Binchester Day Twenty-Four

A fairly brief update today as I've been off site most of the day. The key developments are clarification of what's happening in the northern end of the main building. Further cleaning has revealed a series of cut features including a possible stone-lined beam slot. This appears to be lines using thin slabs of stone and is strongly reminiscent of the lining of the post-hole in the adjacent late/sub-Roman sunken features. This suggests that it too is of a relatively late date. Elsewhere it is becoming increasingly clear that there a series of features cut into the roadway. The gully excavated yesterday is quite substantial and clearly at an angle to everything else on site; there are also a number of possible pits appearing We need to make sure we take environmental samples from them. Full update on progress tomorrow.

Binchester Day Twenty-three

A quiet rather than a spectacular day Everything has been humming along nicely. Work on the road has revealed a number of features cut into it (in addition to the various layers of metalling and patching). At least one substantial gulley has been sectioned; this appears to be on an entirely different alignment to anything else we've found so far, so its cleary not a roadside ditch or a drainage channel. It is just possible it is related to a new surface of large-ish stones we are revealing just the other side of the baulk (though that remains very very speculative). Elsewhere, planning has continued at the northern end of the barrack, and further definition of the features cut into the floor level. More has been taken out of the big post-med and/or late Roman feature. We still can't see where we've missed the cut, though the area being excavated still continues to reveal nothing but late Roman material. Further cleaning to the west of the main barrack wall has revealed a series of poorly defined rubble features at regular intervals along the line of the barrack. We've not really tried to define these in detail yet and their function is unclear. It is possible they are post-pads for a later building (although if it takes just two stones in a row to be a wall, it takes just one stone to be a post-pad!).

Binchester Day Twenty-Two

Another busy day with everybody cracking on with their allotted tasks despite a rainy start. Work on clearing back the layers overlying the probable roadway is nearly complete; the metalled surface appears to have been repeatedly repaired and there are places where we can see probable rutting. Work on the northern section of the post-medieval feature has again revealed no medieval or later finds; I am now almost certain that we actually have a post-med feature cutting an earlier late/sub-Roman depression; we must have missed the cut higher up. It is very difficult to recognise features in the dry and rubbly soil we've been dealing with. All the pottery recovered from here today was late Roman (including calcite-gritted ware and Huntcliffe ware) and Joy also found a small segmented jet bead.

The northern ends of the walls of the main building have also now been completely cleaned and photographed and planning will begin tomorrow. There has been much work on the interior of this section of the building. The damp weather has allowed us to pick up a series of cut features including post-holes and possible stretches of beam slots; how visible these will remain should the site dry out again is a different matter. In the south-east corner a little randomn furtling has revealed a couple of short stretches of wall possibly a building linked to the rampart; certainly on same alignment of the main building.

Binchester Day Twenty-One

Back to work today after a busy weekend. Yesterday, we visited Segedunm (Wallsend), Corbridge and Vindolanda, as well as squeezing in a stop at Milecastle 42 at Cawfields. It was a great opportunity for people to get a feel for the potential at Binchester. Although most of our site is under fields, the chance to explore Vindolanda in particular reminded everybody of how much might survive at the site; the fact that the Binchester bath-house is so well preserved is a good indicator of possible preservation elsewhere. The Vindolanda visit was also very informative as Andrew Birley gave us a brief tour of this year's excavations in the North West quadrant of the fort. Whist the most spectacular discovery was that of a small shrine to Jupiter Dolichenus (including a beautifully carved altar), from my point of view the most interesting aspect was the similarity of the late activity on their barrack blocks to ours; lots of reworked walling and spreads of rubble (although they were further ahead in the excavation than we are). Crucially, they have recovered evidence for occupation as late as the 8th/9th centuries AD. At Binchester, we know there was activity at the site in this period, as a number of burials of this date have been discovered; it would be fantastic if we’ve recovered occupation evidence of this date. It remains a strong possibility, although the chronological evidence for our late/post-Roman activity remains tantalisingly slight.

We were lucky with the weather today; although thunderstorms circled us all afternoon and we dug to the accompaniment of constant thunder we avoided a soaking. Planning took place around the post-medieval feature. We are now excavating a section of this feature on the other side of the baulk; intriguingly so far this has produced no medieval ceramics. Have we missed a cut in excavating the other side? Was this in fact an early feature cut by a later feature?

More work took place defining of the northern end of the main building. The western wall has clearly toppled sideways at some point, and the apparent bend in the wall was clearly caused by this collapse. The eastern wall is still very patchy; the north-east corner appears to have been supported by a number of very large stones, very different to foundations elsewhere. It is possible that it may have had to have been supported or re-inforced at some point; this is the same wall which appears to have had a stretch of double-thickness walling in places. There are also hints that it may the wall partly extends over an area of metalling, although this is still far from certain.


North-east stretch of walling of main building (looking south). You can see the large stones used to re-inforce the north-east corner


A nice ceramic lion's head


The proud discoverer of a Roman coin!

BInchester Day Twenty

Half a day’s digging completed today; lovely weather in the morning, but rain came up at lunch time, so we decided to ditch it for the day, though we used the early finish as an excuse to visit the nearby Anglo-Saxon church at Escomb. Despite the short day, some useful work was done. Much of the morning was spent cleaning up the north end of the main building for a photograph (which took place in the rain). Elsewhere work continued bottoming out the large post-medieval feature; we appear to have reached a stone lining. We also had a visit from our coin expert, Philippa Walton and the new County Durham Finds Liaison Officer, Frances Macintosh. They took the opportunity to have a look at our small finds and coins. Frances was able to identify a variant of a knee-brooch and part of a trumpet brooch, amongst other bits and bobs of Roman and medieval date. A quick review of the coins showed that, not surprisingly, the majority of them were mid-4th century in date, although the latest were a couple of examples belonging to the House of Theodosius (AD388-402).

I’ve been looking at the gadget which records visitors to the this blog, and I can see we have readers from all over the world, including (in the last couple of days) the US and Russia. If anyone has any questions about the site or simply wants to let us know why you are interested in Roman Binchester we’d love to hear from you.

Binchester Day Nineteen

It was a hectic day on site today. This morning's excitement was caused by the arrival of Adam Stanford of Aerial-Cam. He bought a mast-mounted camera set-up attached to a Land Rover. The mast extended to about 20m above ground and allowed to take some fantastic near vertical shots of the site (see some of the photographs below). This proved really useful. Although we have many plans of individual areas of the site they have not been collated yet; Adam's excellent photographs allowed us to really get a clear idea of the layout of the site. It was fascinating how the different perspective of these photographs really altered our sense of the site. For example, the bow-sided building turned out not to be anywhere near as bow-sided as we thought. Also, it became clear that a long spread of rubble on the eastern edge of the site had a much straighter edge that previously appreciated, and what we had assumed was a late-Roman rubble revetment clearly overlay parts of the (non-)bow-sided building. At some point we hope to be able to rectify the images using the plans we have drawn which should give us some fantastic vertical site shots.


The Aerial-Cam camera





The (non) bow-sided building (we need to think of a new term). You can clearly see the long pile of rubble overlying the right (east) end of the structure

Work continued on the site despite the distraction of the camera on a very long pole. Mainly we were continuing cleaning and defining the new areas of the barrack. It appears that what I've termed the 'sub-Roman pit' continues northwards and appears to cover much of the interior of the northern end of the barrack, and appears to cut areas of the floor surface. If the rest of this feature contains as much cattle bone as the small area we've excavated so far it is going to provide a really good assemblage for later analysis.


Aerial-cam shot of the 'barrack block; the large dark feature can cleary be seen in the centre of the left-hand part of the structure


Finally, find of the day, a tiny fragment of a Roman inscription! Sadly, it just comprised an individual letter 'R'. Hopefully, we'll find more of it!

Binchester Day Eighteen

Thunderbolts and lightning, very very frightning! A hot morning followed by an afternoon of constant thunder although the heavens only opened minutes before the end of the day. We've made great progress, with everybody really getting stuck in despite the muggy weather. The most progress has been made on exposing the northern end of the barracks structure. Cleaning back has revealed traces of a probable surface in certain areas, although there are certainly later features cut into it. Intriguingly, the western wall in this area is very heterogenous in character (as well as being anything but straight). It looks like a bit of a 'friday afternoon job'. The northern end of the structure may have been added on to the main building at a later date (although this is far from certain). There is also evidence for phasing elsewhere in the structure now, one of the w-e cross walls is clearly butting the long western wall and is not bonded in. Excavation to the western side of the west wall has produced what is either a slightly earlier stage of wall on a slightly different line or alternatively a possible off-set foundation. On the eastern wall, there is a stretch of 'two-ply' wall which rather than having a rubble core with facing stones either side, instead has the usual two facing walls, but an internal wall within the rubble core; presumably at some point a normal wall was altered or supported by a further course of walling. Elsewhere this wall peters out entirely, presumably robbed out. All in all a great day throwing up lots of challenges; it is clear that there is a lot of alteration to the structure following construction including additions, phases of robbing, new surfaces and features cutting them. Lots to do tomorrow.


Newly revealed walls


More areas of new wall