We’re pleased to announce that our post-excavation assessment of the 2015 excavations in Hungerford has just been completed and is available to download.
This report, authored by Dr James Gerrard and Andrew Agate with the assistance of Holly-Ann Carl includes contributions by Don O’Meara, Suzi Richer, David Heslop and Rob Young.
A copy has been submitted to the Somerset Historic Environment Record.
When Hayward and his team dug the villa in the 1940s and 1960s archaeological science was in its infancy. Today we have a whole array of scientific techniques that can be used to shed new light on the villa and its inhabitants.
Above: Hayward’s excavations
The starting point was taking all of our samples over to local archaeological firm GeoFlo. GeoFlo are specialists in wet sieving archaeological soil samples. Over the next few weeks Nigel and Liz will run wet sieve all of our samples – burnt seeds and the like will float (known as the ‘flot‘) and these will be sent to various specialists for analysis. Shells of molluscs and other tiny fragments of fish bone and the like will be caught in sieves with tiny meshes. These tiny fragments will also need to be sent to various archaeological scientists.
Lufton is a long way from the coast and one of the things that we’re quite interested in is determining where all the oysters came from. There are tow logical options: the Dorset coast or the Bristol Channel. Ancient oyster specialist Dr Jessica Winder will look at our oysters and we hope that she’ll be able to shed light on this element of our villa’s inhabitants.
Above: Oyster shells on the tessellated pavement – a late Roman snack?
Finally, we took a soil micromorphology sample from the burnt deposits that Hayley and Co. excavated. This sample, in a kubiena tin, is going to Cambridge University to be prepared and thin sectioned. Newcastle’s Dr Lisa-Marie Shillito will then undertake the analysis of this sample and hopefully tell us how these deposits accumulated.
Above: Burnt deposits in Room 1
It’s been a week since we all returned from Somerset. Most of us (James and Andy included) have been taking it easy after a grueling four weeks in the field and in anticipation of the start of the academic year.
One of the bits of Lufton related work James has been up to is provisionally cataloging the uncleaned coins. Just for interest’s sake the barchart below shows all of the excavated and identifiable (so far!) coins excavated from Lufton (this year and by Hayward) as per mills values by Reece period. As a point of comparison Phillipa Walton‘s British Mean values are included too.
This is a VERY PROVISIONAL analysis but the strength of Lufton in the early to mid fourth century AD is very noticeable. One of the odd aspects of this year’s excavation was our failure to find any coins later than AD364. Late fourth century coins are quite common at villas in the West Country and we’re not sure why ours are missing (especially as Hayward found three coins of the House of Valentinian).
James reckons about 15 coins will need to be cleaned and conserved. This will happen in October. It’ll be interesting to see if they change the above diagram…
James is writing this from the comfort of his home on a rather damp bank holiday Sunday.
The hard work of the excavation ended on Friday when James and Elliot watched the machine backfill the trench and reseeded the area. With the students ferried back to the train station the supervisors and directors retired to the Masons Arms for a fine evening meal. On Saturday they left Somerset early and heading up the motorway at light speed (also known as 62mph) we made it back to Newcastle (dropping Hayley at Wetherby Services on the way) in record time.
A hideous couple of hours followed and James, Andy and Elliot struggled to get all the finds and equipment properly stored at the University. By 7pm we were all home, back amidst our respective families and coming to grips with such innovations as walls and meals that involve rice.
***************************************
It’s been our most successful season. We’ve achieved more than we imagined we could and revolutionized our understanding of the Lufton Roman villa. The long process of post-excavation analysis follows, so make sure you stay tuned to the blog for updates.
We’d like to thank the excavation team for all their hardwork in sometimes difficult and trying conditions. We’d also like to thank the local community for their interest, patience and generosity.
Particular thanks go to: Maggie and Colin Baker (our hosts), James and Carol Pullen (landowners), Liz Glaisher and Peter Seib (Brympton), Ski, SSARG, Historic England, YALHS, Roman Research Trust and the Somerset Archaeological Society. Ian Hodder, our digger driver from G. Crook, made the work possible, as did YHC and Wessex Water. We have undoubtedly missed someone off this list. If it’s you, then please accept our thanks and know that the omission is through forgetfulness rather than carelessness.
We do hope to return next year. Such a return largely depends on whether significant funding can be raised. Excavation is an expensive business and to run another season will cost somewhere in the region of £35K. If you, or your business / organisation are interested in supporting the project next year then please contact James G.
To end with a score card of the excavations:
Extra building phases found: 3
Roman coins discovered by metal detector: 45
Roman coins discovered by eye: 5
Tessellated pavements found: 1
Roman hairpins: 1
Complete pots: 1
Visitors to site: 500+
TV appearances: 2
National Newspaper articles: 3
Rubbers / pencil erasers lost: 60
Custard creams consumed by Andy: 134,567
Trips to Asda: 34500
Meals ruined by Jeff: 1
Dig trousers worn by James G: 1
Trowels lost: 3
Pairs of steel toecapped boots ruined: 3
Times the hire company emptied the Portaloo: 2
It was the final day of work for everyone today before the final team head back home with just a few week before the university year begins again.
There was lots to do this morning. We started off by scanning the tessellated pavement with a Faro 3D laser scanner. This will allow an extremely accurate 3D computer model of the discovery to be made. Recording the pavement in this level of detail will allow other scholars to study the remains without the need to disturb them again.
Having scanned the pavement the next step was to backfill the sensitive areas of the site by hand. Pushing barrows of dirt over the painstakingly excavated hypocaust and tessellated floor was a strange experience but it will help to support and protect these parts of the site when we backfill by machine tomorrow.
One exciting last minute discovery was the realisation that a large ‘rock’ towards the northern end of Room 4 was actually a plano-convex lead ingot. This hefty item was lifted and will be taken back to Newcastle along with the other finds for study. Presumably it was manufactured when the building was demolished and robbed. All of the lead fittings will have gone into a crucible and been made into this leaden lump. Quite why it was left behind is a mystery…. and an avenue for future research.
This excitement over we got on with removing the fencing and creating a smaller enclosure around the trench in preparation. The hire company will be picking the fencing up tomorrow – here’s hoping they come nice and early.
Other jobs included striking the tent we use for a site office and getting all the tools and other kit back to base. An afternoon of sorting, packing and cleaning tools kept most of the team busy. Douglas (below) even got all the samples organised for their collection by GeoFlo tomorrow.
James G spent the evening checking paperwork and plans, which caused him at one moment to bless the invention of single context planning as a sneaking suspicion about one part of the site was confirmed by close analysis of the drawings. It was quite late by the time he was done and the team were, by this time, all lurking in the marquee clutching their purloined rubbers (or erasers for N American readers). By this time Andy had deserted us for the comfort of the Masons Arms.
Tomorrow will see the team depart to Newcastle and other parts of the country. Left behind will be James G, Andy, Elliot and Hayley who will oversee the backfilling of the trench and the final pack up of the camp. Ski will join us for one last time and hopefully find, as the spoil gets pushed back into the trench, all the metal bits and pieces we missed.
The end is nigh and everyone’s thoughts are turning homeward.
Today was the final day of archaeology for this season’s excavation. Although there are still some bits and bobs to do on site tomorrow, today marks the end of digging and recording for our 2016 season.
The day began with Elliot and James G finishing their work on the tessellated pavement. After recording the final overlying layer, removing it and sampling it in its entirety, they were able to uncover the pavement as much as possible. In the final layer on top of the pavement James G even found a completely intact Late Roman bone hair pin. After it was uncovered, with some careful brush work and some excellent sponging methods, they were able to clean it up in preparation for its photo record.
Elsewhere in the trench, our top planning team of Lucy and Becca finished off their work for the season by finally recording the last of the walls.
Meanwhile, Matt, Frankie, Jeff, Freddie and Tom were occupied with the mammoth task of cleaning up the rest of the trench, ready for Andy to take a whole trench photo.
Hayley and Doug were able to take out the final layer of their burnt patch and sample it before Hayley and Elliot took on their supervisory roles and delegated the cleaning of the trench as much as possible.
The majority of the team were taken home while Andy, James G, Elliot and Hayley attempted to do some laser scanning of the trench. Unfortunately due to rain they had to postpone playing with the expensive gadgets until tomorrow.
It’s the final day on site for most people tomorrow before backfilling on Friday. Both our first and second teams are incredibly proud of what they’ve achieved over the last four weeks, seeing the trench completely cleaned up today hammered home how much their hard work has paid off.
It was a bit of a media circus on site today. The team were visited by Historic England, the county archaeologist, representatives from the Historic Environment Record as well as reporters from BBC Points West and the Western Gazette. The outcome of all this is that Historic England and County are very pleased and impressed with our work; BBC Points West did a great news story and the Daily Mail Online wrote a rather odd, not to mention inaccurate, piece about the project… still we were pleased to make the national press.
We also had a visit from Absolute Archaeology – who brought us wine and cheese! Thank you!
Elliot, Josh and James G spent most of the day working on the contexts overlying the tessellated pavement that was uncovered yesterday. They worked hard all day to record each individual layer on top of the pavement while also carefully uncovering more and more of the tesserae. While it was disappointing to find it’s just a plain grey pavement we were really impressed by its state of preservation. The slumping must indicate that the floor is subsiding into something beneath it – a hypocaust??
Meanwhile, Hayley continued to unpick the layers surrounding the burnt layer in the central eastern part of the trench along with Doug and Matt. They were rewarded by finding a late Roman coin (with Ski’s help) and some pottery.
Tom set off alone just behind Elliot and Josh working a burnt patch of his own, recording and excavating it in an attempt to understand its place in the wider picture of our trench.
Meanwhile, Jeff, Freddie and James B began the monumental task of cleaning the entire trench in preparation for a whole trench photo tomorrow.
Andy was working throughout the day with the Total Station and the GPS while also darting around site, taking record photos in between bouts of custard cream-related madness.
In other news, our crack recording team of Lucy and Becca continued to record walls as well as making further records of the apsidal room and its related hypocaust and flue channel.
The team returned hone to cheesy pasta prepared lovingly by Tilly and Frankie.
With only two days to go, the team are working hard to get as much done as possible before heading home this weekend.
It was a busy day on site today but the team managed to make a brilliant discovery of a tessellated floor. This pavement is in a room that occupies an area that Hayward had thought was outside of the villa entirely.
At the start of the day, James G was hoping to work off some of Josh’s excess energy by having him, Jeff, Frankie and Elliot hack out some of the overlying rubble deposits in the North East corner of the trench.
However, after a near miss with the mattock, Elliot struck some tesserae. These quickly grew into what was clearly a full paved floor. The pavement is suffering from some subsidence but otherwise appears at the moment to be a plain grey floor.
Elsewhere in the trench, Hayley, Doug and James B worked hard to record and take off the clay layer which was overlying the burnt deposit on the east side of the trench. They topped the day off by taking a micromorphology sample from their deposit and cleaning up the surrounding contexts.
Becca and Lucy continued their adventures in archaeological recording by planning walls and contexts for the whole day while Freddie cleaned up the loose over the walls and Tilly worked on the water pipe channel in the Southern end of the trench.
The team are all very excited about their new discovery and are looking forward to finishing their work in Lufton soon.
Yesterday was a busy day with about 400 visitors being shown around site and another 100 attending the evening talk. We were all pretty exhausted and shell shocked by the end. We were pleased to enjoy a lie in before working a half day in the afternoon.
In the morning Andy and James G bought supplies for the week and the team wolfed down some sandwiches before lunch and a productive afternoon of archaeology.
An old friend – Woofton – joined us in the afternoon. Woofton’s been a companion and mascot for the dig since 2014 and he enjoyed sunning himself in the hypocaust!
Lucy and Becca were tasked with drawing a huge plan of the apsidal room, its joining hypocaust room and the connecting stoke hole channel.
While that was going on, James G, Matt and Freddie discovered that what we thought were capstones of a water pipe in the south east corner of the trench turned out to be the south end of the water pipe channel.
Meanwhile, Doug, James B and Tom were working on the burnt patch that Hayward identified as a squatter hearth. After Josh, Tilly, Jeff and Frankie had finished their work in Room 4 they came as back up to help Doug and co clean up their context for Andy to photograph it.
Elliot spent the day working all over the trench doing bits of recording and helping out the rest of the team. Hayley was tasked with taking out the rubble from the wall on the back of Room 2, revealing another water pipe channel.
At the end of the day, the team ordered pizzas for tea. Andy, James G and Elliot went to collect the leaning tower of pizza and brought back the team’s rations.
We’re entering the final week of excavation tomorrow – it’s the last stretch of work for the team and we need to make every minute on site count!
Today the whole team were on site working hard while James and Andy were providing guided tours of the site for our open day.
The whole team would like to thank everyone who visited for their generosity and interest. We all really enjoyed talking to you all and estimate that around 400 people came down to see us!
We’ve had fish and chips and now we’re off to see James G give his talk at Abbey Manor Community Centre.
The team are looking forward to a lie in tomorrow before going on to the last week of excavation!