Tower Blocks and Togas (South Shields) | S12E12 | Time Team

Somewhere beneath this grass is a Roman cemetery containing the remains of soldiers from across the empire who were stationed here in South Shields. We know it's here because Victorian builders found many bodies. The fort was in use for 300 years, so the cemetery could be huge. and it's not just full of average Roman squads, there were troops from Spain and Africa, there's even an intriguing reference to what could be a unit of Iraqis, there's just one small problem, it's all under a housing estate and we only have three. days to try to decipher it when the Victorian builders raised these terraces in the

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they found Roman tombstones, skeletons and cremations the discoveries seemed to be grouped in one area but the records were approximate and ready, so the location of this cemetery is confusing our The task is to find the cemetery in a landscape that has changed even since the Victorian discoveries and where there are very few pieces of ground where we can dig.

What will be our strategy? We know we have this area of ​​Roman tombs down here for the cemetery. but there are not a large number of them, there are only 16. So our plan is to look for the extension of the cemetery. You think there will be more graves than those. Oh absolutely, I mean these are chance finds made in the Victorian era. period until quite recently and as far as I know there has only been one modern excavation, right? What did they find four or five burials? Probably 4th century inhumations right next to them, there were cremations in vessels and they spread in the early 3rd century.

How do we investigate this cemetery? Well my plan is that we don't start from the known, we actually go beyond the edges of the known cemetery, outside the cemetery, we only have three days, well that's true, but the key things that I want to know is what how big it was and how far it extends, so the goal is to go to these open areas, the grassy areas in the plan, but a decent ditch and we'll start with one here to the west of the cemetery and one right behind us, in the north side of the cemetery, we have locals who are going to dig in the back gardens and they are starting in the middle, so that should give us an arc, trying to understand if the barrels go up to here it's a bit random, isn't it, Phil?

A bit like throwing darts on a dart board, it's not a tour Tony, what you have to understand is that we are a bank of rubbish in the middle of a big house in a green state. The areas are the only places we can really put ditches so we have to go for the green areas the green areas the green areas these areas here the dog poop areas all in today's work Toni Tim's strategy starting the ditches one and two immediately here and work is the opposite of the traditional approach and may ruffle some feathers, but he says that our first objective is the extent, not the contents of the cemetery, we will see well, we will see if we can really reach Roman levels when the original. the victorian terraces were knocked down the new property has just been built on the rubble we have to get through them geofiz has been using radar its deeper investigation technique so we can try to avoid digging up victorian basements well what we are seeing is mainly In all the houses victorians, we think there were two lines of streets here, one in the front and one in the back, running along the road, yes, we think in the middle of the trench we can be in the yard, so they are houses , houses with patios, that's right, yes, but this. everything is disturbing our results it's just when we go to radar this is the disturbance of the Victorian rubble but you can see these answers below what we're wondering is if that's archeology and that's what we want to see, could it just be the foundations deep of the house the deep foundations of the houses the only way to find out is by digging the victorian builders are a tough act to follow they found amazing things like this right in the middle of our site they unearthed two of the best roman tombstones in britain, one It was put up by a Syrian for his 30-year-old wife, Regina, a freed slave from

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ern Britain, the other was in memory of Victor, a 20-year-old North African and former slave of his Spanish master, the southern Roman

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were clearly a microcosm of the entire empire who were the people that would have ruled this place as most of the forts on the border are ruled by provincials these are people that the Romans hired from all over the Roman world they never settled them in the provinces where they came from They were taken to do the dirty garrison work on the border in the long term and we know that there was guts here, there were also Asturians who were Spanish cavalry regiments.

We also know that in the 4th century there seemed to have been a unit of boatmen probably from the Tigris area, which is roughly equivalent to the modern Iraqi Tigris boatman, they must have been tired when they got here, but their services may have been useful here in the Arbaya Roman Fort, which commanded a strategic location next to the North Sea and overlooked the mouth of the River Tyne. The fort was four miles east of Hadrian's Wall, the northern boundary of the Roman Empire and acted as its supply base. The first known fort was built in 160 AD.

C., although there was probably an earlier one. The entrance gate of the fort has been reconstructed based on the plan revealed by the excavations. There is also a reconstruction of the luxurious rooms in which the commander of these unlikely Tigris boatmen lived, a very impressive place, what is this room? This is the commanding officer's summer dining room, as you can see, it is a very magnificent room, with very high ceiling frescoes, so here it is. I have a commander on the northern border who lives in the style of the Mediterranean knight commanding the tigress boatman. Oh, it's a really exotic idea, isn't it?

But that comes from a late Roman military document called the national titan which lists all the units of the Roman army and here in the south protect our bear, it lists this tigris boatman unit. I love the idea that 2000 years ago the Iraqis were part of an invading force in this country, of course it would be great to find artifacts that could confirm the presence of these Tigris boatmen but first we have to find burials of any kind and to expand our cemetery search we are planning to make test pits in the gardens of local residents it is just an arbitrary bet on which house we will choose as it sounds uh hello we We are from the weather

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and we were wondering if we could put a trench in your garden. uh, no, no, because it's all paved and stoned, and how to dig it all up, that will be a big problem, since you have a large area. it's completely paved, yes we could probably dig a hole down there, yes a small one, this test pit will be here in the middle of the property, others will be in an arc to trench two that is being dug to look for the northern boundary . of the cemetery, but the first signs are not encouraging.

Phil has reached the concrete where we might have expected the demolition rubble of Victorian houses and bridges jammed with modern services, gas, water and electricity pipes. The kids from Hadrian's local high school are also going to be digging test pits. John Gator is looking for targets for them because the school is right next to the fort, they are likely to find traces of the vikas or civilian settlements that surrounded all the garrisons. Romans, you know, in cowboy movies you have the fort and then outside you have all these old shacks full of Indians and drunk doctors, do you think that's what it would have been like outside of the Roman force?

Yes, practically the Roman army in the campaign pushing forward the border has quite a bit of baggage. a train of prostitutes, wives, children and their loot and a series of huts and huts would take over all kinds of thoughts, but in reality here on Hadrian's wall it seems to have been different, the rooms are much more permanent and as soon as the forts become Permanent, the cities become much more permanent, much more organized. If you were here, outside the South Shields, in the 2nd century, you would see a vase-paved street with stone houses, shop fronts facing the street where soldiers could buy everything they needed.

You might want workshops behind some of the soldiers who were married, they would have houses that would be inns for travelers and even beyond that, you would have temples, you would have a religious area and beyond that, a cemetery, so it's a thriving community but really quite established. Well ordered and well managed, the population of Las Vegas and the fort could have been more than a thousand during the 300-odd years of the fort's life. Thousands of people would have died in our Bay. They must have been buried somewhere where Stewart was trying to work. find out if the shape of the landscape in Roman

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s offers any clues as to where the bridget trench cemetery might have been one has found a way through the services has his family robin feature well no, not yet um it looks like we're going through this Victorian style remains of the makeup coat, but then Ray was here and found three pieces of medieval pottery, we have the green glaze, oh yeah, that's good, isn't it amazing?

So Bridgette has another 1,400 years left if she wants to find the west. boundary of the cemetery phil although in trench two you can't go any deeper 12 years later the

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tells me this is not phil Roman no, I don't think I ever found a vehicle inspection pit before tony, I'm blaming him, you know, When we laid this trench, I was expecting the foundations of a Victorian terrace. Well, there is a certain law that covers this. Where the ditch actually was, we discovered by looking at an aerial photograph in 1949 that it was in that space between the houses. one and only gap in the whole area of ​​Victorian houses, I think it must have been a stray bomb or something, it left this gap and then they put this concrete, whatever is here to fill the gap if you think this trench is useless come and take a look at this here look this is a sand pit isn't it Phil Tony?

That's very, very informative. Look, do you see those horizontal lines across there and actually in the sand that tells us it's natural sand? Now that means we're not actually going to find any Romans there. Actually, we've dug a long way and it's a natural Sand Phil. We can hit trench two on the head, right? I think we can. This does not. It doesn't look too promising, but it's only the first day and it may be that Tim's strategy of quickly discounting areas is paying off at school, the children have only reached Victorian levels and the residents' test pits also have a lot way to go. come a long way down, yes, but most of what we've excavated was just all the demolition from the 1960s, when they knocked down all the Victorian terraces, so you think it's a Victorian wall, yes, definitely, they are old-style hand-made bricks and we've taken out a bunch of them and, well, you haven't gotten to the natural yet, so there could be Roman archeology underneath, that you're running very short of room to work in the background, Now you must be having a nightmare.

This is the main link between northern Britain and the rest of the Roman Empire. Indeed, Stewart has now provided new information about the cemetery and its location and the extent of the Roman road. Where is our cemetery? The cemeteries here in the open areas we have. marked and we know that the cemeteries are located along the roads and this is the main road that leaves the fort here and you see how the slope goes down there, the cemetery was placed on that ridge quite deliberately so that the Roman tombs are visible to people. going up the road or leaving the settlement the choice is quite deliberate this is large or rather small because if the cemetery were located on this spur it must be much smaller than we imagined which could explain why both trenches 1 and 2 and many of our test pits are empty, but 400 years of fort would have generated many dead people who must be buried somewhere even though trench two found nothing Roman, it is the closest we have excavated to known burials and Phil thinks it's worth moving.

A few meters closer we're not done with this area down here, all we've done is establish where the sand level is and we've seen it in about a tuba two area, I mean you could have a grave. the way around it and you wouldn't find it so what we have to do is open up a large area we have we have the space down here we can open up quite a large area I actually disagree Phil because if you look at In On this map what you will see is a road that is right behind those houses over there and I think there could be a road that leads down this ridge and we know that there are Roman burials next to the roads, waitWait a minute, what we said was that we wanted to find the extension of the cemetery if we follow Stewart's theory, the Roman road to there we already know that there have been fines there, so aren't we undermining what you wanted to do?

Yes, we are to a certain extent, but I think there's some value in both of our ideas, you're sitting on a fence anyway, let's take our Roman finds to Stewart's Roman road or Phil's sandbox, whatever. We'll find out tomorrow, we're looking to see how far a Roman cemetery extends beneath this. housing development in South Shields so far we have found medieval plow land in our first ditch and a 20th century vehicle inspection pit in the second, but we have not ruled out this area and are ditching three nearby to search north. The boundary of trench four of the cemetery is also underway a little closer to the known burials.

You will look for graves placed near the possible Stuart Roman road. If these trenches do not work, the plan is to continue moving towards the known burials. I do not remember. The last

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we did a team time when at the end of the first day we found so little, in fact absolutely nothing, I'm starting to get this terrible feeling that at the end of the third day I'll have to turn to the camera and say that we came here looking for a Roman cemetery but I found something much more interesting 50 tons of sand and a vehicle inspection pit.

That said, although yesterday this whole area was filled with a pretty unfocused frenzy as people were digging everywhere and now at least it seems like they're starting to think and pontificate, we actually have something bridge, well, yes we do, it's the first feature in this trench, this is a regular shaped cut, here it is cutting through this windswept redeposited sand and within it we have distinct bands of clay and then dirty sand and then clay. and then dirty sound again don't you have something created by humans? It looks like it to me if you look at that nice vertical edge there, the sharpness of the cut looks like an intrusion that has been deliberately excavated.

This could be a Roman characteristic. grove, I'm not quite sure what it feels like for me in a kind of sub-Saharan sand. Maybe it's a natural feature, you know, heavy rain causes holes to form in the clay at the bottom of the holes as it dries. Windblown sand, more clay, so what are we going to do with it? Well, I think we have to get to the bottom of it. One of the problems is what we will find because in the sand, exactly, but I don't think we will be. We're going to find a lot of evidence of any bones left within the scene because they just disappear pretty quickly.

Does that mean we can't prove if it's a tomb or not? Oh no, because in a Roman tomb, especially in the military cemetery, one would expect to find grave goods, so that even without preservation of the bones it is possible to prove that this is a Roman tomb. Well, it may turn out to be just a pond, but it's the most positive thing we have so far, there it is, in trench four, that's it. a strong smell of Roman in the fines it's quite a nice and bold room, yes, really, yes, it's been torn down, but that's the last piece of archeology that Matt Williams will see for 24 hours for 250 years.

This fort would have been manned by Roman auxiliaries, tough soldiers from throughout the empire who would have signed up for 25 hard years. Matt goes to see if he could have hacked it. Where you come from? London, I fear that rural recruits are considered better and are better accustomed to hardship. I'm a soft city boy, so I can say that Gaius Matt is going to live 24 uncomfortable hours as a 4th century soldier with harsh training, draconian discipline and disgusting food, not to mention he'll have to go to a commando, you'll get used to it, that wait. Okay, Jim, put them down.

There are certain things we look for in a Roman doctor. An alert face. We need a straight neck. A wide chest. Wide shoulders. This can come with age. We are looking for a tight stomach that we don't want. anyone running towards fat, muscular buttocks muscles and curved feet the sacramentum I swear by God Christ and the Holy Spirit I swear by God Christ and the Holy Spirit and by the Majesty in pursuit of the mortal remains of the Roman troops who were here 1600 ago years The Trench Four search for burials near Stewart's Roman Road, but the fines are not what we expected, instead of evidence of dead people, we are getting traces of occupation where people lived, oh, it's obvious, that's it the beautiful Samia and was imported from a Roman ghoul, I can say it clearly. far, this is a very rare form, you know, that maltaria, those Roman kitchen bowls with the proper semolina to grind the food, the very characteristic Roman kitchen, this is a very rare form of samiano mortarium, it has a kind of wall vertical around the edge here. with a very distinctive lion's head shaped beak on one side and then the bowl down here with the sand, you can actually see some sand in there, it's not the kind of thing you'd expect to find in a tomb, although I think They are occupational waste.

I mean, I've been talking to Tim about this and we agree that it definitely seems like some kind of occupancy warehouse. I mean, it's a thick deposit, with a whole range of materials and it even has coal. I always placed the vehicles further towards the fort on the west side, so it seems we have now found evidence that it is spreading further here too, with the vecus appearing to extend further south than previously thought on the Roman map of the south. Shields is being redrawn, that's all well and good, but where are the burials? Carenza approaches the problem from a different angle.

He is also going over exactly what archaeologists here in South Shields have found in previously dug test pits around the property. The cemeteries seem to occupy quite different sizes. Matt is getting a crash course in Roman drilling. Scooter status. least for the next two and a half or three centuries, just a lot of permanent forts here, it's the edge of the Roman world, it's just the garrison at the end of the known world, if you like, would any of the soldiers really have been British? No, no, the best thing about the Romans with their army is that they realized that if you hired local troops and established them locally, you could have actually hired your own resistance and equipped it, so you usually take units from the provinces you control and you put them. them in other parts of the army where you could control them, these are really tough men who are used to very considerable hardships, all kinds of discipline and the Roman army fell like an absolute ton of bricks on any mutant troop that decided they'd had enough of that. this, what happened when they were too old to fight the provincial auxiliaries, they served for 25 years and then they got their reward, they became Roman citizens and then they got a status in life that would be passed on to their children, I think quite a bit. many of them would have been inclined to stay in Las Vegas around here, so there may well be people in these houses who are descended from Roman soldiers.

Oh, around here in South Shield, I'm absolutely sure of that, yes, yes they are, it's the closest thing to The Romans, as our residents have their test pits, they're still empty, at least the local school kids near the fort they have some archeology in theirs. Do you think you really like the Roman haunts here? No, no, why not? And so do we. I really didn't find any people who found them while sleeping. Oh, and that pottery is pretty modern, isn't it? She's probably Victorian too. We need to try to get below all of that and see if we have Roman even lower because that would be great, right?

Yeah, yeah, well, I can't believe this. You only ate a couple of pieces before lunch in trench four. Phil's stream of fines has become a flood, but the story is still a settlement, not a graveyard, I mean, look. this we have a bunch of salmon which is probably my favorite it's very well decorated it's actually not that wonderful you know if you look at the rosettes they're very worn and it's got that pretty fuzzy orange color I think this is the eastern school as you know late 2nd century early 3rd century came from the Rhineland where they were noted for their bad Samia they weren't really very good at it and it's not that it's quite distinctive actually, but it's a good quote and then we also have these color coated ones, I love that type of decoration, yes, it's one of those little beer drinking beer drinkers, that's right, I approve, yes, but I think this one came from the Neem Valley, Cambridgeshire, near Peterborough, in the right area, and then we .

I also have more roulette, yes, that color makes me think that this is from northern Gaul, yes, you know, what's really interesting is that it shows all the trade routes that have come up here, that is, when the place It was a port. It is not like this? Many of these things would have been shipped to the east coast or across the North Sea. Among the finds found by the Victorian builders were several skulls, all of which show signs of trauma that are wounds to you and me. Even a supply base like our Bayer would have seen its share of frontline action and the actual injuries have intrigued our bone experts.

We have these skulls and many of them have cut marks like these that you can see caused by a sharp blade and another one there and another one there, obviously they were inflicted when this poor floater was on his knees, probably by someone who was in a killing frenzy and there's a lot of evidence for that, but this is probably the most unusual one because you have this depressed fracture where the bone is still attached on the inside and you have the weapon signature that actually calls it here, so we're experimenting to see if we can actually establish what type. on the weapon it says that signature, it's not clear if the wounds were inflicted on Romans or by Romans, you can see what it did, you can see it crushed the bone there and then there's a fracture that leads up here, so we're starting to get these radiating fractures. coming out but it still doesn't seem like that doesn't matter, I don't know my money is on this Tony, I think the only thing that has the right size and enough speed to cause this kind of damage is something like a shot or or even a rock that really would have hit like this, both the local British and the Romans used slingshots, which seems quite plausible, it's quite convincing, I think near trench three he set about looking for the northern boundary of the cemetery that Bridget had produced. our first possible sniff of a burial, the feature that could have been a grave cut, damn yes I'm afraid, then it's not a grave, no it's not, but I was right, I said it was a natural feature, No?

Yes, but this is the third trench with nothing in it, isn't it? I'm not as discouraged as everyone we've seen in a reasonable area, there's clearly nothing here, so now we stick to our strategy and move forward, but realistically. We are two thirds of the way through the second day and had found nothing at the end of yesterday. I thought, "Well, it's a little frustrating, but the clock is ticking, isn't it okay?" and if we don't do it. I won't find something soon. I'm going to start to worry, but for now we are following a strategy.

Where are we headed? Well, we head to the next trench that is closer to the previously discovered cemetery by the time we get to this. trench we are only 30 meters from where the cremations were found before john have you done the geophysics yes we are still having trouble trying to see through all this victorian rubble i mean you can see it on the radar here the red and yellow , it is when we go deeper into the ground that things need investigation. This is what we have seen here. Well, it turned out to be a metal wire call.

Great, but it's the only way we can evaluate things. You already know. I think I have some great targets on the other side of the excavator and I would like to see them, so this trench will now widen and every meter we move means one meter closer to the known burials, which is the Latin for coward, but I have to to say that he was hitting you a lot harder than you were hitting him, yeah, well, you know he has a little bit of an advantage over me. I don't think I'm very used to this. Are you a bit feminine?

To be honest, when they weigh an absolute ton, I mean this, although it is made of wood, it is not very well balanced and is quite difficult to balance. You have to keep going, that's why you didn't hit him harder, right? Yes, God, yes, you need, you need muscles there and there, and then this shield again, you have to keep it upright all the time and also move it. move pretty fast to parry his blows, yeah, because he obviously can't use that and then of course there's the trusty chainmail which he's an absolute ton of, so you get dragged down all the time and were you hurting when it went to you, oh no, no, not at all, really, yeah,okay, that's better, Matt, finally one of our test pits is delivering Roman fines.

The question is: could they be from burials? Yes, oh, yes, yes, of course, that's a nice little piece of the flag and there's the main one. body and then that goes all the way to the rim unfortunately without the handle or proper spacing it's going to be very difficult to date it but that's guaranteed in the Roman period now a jug is the sort of thing you can get at a cremation burial like grave goods, but it is more likely that this is just a normal flag from everyday use, part of everyday life in Las Vegas, so possibly it is a grave goods, but we still don't have anything that positively shows that a trench four of the cemetery was is becoming our hot trench, not the roadside burials that Stuart expected, but instead there are signs of settlement in the form of a rubbish tip or garbage dump and now another surprise has turned up.

Would you mind taking a look at this incredibly compact hard surface? Wow, that's tough, isn't it? It's real metallic, I mean, it is. This is the type of surface you get from Roman roads. It looks Roman to me here given the amount of Roman material we've removed from the top, so it's there, it's there, it's there, a Roman road, another sign of life where we expected. Finding death is becoming a real enigma, trying to discover what happened to all those people who must have died in our bayer, where they were all in a cemetery. Korenza is trying to discover whether the layout of other Roman fort sites can tell us why the cemetery here is so elusive.

The answer may be simple and devastating. The problem is that the cemetery may well be much smaller and much more compact and perhaps several cemeteries what we may be reaching is the spaces in between I think what we really need to do from an archaeological point of view is to start as close as possible to any place where we know we have had human remains underground, but that is exactly the opposite of what Tim told us. The strategy was at the beginning, he said he would start wide and work inwards and it hasn't worked well. I think we should start working from what is known and find out if there is anywhere where we know there are remains in situ at point h. on the map here where there was a small rescue dig that found Roman cremations and burials, so the Karen faction wants to dig here.

Point h. It will be very interesting to see what Tim thinks, we won't have to wait long to see Tim's reaction that day. It's coming to an end and at the end of Matt's day there's one last test for him in the legionnaire's tavern seaweed beer still betting beer debauchery little changes there from the normal life of a digger to my face and now it's showdown time from tim and karen at point h corral this is where we end up this is the last piece of green we have this is what we are going to investigate but this is the only area that I think we should look at also because underneath those bungalows is The area where we recently found skeletal human remains in situ is this the mysterious h i.e. h on the map we talked about earlier and we actually have the end of a grave cut right here so there's a really defined target to go to.

That's brilliant, if we have a grave here we can put a trench over it and get out of it. In other words, we are going to change our strategy and work from the known to the unknown. evidence from the GFIZ that there is something here, we've only managed to do half of that strip by the time we get into the ground with the radar, we're starting to get this really clear response, it seems to have a curved edge, I think it may be significant and we should look into it, that would be really interesting because other test pits have been dug there, one of which found what looked like the edge of a curved trench in which that or yours or both may be part of a burial of Roman burial mound that is found associated with these military thoughts, so they could also be part of the cemetery, suddenly everyone is talking, there is a lot of evidence to dig up here, well, I think there are some interesting ideas here, but we have to do some.

More work, we need more geophysics, I think before we can be sure what's down there and this curved mound, we need to really determine how big it is and what it is before we can know where to dig, I think in the meantime, while that happens. Let's continue with the certificate on this one but all that is for tomorrow. Are we going to find the cemetery? Are we going to find the mysterious missing bodies? This herb is our last chance to drop three in our search for a Roman cemetery here. shields from the south and we have searched everywhere we could throughout this property and we have certainly found evidence of Roman occupation in that grass where that large mound of earth is, but not a single burial, we don't understand, but we have one last roll of the dice there on that green by that yellow digger.

Let's hope we find something. Two new trenches are planned. The first close to a previous excavation that found part of a Roman burial twenty meters away. Gfiz is inspecting our second target. In an earlier test pit, part of a curved ditch that could have surrounded a Roman tumulus was found here. We want to know if that was the case. The only problem is that we know the areas were full of gas, water and electricity pipes at the same time as our surveyor. Henry is trying to estimate how large the possible burial mound would be from the small segment of the ditch that was found.

A short, hard life, they spent half their time drunk, the other half exhaustively drilling or, in Matt's case, trapped in a ditch as a digger, you swore you would serve the emperor until death, didn't you? Yeah, you're pretty close to By the way you look, I'm pretty close to swearing it's true. Last night it was absolutely cold. I was falling asleep standing up. They have stationed me outside the barracks. They told me it's two in the afternoon. Morning a little tired now I'm sure I'll be very tired in a couple of hours. I'm on this until four in the morning.

I don't think I have more than a couple of hours. Sleep before we have to get up and start cleaning things up and then roll call after that add a little and the captain pinched you, pinched me and crushed them underfoot claiming they weren't Roman, at which point I was ready to uh rebel, imagine if you were Italian and you were sent here to South Shields. I think I'll run back to Italy as quickly as possible. Matt's time is up and so is he. Now it's almost lunch time talking about the latest orders. at the last chance, in the hall, anything here, well, there would have been, but unfortunately we have a city service here, I mean old Victorian toilets, some of which we couldn't have, we couldn't have picked up anything, nothing more, nothing more, what's happening? down here, well, down here, where we had the highest hopes of finding a burial, more services, so what are we going to do?

We have a chance. I think this is the geophysics that we have now extended, it's the trenches, look what stands out. Like a sore thumb we can't ignore that it may just be more Victorian vendors, but given the circumstances we have to try, maybe it's an option and it's right down here, but I haven't given up here, I still have plenty of services though Well, there are services, but there is a space right up here, right at the edge of the site, from the edge of this sidewalk to this orange line. Tim, that is an act of desperation, absolutely not, we have this. trench that we are going to put here and we are going to go down there where the pegs are, we have marked it well, we will have unearthed the entire property then, right?

But that's it It goes so two new trenches are going to go in one to investigate John's anomaly and in the other as close as possible to point h, but it feels like desperation, we are no longer looking for a cemetery, we are looking for a single grave and our best bet may still be the possible burial of the mound in trench seven even though it has been damaged by services. Tim, I remember the night before we started there, you were the first time leading a team weather dig and what you were worried about was how we were doing.

We are going to process this wealth of archeology that was going to sprout from the earth because we put a trench, yes, and it has been quite different, right? Why I think it's because the land surface we see now is very different from the underlying Roman surface and we didn't realize how variable the geology was, you know, sand at this depth in one place, clay in natural hollows, gullies and things we didn't imagine were going to be there at all, but this is pretty interesting, right? Well, it's because actually the archeology here, although it's not symmetry, I think it's starting to make me feel like we can put it all together in my path, well under that dump.

You know, the dumpster Phil found yesterday. We discovered a cobblestone path. which I think feels glorified with the name of a road, it's not what you would call a standard grade one main Roman road, but it's still a road and it's on this particular alignment that leads towards the known burials and that excites me because I think You are getting the idea of ​​a path that leads to burials, why do you say that you are starting to be able to put everything together well? Because we found these same cobblestones in the next trench, even closer to the cemetery bridge, there is a trench, absolutely yes.

This road heads through that trench and to the glorious point of Carrenza. Absolutely, that's what we think, yes, and what's more, we've discovered something new in the last half hour, which I think makes the idea even more positive, tell me right. We can see the path or rather what remains of it down here, but we have just discovered the ditch in the same alignment to the other side that runs through the yellow sand, that gray band, the previous excavation that did find burials was defined by ditches exactly on this alignment and I think we found the edge of their cemetery plot, which is what we came looking for, wasn't that the absolute definition of the cemetery?

But it would be nice to find a burial, wouldn't it? There's just a chance that we can I found something in the trench section there, the bridge. I think she may have found something cut into the ditch that looks a bit like a burial. Do you think you might actually have a cut on your grave? Yeah, well, I hope so. Clay can be seen within a rather square looking feature and Roman tombs cut into ravines have been found at this site before. Well, that's the most optimistic thing I've heard for several hours. A tomb would be fantastic news and there is more good news from the local school children who have produced an impressive fine room in their test pits, in fact they have found a lot of Roman pottery considering the small area that has been opened up, they have done very well, in fact, they really can.

You give them an idea of ​​what was happening in Roman times in this place by what they found. Well, I can see right away that there is a very nice little collection of Roman kitchen utensils. This is the type of material that was used every day in a Roman era. In the kitchen, contaminants are collected from food and thrown away quite regularly, in the same way that we throw away paper plates, Styrofoam containers, that type of thing, this is the type of material that would have been used in homes, in vehicles. where the families of the soldiers who lived in the fort had their daily lives but where the beggars were buried not here John's anomaly turned out to be a brick dump possibly here next to point h but due to the services we will perform You never know if it is another of those services.

There is a great void here. Look even more disappointingly. The possible cutting of Bridget's grave has turned out to be a natural feature. Although the trench has produced a fine samian shird. It's a really nice piece, but there is a deer. all these decorative elements mass produced by one of the huge factories in central France, shipped to Britain by the ton, what date are we talking about, about the middle of the 2nd century, about the time the fort of stone. he called from his search of the cairn to trench four, which produced yet another surprise as I left.

All we had was this Roman road. Now you have this huge slot running through it. What archeology have you found in it? We have discovered that Beneath the surface of the road we have this huge clay dump about a foot deep, which is what was put there to build the road. Underneath that clay we have natural sand, so we're really at the bottom and we cut through that. At this end of the ditch we have this small pit filled with gray dirt and charcoal. Is there any cremated bone sticking out of it that we can't see with the naked eye yet?

We have a large piece of bone that is on that tray where it came from this is from a level that is much closer to the level of the surface of theroad um almost this kind of height in the section oh that black thing or not just below that is okay well I think it's human It's probably where on the body it looks like a piece of the upper arm of a pretty thick arm , but undoubtedly, the possible cremation pit turned out to be a prehistoric feature, but the human bone shows that there was a burial about 20 meters.

Bridget's trench has finally produced intriguing evidence that we are close to the cemetery ditches in the correct alignment and now, which could be even more positive. Bone, the question is what kind of bone is in such terrible condition. It's certainly not cremated bone, I mean, it is. uh, mostly long bones, but gosh, it's the consistency of toothpaste, yeah, it's just rotten, it's falling apart, obviously that's why we don't cover any skeletons here, isn't this soil so acidic that we both Are they decomposing? There is nothing there that is recognizable as anything that is specifically animal or specifically human, whether human or not, we now know that we are near the cemetery or that one of them was small and could not have housed all the dead of our bayer , so there must be other cemeteries at this time. one was prominently placed crowning a hill with access along Phil's path.

We now also know that the vika extended lower than previously thought forming the northern boundary. The main road south from the fort was the eastern boundary. To the south there was swampy land not suitable for burials. and what a phil who's been digging right in the middle of this wedge shaped graveyard his persistence in trench seven has paid off he's not a wheelbarrow but he snatched victory from the jaws of the utilities it's a lovely little feature you can see which is cut into this this very orange clay and it's filled with this grayish brown clay which is exactly the same material as the underwater saw, the Roman type of underwater saw, so I'm pretty sure it's Roman dated and I say it's very well cut with a nice flat base.

I wonder if maybe it didn't have some kind of wooden wall inside. It's peculiar because one was dug at right angles in the test pit that was dug a few years ago next door, so it looks like we have two at right angles here and that begins to suggest an enclosure that might be the kind of feature that It's really in a cemetery, certainly with that clay like that, I mean almost deliberate filling. So, that's the kind of thing you find in the ritual enclosures that are known around cremations and other burials, so I think we're where we should be.

An enclosure would probably have surrounded a family plot containing cremations marked with stones or stakes, it would have been the 3rd century. or earlier, before the Roman Empire converted to Christianity and burial became the preferred funeral practice. Well, one thing we can say about this farm is that it is quite well equipped with gas, water and electricity pipes, most of which we found in our trenches, but with help from the south. protects the residents and the school children, we have managed to unravel the history of a Roman cemetery from this labyrinth of buildings and concrete and I think that is a result that you