Tuesday started early for Martin as he had an on-site interview with BBC radio Gloucester, and he also wanted to do some recording of what we had found so far before we all appeared trowels in hand.
Mike and the rangers came to help remove some of Sir Ian Richmond’s concrete and start digging the next area in the apsidal room.
The concrete strips removed and work begins to find out what they covered
Martin, Rob and Luke lifted the geo-textile and cleaned back the degraded ‘opus signinum’ roman concrete floor just in front of the bath house. Which was the layer /level that the excavations in 2000 stopped at.
Luke and martin cleaning the top of the opus signinum floor
- Charlotte excavating in the apsidal room
We had some extra help today from Charlotte who luckily had some time to come and have a dig with us. She did a great job and found some lovely pieces of box flue tile and some tesserae from a mosaic floor. Thank you Charlotte, keep digging 🙂
A very happy Charlotte with some of the flue tile she found
There was great excitement in the afternoon when Fay found a coin, and yes it was a Roman one! It is very worn but you could still make out the Emperors head, he had a particular hair style that helped date it. I call it a bobble hair tie type but I am sure there is a much more technical term 🙂 It is from the 330s/340s and according to Roger the coin man on site it looked like it was from within the House of Constantine period.
The coin, the Emperor is looking to your right
Just when we were starting to ease down ready to stop for the day, Tony found some tesserae grouped together in the apsidal room. There were more and …….. then we had to pack up! Maybe we will find it goes on further, do we have a floor , as they say tomorrow is another day…….
The patch of mosaic Tony found at the end of the day
Archaeology National Trust SW 