AN INFORMAL DAILY LOG
of the 2005 Excavation
by Jeremy Cooper

(...based on the Weblog sent to the Channel 4 Time Team Big Roman Dig)

The views expressed are Jeremy's own and the information is his own understanding - he has been known to get things wrong!

Day 16 of 20: Monday 18th July

Heads Down

The first day of the last week, and fewer pairs of hands, so the round house was given time off.

Attention switched to the East end of the villa range, and the elusive search for the East Wing. Two trenches were opened up.

The ditch at the bottom of the bath house has been cleaned up.

The drain from the bath house is clearly visible in the middle: the clay pipes in the bottom right corner are a victorian drain.

On the lower slope, Steve himself spent much of the day trowelling alongside the mere mortals.

Clean-shaven Steve is modelling his woollen hat

A large piece of floor surface was uncovered, showing a distinct straight edge perpendicular to the alignment of the pilae.

At the end of the afternoon, archaeologist Alice arrived to join us for the rest of the dig. Welcome back Alice!

Jeremy Cooper

Day 17 of 20: Tuesday 19th July

Steady progress, but running out of time?

It turns out that Alice (one of our most devoted readers, and ex-Whitehall supervisor) was here for just one day! She needed a good dig before getting on with the dissertation for her archaeology MA. Thanks for your help, Alice, and good luck!

Hands-on visitors today, from Danetre School. They found out just how hard the soil can be at the east end of the main villa range! (Photo to be reinstated when all parents have given their permission).

Jane was on site again today: one of her missions in life is to put things back together, whether they be jigsaw puzzles or broken pots. You can see some of the results of her work here.

On the lower slope they have established the line of one wall of the new building. The wall, the pilae and the line in the floor covering all align perfectly. Steve bemoaned that fact that there won't be time to get as far as he would've liked in uncovering this building - there's another unwritten law of archaeology hidden in there for you to find!

Nearby, Andy has started to lift the large skull which started off as a possible horse, then became a sheep or goat, but has ended up as definitely a cow. Note how the sign hides the animal name, just in case...

No activity again on the round house, except that Paul spent some quiet, lonely hours planning it.

I spent the morning with my laptop in the seclusion of my green tent working on a new introduction to the villa for this website: Jeff (of "leave-bits-of-pottery-in-sections-please-Jeff" fame) pointed out to me that newcomers to the site are offered no easy way of getting up to speed. I had come to much the same conclusion myself, but it took Jeff mentioning it to move me to do something about it! Polite suggestions are always welcomed! Thanks Jeff - the new page will be online soon.

Jeremy Cooper

Nearly there!

Australia, that is. Steve liberated several diggers from the frustration of trowelling a millimetre at a time, and told them to dig deep.

Dave standing by for a new context to be revealed

As ever they're hunting the elusive East wing, but so far the test pits have not revealed a juicy foundation.

The Dantre School students were back again and worked hard. They were a credit to themselves and their school. (Photo soon when all permissions gained).

Here's Maureen's fibula (see day 15). The operation was painless and she is almost completely recovered.

Down on the lower slope they've uncovered a roundish line of reddish stones, with darkish brownish soil inside it - possibly a spaceship launching pad or even a plunge pool (silly idea).

Anyway, Doc Martin says it's coming out tomorrow - make of that what you will!

Stay with us - only two days to go!!

Jeremy Cooper

Making Plans

A quiet, cerebral day on site today, as the emphasis switched to planning. So tape measures, strings, planning grids and people bent low over drawing boards seemed to take over the site. No sound of mattocks mattocking, or trowels trowelling.

Plenty still going on in the finds area though, as trays of washed finds dry in the sun.

Steve and Dave spent a lot of time sorting out their understanding of the complex contexts on the lower slope.

What Steve might have been trying to copy. Eh!

Here's an overview of the lower slope, seen from the southern end.

And here's the most exciting bit with pilae, floor and walls and the roundish thing.

The spaceship launching pad has not "come out" as predicted. I'll put money (but not much) on them having a quick go at it tomorrow after Aerial Close-Up and the site photographer (me) have done their stuff.

I'll be recording a video interview with Steve tomorrow afternoon for the 2005 Update DVD: so in the final blog I'll spill the beans as to Steve's latest thoughts about exactly what is going on here.

Last day tomorrow. The weather forecast is good...

Jeremy Cooper

For the record

A 2004 photo

The day started overcast and threatening rain. But the drizzle held off long enough for Aerial Close-Up to do their stuff, and the light was perfect - no shadows to confuse the archaeological detail. Ever since 2001, John and Richard have photographed the site using their unique rig that puts a camera (stills or video) on top of a mast that can go up to 70 feet and look almost straight down on the site: there's a video feed to ground level and the camera can be zoomed, panned and tilted to compose the shot.

I know that the people working on the final stages of planning and context plotting are frustrated at being asked to clear the site for the hour or so we need to do the aerial shots, but the photos are an invaluable archaeological record, enabling us both to look in detailed plan view at certain areas, and to relate all the different parts of the site to each other - and from several different angles. Aerial Close-Up's work for us makes Whitehall probably the best photographed site in the country! Thanks John, thanks Richard. Click here for their website.

So I won my bet - please send me my winnings! Doc Martin did indeed attack the enigmatic feature after the end of play, and found - drum roll please - another pilae! And perfectly aligned with the others, and the walls...

Looking at the level of this new pilae and of the ones found last week, and doing some sums, Martin reckons that they were all 8 tiles high. That's high enough for a child to crawl under the floor to clean out the hypocaust: nice little after-school job, equivalent to a paper round, I suppose. Kept them off the streets anyway.

Steve recorded a fine interview for the DVD (you can just see Martin delving behind him!) in which he said... well, you'll have to buy the DVD to find out. Sorry!

Steve then conducted the end-of-dig site tour. This confirmed the findings for this year: a second century roundhouse to match the robbed out one at the other end of the villa; still no real sign of the east wing, but it may well be under the post-roman layers which, now the archaeo-magnetic samples have been taken, we could clear; there was no extended porch; the charcoally area east of the bath house is still an enigma, but the features almost certainly are parts of the drainage system (a grain drier had been suspected at one point); on the lower slope we have a range of at least two rooms stretching under the baulk, both with hypocaust heating - possibly an earlier bath house but...

So there's still lots to find out, and we'll be back next year.

The evening saw the traditional site-side barbecue with loads of family and friends joining the diggers. Steve and Nick manned the barbie and the smell of cooking meat drifted over the site - as it must have done many times 1,700 years ago.

Thanks for staying with the web log all the way to the end. I hope you've found it useful and engaging. We'll do the same next year. Meanwhile keep watching this website for developments.

Bye for now!

Thanks for the photo, Malcolm

Jeremy Cooper