The lower Roman courtyard metalling has been drawn and is now largely removed to reveal the soil layers below. These are producing large quantities of finds most of which looks to be early Roman with some Pre-Conquest material.
A good weeks work with some steady progress made. An area of fallen Roman walling by the front entrance porch was cleaned, drawn, photographed and removed. Below it was a rather more extensive area of fallen Roman roof tile apparently collapsed from the front portion of the Villa. About twenty five sacks full of this tile was bagged up and taken for storage at Dover (plenty of washing for the winter here). Despite a careful search no tiles stamped with
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Another good week although Thursday was a washout . Nevertheless the hardy Pot Washers kept going. On site the last of the late Roman rubble deposits have been removed and we are now working towards exposing more of the lower courtyard surface already partially exposed. Various odd small blocks of soil have been cleared so that we can get down to a constant level across the site. In the process some interesting finds have been made. Amongst recent discoveries are
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We have had another good week with no rain to speak of. Having completed drawing the rubble of the courtyard we took photographs of it and have now started to remove it. This has produced a number of finds all of which indicate that the rubble layer was laid down and used during the fourth century AD. This seems to indicate that the villa was occupied as late as about AD 390. As the rubble has been cleared so traces
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Another good week although the weather has been a bit mixed. Work cleaning the rubble layer in front of the villa has now been completed. This has allowed Andy to make a stone by stone plan of the area. This has taken several days but he has now nearly finished and has done a splendid job. Studying the rubble it now seems clear that it represents the final surfacing of the Roman courtyard, in use during the fourth century AD.
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Full time Work started on Monday 11th July. The weekend team had done a good job preparing the site so that we could start excavating immediately. This year’s excavation will be taking place across the courtyard of the Villa on an area never before touched by archaeologists The weather has been a bit mixed and quite cold on certain days but work has progressed well with between 20-30 people on site each day – some of whom are on work
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