Report: Focus on the finds - the pottery

A few pottery highlights from the finds tray!  Dr Paul Bidwell has assessed the ceramics, and most of the Roman pottery is 2nd-3rd century in date.

SAMIAN
Though the Samian was generally in rather a poor condition due to the soil conditions on site, we still had a fair amount of interesting sherds.

Fig. 1 Mars?

This fragment of Samian might depict Mars, as the figure appears to be holding a spear.  If it is Mars, it's a great partner to our Venus from last season!  The piece is from a Dragondorff 37 bowl

Figure 2 - Dancing girl?

This sherd may show a dancing girl, or could be a particular goddess. The piece is from a Dragondorff 37 bowl

 

 Fig. 3 Plain cup

This is a sherd of Samian from a plain cup, Dragondorff form 33.  It would have been used for drinking wine!

Fig. 4 Samian decoration

The Dragondorff 37 form has a bead rim, which means it's small and and rounded.  These joining sherds are a little burnt, but show the decoration often found at the top of Dragondorff 37 bowl.  The fancy decoration is called ovolo, or egg and tongue moulding.

Fig 5. Roman ink well

These Samian inkwell sherds were found on the beach. It has an inner lip to prevent spillage and is possibly Samian form Ritterling 13, similar to this.

OTHER POTTERY

Fig. 6 Head pot sherds

These strange looking sherds are fragments of head pots, decorated with bosses and a straited cordon.  They have parallels in York and generally the north-east.

Fig. 7 Pot lids? - two ceramic (top left & bottom right, and two stone (top right & bottom left)

These circular pieces are often identified at pot lids, gaming counters or may be some sort of weights.  Also, recently, there was another theory - that they were Roman toilet 'paper.'   Not totally convincing, especially due to the rather hard nature of the pot and stone!  This clutch all came from the same context - it remains to be seen if they were near a latrine ...

Fig. 8 Moselkeramik beaker

These joining sherds are from a Moselkeramik indented beaker.  The slip is dark, almost metallic.  These pots come from the Trier area, Germania.

Of course we had lots more pottery which will be reported on in due course

Report: Focus on the Finds Hut

Whilst the diggers worked hard excavating trenches, the finds team grappled with the mass outbreak of slag this season, as well as the other various categories of finds.  The slag all needed to be dried out, weighed and bagged up.  Leo was instrumental in getting this done:

Leo weighs lots and lots of slag ...

Meanwhile, Rosalie and Janice worked on sorting out the trays (and sometimes buckets!) from the previous day.

 Janice and Rosalie sorting the slag before its laid out to dry

In between all that, they would supervise the washing of the bulk finds.

Rosalie and finds washers sheltering from the sun!

 
When they'd finished the initial sorting, they moved onto small finding items.  This involved giving small finded items a unique number and taking appropriate measurements. The finds would then need to be packaged and stored.

The Small Finds book

This year, due to the pottery actually drying, we even did a little bit of pottery marking!  This involves painting the pottery sherds with a line of Paraloid B-72, which is a clear acrylic resin. When it's dry, we can then mark the pottery with its context number in permanent ink. When that's dry, we then paint another layer of Paraloid B-72 over it. 

Janice marking the pottery - small, clear and neat handwriting is mandatory for marking!

When the finds are fully processed they can then be boxed up ready for removal from site. We stopped washing finds on the last Saturday, so we could concentrate on bagging up as much as possible.

On the last couple of days, whilst the trenches were being backfilled, Brian K finished up the packing of the finds and the finds hut due to the absence of Finds Officer - she is very grateful for him being able to step in and take charge at the very last moment.

The finds are now resident in York for the moment waiting for the processing to be fully completed and then they'll be dispersed to the various specialists.  The clear boxes are for small finds, and the other white tubs are normally (for Ravenglass at least) the slag.

The Ravenglass small finds - and some slag

More finds boxes awaiting their fate, along with some ... more slag!

My next blog will focus on some of the finds highlights from this year's season.


Sandra Garside-Neville, Finds Officer, Romans in Ravenglass

Report: Excavation blog, Week 3 (17-21 September)

The continued good weather has meant we have made further good progress this week. A wide range of Roman pottery has been recovered, and slag has been found in bulk this week.

Finds drying with Janice & Alison

In Trench 1, ashy deposits were revealed within the building, but whether they were the result of domestic or industrial will depend on the evidence from the environmental sampling. Further rubble dumps to the rear of the building were encountered – no clear signs of a ground surface outside the building yet. More frustratingly, it became evident that there was a post-medieval trackway between the Roman road and the building, obscuring the relationship between the two features. Hopefully the trackway will be removed swiftly at the beginning of next week!

In Trench 2, the focus was on the low-lying, north end. The sondage at the very north end encountered a narrow channel was succeeded by a timber-lined drain, although none of the timber lining survived, pointing to water management. 

Excavating with Richard

At least two layers of well-constructed cobble surface overlaid the stream deposits to the north and the series of burnt deposits and cobble surfaces to the south, perhaps providing access to the stream from the industrial area to the south.

Burnt deposits

In Trench 3, within the building excavation of the base of an oven full of charcoal was completed and the clay floors were investigated.

Planning, mattocking and trowelling

To the rear of the building, various deposits and cobble layers were excavated, showing that there had been considerable activity inside and outside the building.

 Excavating in Trench 3

Kurt Hunter-Mann, York Archaeological Trust

Project Site Director

Comment: Venus Anadyomene

When I saw first saw the dig's lovely Samian sherd with a female figure on it, I immediately thought it's Venus, and wasn't sure why, apart from the fact she has no clothes on!:

So I've looked into it more closely, and realised I may have been thinking of Roman pipeclay figurines, like this Venus here, from York Archaeological Trust's Excavations at 24-30 Tanner Row:

This is what Dave Hooley said about this figurine in 'General points from an accident of fortune' Archaeology in York Interim Volume 13 No 1, 1988, page 18-19:

Venus was not simply the 'Goddess of Love', she is depicted here [see the photograph above] as Venus Anadyomene, a guise which derives its inspiration from Aphrodite's birth from the seas, and is believed to be a dedication to the water-nymph guardian of the sacred waters from which all life flows. The figurine itself is almost certainly made  in Central Gaul.

The lifting of her hand is to shake water from her hair.  In addition Samian is imported from Gaul, where the pipeclay figurines are also made. So maybe this is common them for that area of the Empire, and it isn't a surprise to also find her on Samian.  I was certainly able to find archaeological reports online which mentioned the motif appearing on Samian, such as that found at Piercebridge.


However, I could easily be wrong, and it'll be interesting to see what the Samian experts say when the pottery is written up in coming years.

Comment: Romans in Ravenglass video now live!

I’m pleased to say that the Romans in Ravenglass video is now available to view on the Lake District National Park website. Just click here to view.

The 5 minute version is a cut down version of the 13.40 minute one which is well worth watching. It gives a really good impression of the dig and what all your hard work achieved. If you are lucky you might even see yourself in the video!!

Report: 30th September

All the digging had stopped, and now the packing started in earnest.   The first cabin to go was the Welfare Unit.   Meanwhile, the trenches were being backfilled:

The Finds Officer took the opportunity for a couple of snaps of the finds before they were packed away in their boxes:

This is the colour-coated folded beaker that was found during the last week of the dig.  It has a buff fabric, but a grey-brown slip over it, which may be trying to imitate a metal such as pewter.

Ironically on the first Saturday of the dig, there was a Potter at the Pennington Arms, showing how he made made reproduction Roman pots. One of the pots on show was a folded beaker, laying on its side - these pots tended to have small bases, so were top heavy:

Eventually, the finds were all packed up ready for the van that was to arrive mid-afternoon:

Then it was a case of taking down the fencing and waiting for the van:

By around 5pm, we were all packed up and ready to return to Yorkshire.

We're now looking forward to the 2014 season of Romans in Ravenglass!

Report: By Director Kurt - What did we find in Trench 1?

From an early stage, the gravel surface at the south end of the trench and the alignments of large stone blocks in the middle of the trench seemed good candidates for the Roman street with timber building to one side that were indicated on the 2011 geophysical survey. However, the stony layer overlying the building contained post-medieval as well as Roman pottery, and the use of such large, if not massive, stones as a foundation was in contrast with the foundations evident in Trenches 2 and 3. Overall, this left a nagging doubt that we were dealing with a relatively recent building that happened to follow the Roman alignment.

However, two further layers of rubble, with distinct dumps (barrowloads?) of cobbles, stone and shale fragments contained only Roman pottery. Furthermore, similar deposits appear to continue beneath the building, which suggests that infilling of the ditch as its fills settled had been a long process. The current interpretation is that the massive blocks are the foundations for a timber building, perhaps of two storeys, with the rubble forming a bed for earth floors that have been removed by ploughing.

Although it is assumed the building extended to the edge of the street as is usually the case, the massive blocks as found were restricted to the rear part. It is suspected that the blocks had subsided into the fills of a large east-west ditch that became disused before the building was constructed. The blocks (and associated rubble layers) appear to have been an unsuccessful attempt to form a solid base for the building on the unstable ground. The front of the building, on firmer ground, may have had much slighter footings or even been built with earth-fast posts, and we hope to find evidence of this next year. 

An alternative theory is that large stone blocks also formed the foundation of the front of the building. If so, as these blocks would not have settled into the ditch they would have obstructed ploughing, and may even have protruded above the ground surface. Consequently they would have been removed, presumably for re-use elsewhere. If so, we will find only a gap in the building construction marking the absent stones. Either way, there is the exciting possibility of finding a large ditch beneath the building next year.

Report: 13th-14th September - Open Days

Today (16th Sept)  it's rainy, windy and just a bit chilly, but 13th & 14th September were site Open Days.  We were lucky, as both days had fine weather!  The Friday Open Day focussed on local societies, plus the Portable Antiquities Scheme Officer for Cumbria was available to identify finds from the area. He brought some finds from Ribchester Roman Fort with him, including glass beads, a silver ear-ring, coins and finger rings:

Also present were the Lake District Archaeologists, with Holly helping to meet and greet, as well as doing site tours:

Mervyn (background in hi-vis jacket) was the mainstay at the gate, along with Janice and other helpers potwashing and fielding initial questions:

A full range of other site activities were underway including digging in all three trenches, and working on environmental samples:

It was Supervisor Clark's last day on the Ravenglass samples, so time for one last photograph - his nifty wet weather headwear was much admired on previous rainy days:

Saturday was specifically a Family Fun Day, so a Outreach Officer Lisa brought along a sandpit available for kids to dig up their very own finds:

It was also busy at the Lake District tent, and Brian helped out, including doing site tours:

It was a much busier day than Friday, but it was still easy to pick out the diggers in their hi-vis jackets as they returned to their trenches after a well earned tea break:

The Finds Officer was pleased as she was able to let the finds trays out of the confines of the Finds Hut so they could get a bit of sun and (hopefully) get dried out enough to bag up:

 

Also enjoying the sun, were the diggers, especially when they got time to have a break from digging:

During the two Open Days, over 300 people came to visit the site to see what the commmunity had found in the three trenches at Ravenglass. We're recording where our visitors come from and its interesting to see that as well as local people, people are also coming from Lancashire, Yorkshire, Herefordshire, Scotland, Germany, and Australia!

Report: A few finds from site!

This is just a selection of finds from site:

Please forgive the fuzzy picture - to give you the hint as to why it's fuzzy, the scale is in millimetres!  It is a glass bead, and currently we think it's Roman but will be consulting with some experts shortly to see what they think.  Well done to the digger who found this tiny object!

This shows the Crambeck mortarium rim, and another fragment. It's very typical of the industry, especially the brown paint used to decorate the rim. Dating around the 3rd & 4th century, it's all the way from Yorkshire.

 

This hulking piece of ceramic is a fragment of tegula - Roman roof tile.  We're finding lots of tile, which also includes flue tile used in hypocaust (Roman central heating) systems.

Some sherds of Roman greyware - archaeologists call this stuff greyware when they aren't sure what it is - it'll eventually get passed to an expert who will know where it was made!