Time.Team.S16-E07 Toga Town: Caerwent, South Wales

this walls pretty good isn't it and it's all pure rock-solid Roman and if you think that's good you should see what's inside it because this is Kyle went the best-preserved Roman town in Britain and it's a cracker here's the plan look you've got temple forum birds houses shops but there's still pieces missing here here here here absolutely nothing that's because those areas have never been touched never been dug until now we've been invited here to get to the very heart of the Roman town uncover its secrets and fill in the blanks Kyah went lies in south wales near the Severn Estuary in Roman times it lay on the main road from Gloucester to the legionary fortress Kylian today this small rural town is the best-kept Roman secret in Britain over the past hundred years archaeologists have been piecing together a massive archeological jigsaw puzzle and now hub and post office rubbed shoulders with temples and villas fantastic site he'll know we're walking down the high street one of the major Roman towns of Britain for and over there bars here temples here you know what could be better than that yeah except this is not a time team tourist trip what are we likely to find well I don't know we've only to guess yeah what would you expect upon the hush of your local town fancy shops fast food outlets vegetable market meat market anything and it could all be in here right on the high street mean look at it Greenfield has never been dad or geophys ever and you're right on the major street of a major Roman town there's only one thing that's perplexing me why is Mick Aston here though famous medieval assume hates anything roaming I'm not keen on the roads but we're right next to the church there that's medieval so I think there's going to be a lot of medieval stuff here on top but Mick they've got three days leaving the center of a major Roman town we call you all that time on the top of six inches looking for the medieval he's the boss this week right right so what are we gonna do well obvious isn't it geophysics first let's look at that mean get a trench in you've got to be quick really got times against us yeah I still think we'll have a metre of medieval stuff on top though to get through Mick we will get to that fairly soon yeah let's see so under the watchful eye of our medieval policeman our conquest of khai went begins right in the heart of the Roman town as the archaeologists investigate this field for the first time ever and while we wait with bated breath for the results Helens finding out about the town's history I can see there's lots of Roman buildings here but what else do we know we know that the Romans called it vent asylum which means the marketplace of the salaries they were the local tribe who lived in this part of South Wales so well the San Lyra is friendly to the Romans initially they were the opposite of friendly they were the most unfriendly of tribes in Britain and it took 25 to 30 years for the tribe finally to be subdued and to be incorporated within what became the Roman and said Britannia so how did these wild barbarians end up with a Roman town because the Romans thought that the only civilized way to live was in a town they founded towns and they relied upon the local elites to rule for them so the local elites restyle themselves from being warrior elites and instead become urban magistrates a bit like as Han councillor so Kai wind was both a market town and an important political centre and this might give us a clue to what's going on in our field and as the digger arrives the GF is is hot off the press but it's causing some confusion what I'm not sure about is whether we've got the monumental building or series of small buildings that's the only problem what looks to me Jones you've got a range of rooms going down their rooms their rooms there another range going across there and then perhaps the central courtyard now cuz your office at the temple and you might have public buildings and that wouldn't be out of place as a meat market but you're making a big assumption aren't you mix said that it might all be overlaid with medieval could the stuff be medieval no I think that looks Roman but what you can't see I think I'm right in saying Johnny's anything like burials on that no we won't see burials in these conditions I see well we know that there are medieval burials up to that more coming in this direction we don't know if they come across this site so it might still be medieval stuff on the side problem what are we gonna do well it's open attention here let's prove these walls test the inside on the rooms be at the courtyard area then it's panned accordingly looking at the geophys Neil thinks this building could be a roman mmah Kellum a type of covered meat market so we're opening our first trench here to test his theory and having barely scratched the surface fills already struck it lucky even you know what I do Tony nowadays citation second century item first piece I mean well that's very job Cheers why are we saying this could either be a huge building or a meat market well I guess a meat market has a fairly standard plan has range the room but always boost if you like around a central courtyard and I guess in those boobs you might have something cooked meats legs of lamb that kind of thing and I think the point is is that single plans therefore it's paid for by one entrepreneur within rates are out for individual butchers so it's all about mercantile activity what syncing up then that mortar watered ish on it oh that's one wall line it's just more or less where you're supposed to be yes is it correspond with what you've got linear phase but it's meant to come through the middle of the trench so we're not coming off so much for our resident medieval misery guts it's only 11 a.m. and we're right down among the Romans not enough to convince me we've got a meat market yet but considering the fantastic ruins over the rest of the town it is pretty tantalizing because looking at the plan of Roman Kyle went previous things have already revealed a grid system of roads which surround blocks of shops temples and houses and at the centre of it all the political heart of the town the forum when Neil said the forum was here I was expecting something grand and towering with great grooves and columns and things but it's not much here really is this for Roman Britain this is actually quite impressive for standing remains this is one of the very few uncovered form basilica's in Britain but look there's there's virtually nothing here I mean this can't be Oh surely no this isn't ancient but it was based on what was excavated and this has been reconstructed so this got around here so that gutter would have been original yes so what would this have looked like it would have started as this big open space for commercial activity and also an important political meeting space they would have had pillars at the front yeah and then there would have been an open space behind it and then behind that they were probably shops which you can see there this one there so this is a shop this is a shop yes so this bit here this bit there and when it was excavated there were a lot of oyster shells found in it so it might have been something like an oyster bar really with these impressive steps in front of the forum yeah they may well have been lined with something there may well have been statues flanking on either side leading people into here which is the Basilica water Brazil occur and the Basilica is the sort of political chamber that's attached to it a bit like a modern cathedral in that you have two side aisles and a central nave and you can see where you've got those really big white walls there there's so why because they have columns going up them huge columns to give this aspect of height so this is really the heart of the political activity in a city well that's quite enough talking politics cuz over the road fills exposed more of the possible meat market Saphir looks like you've another wall there yeah it's it's quite a narrow one this one it's only that wheeler it's just running back in that direction ok so that's kind of a right angle so this one is what you got earlier on isn't it well but I think it's more complicated than that because we got this face of a wall in there looking still see that running down there but we seem to have a face in there and one out there I wonder whether we ain't got two walls yeah built the slide selected yeah which brings up all manner of of interesting you know problems and questions lots of walls great lots of problems not so great and it doesn't look as though things are about to get any easier since John's got the geophys results for the rest of the field look we've extended the resistance survey and there's Phil's trench and now we've got this really strong high resistance anomaly so what is this a wall or a ditch well it's a wall a substantial wall by the looks of it look at the overall plan within the town this wall we've got it is on that sort of lines so it's always as if that those thin properties we're picking up the same in here perhaps new I mean maybe what you've got is you've got your linear strip shop because you're a fair way back from the road here maybe what you've actually got here is a more high-class living apartments you don't have to smell the noise at the front right but you can live out the back so we should certainly put a trench across this thing out yeah I think something in there on the corner don't you think yeah right on the corner going there I thought you might say that how he's done it already look he always does that so I'll get on with it so we're cracking on with the second trench but I'm feeling a bit out of the loop having turned my back for a minute Neil's given up on meat markets now he's talking about shops and living rooms all should be kind of coming up on this line or the geofence there should be a face here okay another one about there so if we can get that we know we're on the money as digging continues everyone's beginning to home in on the Romans at one end of fills trench Matt's got an amphora while Phil's absorbed in an intriguing oval dish but although the finds are coming in thick and fast they could have come from all sorts of Roman buildings and we can't tell what we're digging yet what's more there are lots more gaps in the Roman jigsaw puzzle so we've sent geophysical the hustle and bustle of the high street to the outskirts of the town we're wondering whether this might have been a quieter more residential area and surveying it will help get a fuller picture of the town layout looking this plan I find really interesting because there's five little grids along this way and four down here so that's 20 and all and the whole town's described in this very neat rectangle it's almost as though the planners preordained what they were going to do and just laid it onto the landscape is that what the Romans did essentially it's exactly what they did one of the oldest laws in in Rome was that the dead could only be buried outside the town walls and so you needed to demarcate the urban limits so their various ceremonies and rituals that they employed while laying out these towns that involved um soothsayers and also their plowing of a ritual furrow around it with a brown ox and a white ox and all sorts of things there is one floor in this perfect plan though if you look at this north gate and the south gate they're walking that's one way of describing it all sorts of factors can affect how you layout that that kind of Roman template there's a very interesting quote from Vitruvius who was an architect and engineer of the period they will be properly laid out if foresight is employed to exclude the winds from the alleyways cold winds disagreeable hot winds favourable moist winds unhealthy so the literally I don't want the winds whistling down the other ways that might affect how the ayran things things are laid out I want to try and understand why you've got a wonky gate system why the layout of the tower is a shape and the size and why it's here back in the town centre we've thrown everyone at the trenches although still confusing clear wall lines are beginning to appear and what's more we're now finding evidence which might tell us what the buildings were used for give it plenty of support underneath and up she comes and then fantastic yeah it's got a fish dish fish dish yeah see that man lovely you what do you got there by your name obvious I'm just sitting down here looks like the rim of an answer I think so that might be for oil yep so we got food stuffs everywhere we could have a chip shop come with the oil in the fish well it's just a suggestion and quite frankly the archaeologists don't seem to have much of a clue but over entrenched to the walls finally seem to be coming together Brigid lot of activity in this trench what's this big feature coming through here well there seems to be what what the geophysics was picking up and it's just the old crappy material that's been thrown back in but I've got high hopes when in techne being under there then you've got this love of wall here well that's it I mean this was a really unexpected find an intact wall that's actually 90 degrees to this this robbed out wall and interestingly I was talking to Tracy and we realised that of course they line up in this direction right so potentially you've actually got one building running all the way back to here back wall along here I mean that's quite a sizable building isn't it it really is so the end of day one and it looks like we might have a huge long building running right down the length of the field but what on earth is it this is our first trench trench number one and it came down bang on the money there's Roman structures everywhere we've got a wall here that I'm standing on a next to it there's another wall but that seems to be of a different period and we've got another one here but that doesn't seem to tie in to this one here and with a little wall here is that part of this wall here and is that wall there part of this one here that's parallel to it and either of them have anything to do with this one which is underneath them and how deep are we going to have to dig in order to find out the answer to any of those questions no one knows the answer to any of that yet but look at this jiff is which John just did in a quieter more residential part of the town can you see that there could be the wing of a house maybe something along there something that there could it be a Roman villa what about this here is that a hyper course to Roman central heating system and what about this enigmatic black blob could that be a mosaic floor we'll find out tomorrow beginning of day 2 here in South Wales where we're trying to fill in some of the archaeological gaps in Kyle went the best preserved Roman town in Britain yesterday we put our first trenches in here slap-bang in the middle of the Roman town and people were talking about a great Municipal Market or long rows of shops and we were getting very excited although by the end of the day all we got was a tangle of walls actually what we've got is still really difficult to work out if you want to guess I think they actually have one shop here and then perhaps another shop back there behind Fay but the other alternative yesterday was that it might be a load of retail outlets under one massive roof the walls are quite flimsy not that well built I think the market you expect bigger walls more monumentally constructed to me it looks like private enterprise you have one person here one person there so it's more Oxford Street than Smithfield but it is early Dasia isn't it yeah absolutely we've got to excavate down in this in this area here this is perhaps the living room where people were living at the back of the shop something at the front digging in here we'll find find you know what they eating what they drinking they need to open up a trench up there why what might be up there that's what actually selling and that will tell us you know was it fishmongers was cheesemongers so we're opening our third trench by the road hoping to find the shop front and what kind of Roman retail outlet we've got because at last Neal seems to be confident but we're dealing with individual shops with living quarters stretching out behind the shop floor he thinks our first two trenches picked up the walls in those living areas and as we continue to dig we should learn more about the lives of CAI wench Romans is continuing down er a little bit look here we go this is sort of two rather sharp prongs off the end of it sometimes with these things are part of toilet sets and they were cleaning under your nails rooms maybe get a set of tweezers and a little ear scoop it's like having a cotton bud but without the bird on the end and it you're supposed to scoop the wax out and then maybe that's a clean clean your nails on view isn't it okay we wanted to get close to the Romans but that's just a little too close as part of our quest to fill in some of the gaps in the plan of Roman Kyle went we're not only concentrating on the center of the town so Stuart scrambling over the walls looking for clues to understanding the layout of the town while Louise is hauling a somewhat bemused Helen into the village church I'm not usually dragged into church by Romanist well I brought you here to show you this inscription lovely or fantastic lettering yeah it's absolutely brilliant and it's set up to a guy called Tiberius poor Linus and he was in charge of the second Legion Augusta which was just up the road at skelion yes this is a yeah Guster yeah what's this doing at Kerr went there well this is where you get to the next bit of the inscription because it says here that it was set up by a decree of the town council of the silly race and so they set it up to this guy the way that's a sort of small town like care went would have fitted into the Roman political system was they'd have had somebody important to intercede on their behalf at Rome to sort of put petitions to the Emperor or the Senate and what it shows is that these people are solu raised really know how to work within a really big complex political structure this third century monument is the only record in britain which documents a Roman Council at work and proves just how romanized we Brits had become and since we've got a whole forum at our disposal it's a perfect chance to experience the cold face of Roman politics mind you it took 30 years to civilize the local barbarians so if you guys are town councillors one of the things you have to do is show that you are good men morally virtuous men and you do that through the way you are rate to what to make a speech in a Roman manner it shows through your moral worth so what do we have to do well you have to give a speech following certain gestures which we know about from a second century AD handbook so some of the things you have to do is the way in which you gesture you extend the arm with your shoulders well thrown back and still with your head up touch your thumb to your middle finger and extend the other two three fingers and you might use that to denigrate your opponent or to make an emphatic point is this the sort of thing that I would gesture on a roundabout if somebody for some you know if you go like but you only have use your right hand ah because otherwise your toga might fall off toga nae this is the first mention of the word toga to the breast particular if you want to make a sincere point perhaps like that or you grip your toga as you're getting more and more into your speech you might let it drop slightly off your shoulder there will be no falling off toga also for emphasis another thing you can do is you can slap your thigh if you want to make an emphatic point Oh with your right hand your right hand again but not quite so panting well the market were very good since their speeches the Senora should look slightly more disheveled when he finishes the one he started those two more disheveled unlikely that said I think everyone's going to get a little grubby if we're gonna make any impact on the town plan although yesterday we were digging right in the heart of the town round about there but this field here which is right behind our incident room is this one up here which is at the edge right by the wall and it's where yesterday evening John came up with this really tantalizing geophys which seemed to indicate that there might be some kind of villa here which I found particularly puzzling because I thought that a villa was essentially a country house not something you'd find in a town I'm not necessarily look at the town Tony you've got these big houses in the corners of the Roman town one there one there away from the noise and smell of the High Street all the hubbub it looks like we've already got one in our field does that mean that villas already been dug here one yet just behind you over there it was x-rated about 20 years ago and John fund some geophysics over here and what amazes me is the results are so clear you can see a range of rooms here coming along and back down this side all set around this courtyard what about this checkered dogtooth bit here you'd like to think that could be a sort of hyper core system associated with the villa it's a massive building which rather poses the question how much of it are we going to dig about 1% I should think Tony um we just have to evaluate it so a single trench come in across the range yes you can get the central courtyard let's look at these rooms are they really posh have they got hyper course so we're opening our neck stretch over John's GF is to see if we've got a villa I have to say it seems like he's really a lot into a few fuzzy blobs but yet again the diggers hardly scratched the surface and Phil's struck it lucky they wear that then I am bad for a start of the trench is it those twisted little bracelet yeah bit small for you very fetching Phil but not all the fines are so easy to identify most of them are caked in mud and dirt and it's a painstaking process to identify the real gems you know this really did look like a piece of bone and in fact actually now that I'm cleaning it up I think it's more likely to be antler it it looked like these too tightly and wine lovers gazing into each other's eyes but you know now that I'm looking at it closely well it's two gladiators tightly including combat while bridge continues to do battle with her fantastic gladiators we're still busy trying to understand the building in which they were found Tracy that's a lot neater than it was you know two or three hours ago yes it's really coming up it's looking a lot better but it's not what we expected so what's going on well we're not sure yet we definitely got a bit of surface though down just below where you're sitting all those small rounded Flint's right and that's a nice surface that may be pavement in front of the shop so the actual shop is further that way all right so what are you gonna do now well I think at the moment we're just gonna carry on cleaning back and then I think we think about going that way okay day two three trenches open but I can't believe we're still being defeated by a few Roman retailers I mean it's so complex this isn't it why do you have two wounds side by side I suppose if I had to guess one explanation might be that this is an original shop here coming along turn the corner and then a new shop is built next door and practicing a bit of a boundary dispute here so they actually build a new wall the side of the shop here this is shop one little alleyway or galley here this is shop to here so it's been like a going to frontier whether they're pushing each other back and fail it's like your boundary dispute yeah what I think they're making it up as they go along yes we've had some lovely finds but in reality we're still dealing with a mess of walls you said to me both of you said this is the best preserved Roman town in the UK and yet when I talk to the archaeologists all they tell me about is walls one wall parallel to another one underneath another and get no picture at all of what was going on that's why I really want to show you these shops tell you that excavate a hundred years ago I mean look at it it looks good absolute maze of rules and can't that understand really what you've got is actually a very simple story you've got an early shop here but then you get lots of later activity complicating the picture and this isn't a tiny little narrow room like this it's always built first this goes out of use they build a new wall to replace it recover this to the floor so can this kind of jumble of archaeology tell us anything well it still can because what you have is a large workshop that's fronting onto the main street so the street is what out here somewhere yeah that's the main east-west road running through Coe went with this gully in front of it yeah exactly and then the shop starts here somewhere somewhere around here and then as it goes on you come through this way so this is all one building into the big main workshop come shop itself yeah so you've got the family making the goods and selling them from the same place and there was a forge found in here so you can imagine the blacksmith working away sort of banging away at his and fella with sparks flying everywhere and the back wall the workshop was all the way back here and then behind you got a couple of rooms four living quarters where the family would live it's a big place that's learnt it is quite chunky yes that's not all this is Louise's shop okay I'm next door in my shop now I'm selling I don't know vegetables or I'm a butcher just imagine the smell and the noise yeah I'll be chucking it my rotten meat and my rotten vegetables into the gutter in front of the street think of the noise again you said Oxford Street to me Tony let me think like Oxford Street it's more like a bazaar in the middle east you know people are living above the shop just making babies crying people going to the toilet you know smell smell and the noise looking around here the different phases of development are very complicated but living quarters workshop and shop fronts are quite clear and Neil thinks that this is what we've got in our field but it's afternoon of day two and we've also got a possible villa to deal with yesterday evening I got really excited because of this geophys which seemed to show a Roman villa there although it is quite I of faith isn't it that's magnetometry and today John decided to run the radar over it and this is what he found isn't that spectacular if that isn't a Roman villa I'll eat my hat except when we put a trench in this is what we found nothing nothing nothing nothing Phil Harding rubble Phil where's the villa who's here I'm standing on it what do you mean you're standing on it there isn't anything there mate so what's that hard surface on his wall and yeah if you really want class that is class so that's plaster with red paint on it yeah yep and that's got red and white on it it's right so you reckon that we do have a high-status building here I don't think they come much higher status in that tummy thank you feel that is something of a relief finally one of our trenches seems to make sense and what's more bridge is fine just turned out to be even more stunning than we first thought well this is actually the decorative handle of a Roman folding penknife how do you know that because when I started cleaning it up you actually see this groove that runs down here that's where the blade would have folded up into the handle for safekeeping when it's in that Romans pocket it's two figures isn't it it's actually two gladiators and they're jarring up against each other you basically got what seems to be the heavyweight in the featherweight of the gladiators this one here is called the murmillo and he has got this was actually a fish-shaped helmet over his head you can just see his eye poking out there would have looked through this heavily-armored coming down and he's holding the short jabbing dagger and the other one well that's it this is the right area sand he really is the light sprightly gladiator he would have been holding just a net in his hand with a pitched fork but on his shoulder there he's got a protective piece of metal work which is the only thing that would have been protecting his face and him you can actually see he's not wearing a helmet at all would you agree that it's important oh goodness yet I mean I'd see any one of these elsewhere in Roman Britain and that is of a quality that could easily go on display the National Museum of Wales back at the villa trench and the finds just keep on coming pika yes joy our fantastic look at that's you Wow look at that Roman brooch isn't it copper alloy almost complete the spring is up here and there would have been a pin to attach it to your clothes Holger you'll make that in place up there that's lovely a fantastic find to end a great day and I know a couple of would-be Romans who'd be very grateful for that toga brooch well the next lesson is voice coaching your tone of voice has to be very agreeable very persuasive and part of the way in which you speak is also to do with sort of exercise so you might want to go for a bit of a walk before you give your speech you might want to rub down with some oil for a minute you must abstain from sex before you give your speech in those costumes I think you know yeah and finally you must avoid any trace of a rustic accent oh no chance of that that is I think isn't gonna be nearly impossible take us in high wind not a good slow for a point in time beginning of day three here at Kyle went in South Wales home of the best preserved Roman town in Britain yesterday was a great day with some superb finds and some really good GF is which predicted that around here there would be a huge Roman villa maybe 60 metres across so what do we do we put in this puny trench about as wide as a flamingos leg why is it so thin Tony coming to the 21st century this is modern archaeology we're doing is very scientifically very carefully all right I've been told off but what about my hyper course your hyper course has actually disappeared when we actually looked in the radar it proves this is very superficial deposit there's only at the top six inches so probably it's just like known of old horseshoes or a bucket of iron nails but hey got these fantastic results down here always very clear rooms and others are burning and in here the radar suggests very deep deposits this probably is a bath house where's that on the ground it's just behind us over there at last it looks like we've got a really juicy target so we're opening another trench over the possible bathhouse shown on the geophys but it is day three and I hope we haven't bitten off more than we can chew because we've now got two trenches open here and we're still struggling to identify our shops in the center of the town you don't think you have anything that looks much like a wall in here yet pater I've got a little coin here back in the villa Phil's having more luck fantastic you can see at the end you've got a sort of few lines coming out from the top I will do if I put my glasses on big rocks I can see that's part of the Emperor's crown and this kind of coin was made in the very end of the 3rd century sometime between 275 and around about 300 so that should give you quite a nice tight date for the destruction of this building this is a copy probably made in Britain sure it's a forgery it's not a forgery because the intention wasn't to defraud anybody the I did these are known as barbarous radiates and they were made locally because the Roman state wasn't making enough money so people took it upon themselves to make their own well everybody was just turning out money almost yes under sounds that yeah me too we might be on the money and Phil's trench but not all of the fines are exactly what some of us expected I hear we've got some human bones at last we have indeed but not everybody would necessarily recognize them as human because they are so tiny because IQ these are from a newborn baby this is a tibia that's the big shin bone yeah and you can see this it's got this same basic triangular form that it has with this Ridge down the front that's the bit that if you get kicked it hurts why are these founding in the Roman buildings in well the thing about individuals of this age it's individuals of less than six months which is what your class newborns is being yeah is that they would commonly at this period buried within settlement areas rather than out in the cemeteries with the rest of the dead so it's almost as if with these young individuals because they've had no life of their own they were kept within the realms of the living I love anything like that you know that gets us really close to people at the time does leave and it the other way you can do that if you look at this piece of ceramic building material yeah can you see the finger impressions Oh crikey yeah look at that looks like you've actually got fingerprints there's a lot lots more than mine there might be a child or something like that yes that's wonderful it may be wonderful but it's mid-morning day three and everyone else is busy trying to solve the problems in the trenches except for Stewart who's dragged me off to play with his new toy shirt my instinct tells me this isn't a rotary clothesline this is a Roman surveillance route it's called AG Roma and one was found in Pompeii in 1912 so he know this is the instrument they use for setting out roads and the grid patterns in streets now how they do that is using this gromer which basically is like a cross at right angles to each other yeah what you do is you line these three strings here and you stand back from it you line the three up I've put a pole at the end of it down there yeah so that's that's my base line that's the line of the road effectively so what I would do is come over here hang on I've seen a design flaw already it's really windy today and this is swinging around like a conker it's yeah we actually know that the Romans used wind brakes and they also used to make the string heavier by putting almost like sealing wax or olive oil on it to make more rigid so if you could now be my glamorous assistant your Debbie McGee that's it you've got pulling that bit of string yep which is exactly eighty eight point seven one metres long because that's 300 Rob and feet yeah exact size of the insular Blair and we'll set out the forum so long way to go yet Tony at least three times that distance ah I may be some time but over at our potential bath house at least they seem to be cracking on nicely right right wait stop stop that does look pretty square doesn't it it says I've checked it with my modern severe square it's pretty damn close actually what it does demonstrate is that when you're setting out something as the Romans did they could achieve very good regular grids with this but you've already shown me that there were flaws in this Roman perfection ink I went yes I mean I remember you talked about that the wonky gates is you could call them it's not because they're badly set out there's some other clues there's an earlier route way through into the town through here before this wall is put in here and they're continuing the use of the same route way also this group of buildings just here but that's so badly off like and what that's actually showing me is there was a route way that came through here before this grid system was actually made the seroma severe would have never tolerated that and a plant system with that grid you certainly if you want to learn more about how the Romans laid out their towns log on to the time team website while Stuart's ancient methods give us a great insight into the town's general plan ultra-modern technologies revealing the details of our villa so these are the radar results of the villa complex the time slices as we call them but we actually start at the near surface and work our way into the ground getting deeper as we move what Jimmy's done is take this to the next stage and we start to get the ground plan but we gradually move into the ground and you can actually see the courses and going down into the foundations and all the rooms coming into view really well looks like Manhattan doesn't it I mean you almost don't need to dig it Wow well I wouldn't mention that to Phil right now since he's just been dragged into the bathhouse trench Phil you're digging a big hole we only got two hours left I know but what I'm trying to do is restrict the size of it to enable us to get down we've got this edge this feature this wall coming round here what we want to do is drop a little hole in the corner here just to trace that wall around if we can see how it relates to this wall here see if we can get some depth to it I can see in the Trey field we've got some class before spots tile suggesting hyper course so that's right at last we might have my hyper cost but we're really gonna have to crack on now and over in the town centre we're still struggling with those shops as this trench sold what we wanted then Tracy not really this has been a trench that hasn't quite worked as how we wanted so what what do we actually got now well we still got the pavement running along here yeah but as you can see I mean all of this has been heavily disturbed and we we've no evidence for the front of the shop in here really so there's a lot of archaeology here yes but it would take a lot bigger excavation longer time bigger area to actually sort out what it all meant then yeah I mean I think you'd be looking at a much longer and more detailed still of excavation rather than evaluation definitely disappointingly it seems that the shops have finally got the better of us but although the walls haven't revealed as much as we hoped the fines might have saved the day well we've come down to the shops in pound lane which were found in earlier excavations and I brought some of our finds that illustrate what I think is one of the major purposes of a town it's the market and the very name of care went vent asylums the market place of the tribe we've got things like the pottery of course it contained olive oil and things like an oyster shell which could have been street food yep so you don't have to go home for lunch and then other things that represent butchery we know on the writings of somebody called plotters that butchers were famous for palming off elderly mutton as Ashley killed lamb in fact we have got a series of sheep jaws here but this is just fantastic this is a cattle scapula there you can see that a hole would have been driven through there - let it be hung up on a hook also displayed in the shop exactly that's very nice yeah and another thing that a lot of the ancient writers say about life in towns is that it's incredibly noisy we get Seneca saying things like the hubbub makes you sorry that you're not dead right here we have an object which the sole purpose is to make a noise it's a Budds bone a kind of toy where you you put a cord and you twist it up and you pull it and it goes it's lovely to find that so annoying little child thought there wasn't enough noise so using a combination of fines foundations and the previous excavations I do think we've got a sense of the hustle and bustle and can build up a pretty vivid picture of the Roman High Street it's now 5:00 p.m. day 3 and we're coming to the end of our Roman investigation but has film managed to find our bath house Phil but time is moving on during you've cracked this trench absolutely Tony what you only got well it's been a hell of a struggle but it really has been worth it we do see now the plunge pool the bath house yeah yeah we've got this wonderful curving wall that goes round there and extends out into the field there and then on the back side we've got this straight wall so we've got this this lovely semicircular plunge pool and the idea is obviously when you have your bath you can actually lounge about in there and you've got this glorious view out to the west the Sun is coming in from the West bit nifty but beautiful a fantastic end to a really tough three days and I think we've achieved our challenge filling in some key gaps in the archaeological jigsaw puzzle of Roman Chi went much more excitingly for me though I think our finds have brought us so much closer to the site smells and sounds that we brits would have experienced in Roman Britain but we've one final Roman experience in store and I wouldn't miss it for the world ladies and gentlemen for your delectation and delight please give it up for Matt Williams and Phil honey that will you please mount the podium I shall see case diligent ears repute it in Nullah parte operatio meter esthe dragon cannon salute berry Neary areum ad Portis a quail aquarium mature dare dare it crow cetera omnia an Amalia a tunt RA and now Phil when you get to at Norse vinum be bear a ear mentor kaga moose tanto Quay or / a gig not Millie boss scelera mob at editors at Brutus Julius at Victor I'm Bruce so ladies and gentlemen were you convinced by Matt we're you convinced by Phil Phil you have just persuaded them that water is the greatest drink and alcohol is just four pack animals they pay me to play they tape it baby to save it log on to the website at channel 4 comm slash time team to find out more about this episode watch exclusive video clips and explore past digs the team returned tomorrow night at 8:00 uncovering a Viking boat burial in Yorkshire you

Channel: Reijer Zaaijer

Views: 411,871

Rating: 4.8465991 out of 5

Keywords: Time, Team, Full, Episodes, Season, Timeteam, Archaeological, Sites, Serie, argeologie, archaeological

Id: SwXe0Cn2Lwo

Length: 48min 3sec (2883 seconds)

Published: Wed Mar 13 2013