Drought Led To Discovery Of Ancient Roman Forts And Roads In Wales

The draught in Wales led in 2018 to the discovery of old Roman fortresses, roads, and military cantonments in a village in the United Kingdom. The aerial view of the area revealed 200 such places which suggested the ruins of ancient Roman times could be made possible.

“Britannia,” a researcher from the Royal Commission for Ancient and Historical Monuments in Wales, quoted a science magazine and reported that the Roman legions had entered the rural areas of Wales.

Experts also revealed the ruins of the marching camps at Monmouthshire in the vicinity of Caerwent.

“The camps are truly interesting, used to stay overnight Romans had built on the maneuvers in hostile territory.” Researcher Toby Driver said the discoveries “turn on the heads everything we know about the Romans.”

The aerial investigator for the Royal Commission on Ancient and Historical Monuments of Wales said the new research published in the journal Britannia showed the “Roman military machine coming to rural Wales”.

In Monmouthshire, the researchers have identified a new “marching camp” at a site near Caerwent.

“The marching camps are really, really interesting. They are the temporary overnight stops that the Romans build on manoeuvres in hostile territory.”

The site would have provided defensive positions, camping and kitchens for bread ovens.

“This is when Wales is still a very dangerous place to be for the troops, they are still under attack,” added Dr Driver. The entire area heading into south-east Wales through Usk to Caerleon would have been peppered with similar sites, believe the experts, as the Roman armies fought a 20-year battle to crush resistance amongst Celtic tribes, notably the Silures in southern Wales.

But these sites were “ploughed away pretty quickly” when the fighting was over.

“This is only the third marching camp in south-east Wales that we have discovered. We know there should be more of these around to show how the army was moving in Wales – it shows the big routes they are pushing through to control different parts of Wales,” added Dr Driver.

With conquest came reinforcements, and that meant forts. The aerial photographs confirmed the locations of at least three new fort sites, including the first found in the Vale of Gwent at Carrow Hill, west of the Roman town of Caerwent and the Roman legionary fortress at Caerleon.

The crop images show it had inner and outer defensive structure and a “killing zone” in between, perfectly ranged for a javelin throw.

The photographs found a long suspected fort site at Aberllynfi near Hay-on-Wye is indeed Roman, even though part of it has long since been built over by housing.

While further investigations at Pen y Gaer in Powys, near Tretower and Crickhowell, have revealed new detailed structures previously undiscovered – despite digs and surveys on the ground. The researchers, who included Roman experts Jeffrey Davies and Barry Burnham, have also been able to identify details of new villas – including at St Arvans, north of Chepstow in Monmouthshire.

The location had previously been considered a temple site, after part of a bronze statue of Mars was unearthed. But the heatwave images make it clear this was a Roman villa of some note, with its room structure clearly visible. Perhaps the most startling discoveries have been pieces of unknown Roman road.

One shows how the Roman armies pushed their way south from Carmarthen to Kidwelly, reinforcing speculation the town was home to a Roman fort – even if it may now be covered by Kidwelly Castle.

“It’s the scale of the control of Wales which is exciting to see,” said Dr Driver.

“These big Roman roads striking through the landscape – straight as arrows through the landscape.”

After the driest May on record, Dr Driver hopes he will be able to get back in the air as soon as coronavirus lockdown measures allow, to see if he and his teams can find more pieces of the Roman puzzle in Wales.

“There are still huge gaps. We’re still missing a Roman fort at Bangor, we’ve got the roads, we’ve got the milestones – but no Roman fort. We’re still missing a Roman fort near St Asaph, and near Lampeter, in west Wales, we should have one as well,” he said.

“Although we had loads come out in 2018, we’ve got this big gaps in Roman Wales that we know should have military installations – but you’ve got to get out in dry weather to find them.”

A prehistoric Atlantis in the north sea may have been abandoned after being hit by a 5mt tsunami 8200 years ago

A huge landfall occurred on the Norwegian coast, known as the Storegga Slide just over 8,000 years ago. The event created a catastrophic tsunami, with waves almost half as high as the Statue of Liberty, that battered Britain, and other landmasses. And now the most accurate computer model ever made of the tsunami suggests that it wiped out the remaining inhabitants of a set of the low-lying landmass known as Doggerland off the coast of the UK.

The new study of scientists from Imperial College London will be discussed at the General Assembly of the European Geosciences Union in Vienna. They explain how devastating the tsunami would have been, using sophisticated computer modelling and paleobathymetry – a background study of underwater depths.

And they conclude it would have spelled disaster for the remaining inhabitants of Doggerland.

Dr. Jon Hill, one of the study’s authors, says to BBC, “the research we did is use advanced computer modelLing to look in the Storegga slide.

‘We’re the first to discover dissymmetry at the time, which no model has done before.

‘So we’re able to quantify what the tsunami looked like at Doggerland – no other study has predicted what the wave would have looked like.’

The huge wave that was created in the Storegga Slide occurred when a large chunk of coastal shelf 180 miles (290 km) long fell into the sea. The slide was a single event 8,200 years ago, creating a wave that travelled across the Norwegian Sea in a few hours.

Fifteen hours later, the wave would have reached Belgium and Holland. Dr Hill said it would have been equivalent to the 2011 Japanese tsunami in its scale.

Waves at Doggerland would have been five metres high, as opposed to 10 metres in the Japanese tsunami, as the land was so low-lying just a few metres above sea level.

‘It would have been completely inundated by a 5-metre wave,’ Dr Hill explains.

‘If you put a 5-metre wave towards Doggerland it would have been devastated.’ Archaeological evidence for this area is relatively sparse at the moment. So far, we are relying mostly on finds made by fishermen.

But the evidence heavily suggests it was inhabited and, according to Dr Vince Gaffney of  the University of Birmingham who authored the book Europe’s Lost World: The Rediscovery of Doggerland, they would have ‘suffered dramatically.’

‘If we look at what the study tells us they’re talking about waves that are, in Scotland, as much as 40 metres high,’ he says. 

‘The inhabitants of any low-lying areas like Doggerland would have suffered dramatically if hit by something of that size.’ Dr. Gaffney continues, however, that it is hard to know exactly the extent of habitation on Doggerland because it is very inaccessible.

Described as ‘Britain’s Atlantis’ it is now located under busy sea lanes in murky water. Thus, according to Dr. Gaffney, ‘we know little about the people who inhabited these areas.’ Dr. Hill says that modelling tsunamis of this type are important for understanding our history.

But they can also provide us with data on what we can expect from similar events in the future. Although he stresses no such event is likely to occur any time soon, the UK is susceptible to such dangers.

‘Part of the research is to find out what would happen as the oceans warm,’ he says.

‘Rising sea levels are an indicator but there’s no correlation between rising sea levels and tsunamis.’ The chances of another event on the scale of the Storegga Slide happening soon is, he says, ‘not likely to happen at all.’ Dr Gaffney adds, though, that these events are known to have occurred throughout history.

‘We sometimes think we’re a safe place to live in the UK,’ he says.

‘But sometimes there are risks even in Britain and that’s worth noting.’

Roman coin hoard found in England near Welsh border revealed

Silver coins from almost 2000 years to the Roman period have been declared a treasure by metal detectors after they are found in a field.

A treasure inquest held at Cardiff Coroners’ Court saw senior coroner for Cardiff and the Vale of Glamorgan Andrew Barkley declare a range of objects, including finger rings, a brooch, and a hoard from the Late Bronze Age, as treasure.

The hoard of 91 Roman coins was discovered in Wick, in the Vale of Glamorgan, by Richard Annear and John Player.

They were found partly scattered by the previous ploughing. The founders left the undisturbed portion in the ground before reporting the find to the Portable Antiques Scheme in Wales (PAS Cymru) and archeological curators at National Museum Wales.

It is believed the coins date back to the period of Emperor Nero, from 54Ad to 68AD, to Marcus Aurelius, from 161AD to 180AD.

The latest coin was struck in 163-4AD and three coins were issued by Mark Antony in 31BC.

Edward Besly, the numismatist at National Museum Wales, said: “Each coin represents about a day’s pay at the time, so the hoard represents a significant sum of money.

“The hoard’s findspot is only a mile as the crow flies from that of another second-century silver hoard found at Monknash in 2000, which compromised 103 denarii, buried a little earlier, around 150AD.

“Together the hoards point to a prosperous coin-using economy in the area in the middle of the second century.”

One of the rings is silver and in the form of a decorated band, which has been engraved and then inlaid with niello. It dates from the 12th century.

The other ring is gold and has a repeating pattern of alternating half-flowers filling triangular panels, separated by a deep zig-zag moulding. It dates back from the late 15th century.

Dr. Mark Redknap, head of collections and research for the Department for History and Archeology at National Museum Wales, said: “These are finger rings from different centuries reflecting different traditions of fine metalworking, which are important indicators of changing fashions in South Wales and the Medieval period.”

Other items found in Llancarfan included a 15th or 16th-century silver finger ring and a 13th or 14th-century silver brooch. A 15th-16th century silver pendant, a 17th-century silver-gilt finger ring, and a Late Bronze Age hoard were found in Penllyn, Vale of Glamorgan. This antique silver uk is worth a lot of money as many collectors show great interest in antiques this age.

An early 18th-century gold finger ring was found in Rhoose, Vale of Glamorgan, and another Late Bronze Age hoard was found in Pentyrch, Cardiff.

The items will now be taken to the Treasure Valuation Committee, in London, where they will be independently valued. In most cases, the value of the treasure is split equally between the finders and landowners.

For over 2,000 years, hundreds of gold and silver torcs lay hidden in a Norfolk field discovered by one man and his metal detector.

Maurice Richardson has brave all weathers with his reliable metal detector for 40 years and dreams of the buried treasure. But he almost ignored an unpromising beep when he was searching for waste from a wartime air crash while he was being pelted with rain.

However the 59-year-old is glad his curiosity got the better of him after his persistence in digging through more than two feet of Nottinghamshire mud yielded a stunning 2,000-year-old gold treasure.

Now the artifact, an Iron Age torc, has been sold for a mammoth £350,000, and it was unveiled at the British Museum as the most valuable discovery in recent times.

The intricately decorated collar was so perfect that Mr. Richardson, a tree surgeon in his day job, initially struggled to convince experts it wasn’t a forgery.

‘I got the signal, but it was raining quite hard and I thought it was not going to be worth it,” he said.

‘However, it played on my mind, so I started to dig.  

‘It was about two foot four inches down and when I got within four inches I decided to use my hand. I got down on my stomach and started scraping the soil away and it was then I saw what it was.  

‘You look and look for things like this and you read about other people finding them, but it never happens to you.  

‘It’s a wonderful feeling and just shows that anyone can do it. It’s not about the money, but the fact that it has been saved for the nation.

‘It’s 2,000 years in the ground and it is unique. What are the chances of walking acres of field and passing over it? The odds are astronomical.’

The collar is similar to others found across Iron Age Europe and closely resembles the Great Torc, found at Snettisham in Norfolk in 1950 and now one of the British Museum’s most-loved treasures. It was painstakingly crafted using around 50m of hand-rolled dark gold alloy wires which were in turn plaited into eight thin ropes and then twisted together – the word torc comes from the Latin for ‘twist’.

Finally, hollow rings were attached to either end, carved with spiral patterns as well as animal and plant forms. Such jewellery would have been worn by the most powerful men and women in Celtic Britain or placed on statues of gods.

The collar found by Mr Richardson in a secret location near Newark in February 2005 was probably buried as an offering in about 75BC, more than a century before the Roman conquest. Terrified of being burgled, he hid it under the floorboards of his home before carrying it to the local coroner’s office in a Morrison’s plastic bag.

‘When I got there I unwrapped it and plonked it on the desk, and he stopped in his tracks and said “My God, where did you find that?”‘ he said.

After being authenticated by experts it was bought by Newark and Sherwood council for £350,000, most of the money coming from the National Heritage Memorial Fund, and is due to be displayed at the local museum.

The proceeds were split between Mr Richardson – who put his share towards a new car and kitchen – and Trinity College, Cambridge, which owns the land.  Sarah Dawes, the council’s head of leisure and cultural services, said she had been ‘blown away’ when she saw it.

‘We thought it was fake, it was too good to be true,’ she admitted.

‘You can put a value on an object like this, but in terms of importance and the nation’s history you cannot put a price on it.’

Other finds include a 13th-century medieval silver seal matrix and a horde of more than 3,600 Roman coins. Culture minister Barbara Follett said interest in searching for long-lost artefacts had been boosted by television programmes like Time Team as well as celebrity treasure hunters such as former Rolling Stone Bill Wyman.

Bronze Age logboat remains found at Faversham boatyard

In a Cambridgeshire quarry in the suburbs of Peterborough, a group of eight ancient vessels, including a float about nine meters long. The boats, all purposely sunk more than 3,000 years ago, are the largest group of vessels in the Bronze Age in the same UK, most of whom are remarkably well preserved.

One is covered inside and out with decorative carving described by conservator Ian Panter as looking “as if they’d been playing noughts and crosses all over it”.

Another has handles carved from the oak tree trunk for lifting it out of the water. One still floated after 3,000 years and one has traces of fires lit on the wide flat deck on which the catch was evidently cooked.

Many had ancient repairs, including clay patches and an additional section shaped and pinned in where a branch was cut away. They were preserved by the waterlogged silt in the bed of a long-dried-up creek, a tributary of the River Nene, which buried them deep below the ground.

“There was huge excitement over the first boat, and then they were phoning the office saying they’d found another, and another, and another, until finally, we were thinking, ‘Come on now, you’re just being greedy,'” Panter said.

The boats were deliberately sunk into the creek, as several still had slots for transoms – boards closing the stern of the boat – which had been removed.

Archaeologists are struggling to understand the significance of the find. Whatever the custom meant to the bronze age fishermen and hunters who lived in the nearby settlement, it continued for centuries. The team from the Cambridge Archaeological Unit is still waiting for the results of carbon 14 dating tests but believes the oldest boats date from around 1,600 BC and the most recent 600 years later.

They already knew the creek had great significance – probably as a rich source of fish and eels – as in previous seasons at the Much Farm site they had found ritual deposits of metalwork, including spears.

The boats themselves may have been ritual offerings or may have been sunk for more pragmatic reasons, to keep the timber waterlogged and prevent it from drying out and splitting when not in use – but in that case it seems strange that such precious objects were never retrieved.

Some of the boats were made from huge timbers, including one from an oak which must have had a meter-thick trunk and stood up to 20 meters tall. This would have been a rare specimen as sea levels rose and the terrain became more waterlogged, creating the Fenland landscape of marshes, creeks, and islands of gravel.

“Either this was the Bermuda Triangle for bronze age boats, or there is something going on here that we don’t yet understand,” Panter said.

Kerry Murrell, the site director, said: “Some show signs of long use and repair – but others are in such good condition they look as if you could just drop the transom board back in and paddle away.”

The boats were all nicknamed by the team, including Debbie – made of lime wood, and therefore deemed a blonde – and French Albert the Fifth Musketeer, the fifth boat found. Murrell’s favourite is Vivienne, a superb piece of craftsmanship where the solid oak was planed down with bronze tools to the thickness of a finger, still so light and buoyant that when their trench filled with rainwater, they floated it into its cradle for lifting and transportation.

Because the boats were in such striking condition, they have been lifted intact and transported two miles, in cradles of scaffolding poles and planks, for conservation work at the Flag Fen archaeology site – where a famous timber causeway contemporary with the boats was built up over centuries until it stretched for almost a mile across the fens.

“My first thought was to deal with them in the usual way, by chopping them into more manageably sized chunks, but when I actually saw them they just looked so nice, I thought we had to find another way,” Panter, an expert on waterlogged timber from York Archaeological Trust, said. “I think if I’d arrived on the site with a chainsaw, the team would have strung me up.”

Must Farm, now a quarry owned by Hanson UK, which has funded the excavation, has already yielded a wealth of evidence of prehistoric life, including a settlement built on a platform partly supported by stilts in the water, where artifacts including fabrics woven from wool, flax, and nettles were found. Instead of living as dry-land hunters and farmers, the people had become experts at fishing: one eel trap found near the boats is identical to those still used by Peter Carter, the last traditional eel fisherman in the region.

The boats will be on display at Flag Fen, viewed through windows in a container chilled to below 5c – funded with a £100,000 grant from English Heritage which regards their discovery as of outstanding importance – built within a barn at the site. At the moment conservation technician Emma Turvey, dressed in layers of winter clothes, is spending up to eight hours a day spraying the timbers to keep them waterlogged and remove any potentially decaying impurities. They will then be impregnated with a synthetic wax, polyethylene glycol, before being gradually dried out over the next two years for permanent display.

Murrell is convinced there is more to be found down in the silt.

“The creek continued outside the boundaries of the quarry, so it’s off our site – but the next person who gets a chance to investigate will find more boats, I can almost guarantee it.”

A 1,800-year-old Roman signet ring engraved with the goddess of Victory Found in a field in Somerset.

An amateur treasure hunter has made a ‘stunning’ find from the Roman era in the south-west of England.  With the help of a metal detector, the man discovered a golden ring at a site being investigated by local archaeologists.

The find is being hailed as very important and one of the most significant finds from the Roman-era in the area in recent years. This discovery has kindled a new excitement regarding the importance of the location where it was discovered and illustrates once again the significant role amateur archaeologists play in unearthing the past.

The Roman gold signet ring with an engraving of ancient victory goddess Victoria / Nike has been found by Jason Massey in a field near Crewkerne, BBC News reports.

Massey, who is part of the Detecting for Veterans group, found the Roman gold ring last Sunday after he unearthed some 60 Roman coins.

At first, he thought he had found his first gold coin but the find turned out to be a gold ring weighing 48 grams (1.7 oz).

The Roman ring is described as one of the most substantial archaeological finds in the recent history of England’s Somerset County and is thought to date back to the period between 200 and 300 AD.

The 3rd century AD Ancient Roman gold ring has been discovered in the same spot. Massey and other amateur detectorists stumbled upon a large number of coins and a Roman grave containing coffin lined with lead.

According to Massey, the site in question near Crewkerne, Somerset County, may have once housed a “very high-status Roman villa”.

“There’s a load of figures floating about [for the value of the ring] but we’re interested in the villa, who’s lived there and where they’ve come from and who the person was that wore this ring,” he says.

“There are a couple of gold rings of that sort of date from Somerset but they’re not common. Gold is… an indication that the owner is fairly wealthy,” comments Ciorstaidh Hayward-Trevarthen, finds liaison officer for South West Heritage Trust.

The Ancient Roman grave containing a lead coffin and over 250 coins that Massey and other amateur detectorists found in last year that was dated to ca. 400 AD

A total of six out of some 200 similar Roman lead coffins found in all of the UK have been discovered in the southwestern Somerset County.

In 2016, there were a total of 37 reported cases of treasure found in Somerset in 2016, the largest for five years.

Somerset County is in England’s top 10 local authority areas for treasure, according to official figures from the Department for Culture, Media and Sport. Norfolk County topped the list with 130 discoveries in 2016.

Pompeii of the North: London’s most important excavation ever unearths a Roman treasure

Just yards from the River Thames – in what is now the capital’s financial district – archaeologists have found coins, pottery, shoes, lucky charms, and an amber Gladiator amulet which date back almost 2,000 years.

Situated on the largest swathe of the lost Walbrook River still remaining in the City, the wet conditions have created perfect conditions for the survival of archaeological material, giving an extraordinary glimpse into life in bustling Roman Londinium. Even objects and structures made of wood and leather – which normally rarely stand the test of time – have been discovered, leading archaeologists to dub the site “the Pompeii of the north.”

Experts excavating the site, which lies alongside a huge building project for new offices on Queen Victoria Street, have uncovered wooden structures from the 40s AD around 40ft (12 meters) beneath the ground.

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The discoveries have been so well preserved in the muddy waters of the lost Walbrook River that archaeologists have nicknamed the site ‘the Pompeii of the North’.

Sadie Watson, the site director  from the Museum of London Archaeology, said: ‘Certainly the archaeology on this project so far is probably the most important excavation ever held within London, certainly within Roman London

‘The depth, the preservation, the extent of the archaeology – the entire Roman period is represented by fantastic buildings as well as artifacts.’

The three-acre site, which was once on the banks of the River Walbrook, is also home to the Temple of Mithras, discovered in the 1950s.

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It has offered experts an unprecedented glimpse into life in the bustling center of Roman Londinium. Archaeologists from the museum were able to excavate the area when work to build the vast Bloomberg Place development began.

Since then around 10,000 accessioned finds have been discovered by 60 archaeologists – the largest haul of small finds to have ever been recovered on a single excavation in the capital.

Approximately 3,500 tonnes of soil have been excavated by hand, which is around 21,000 barrows full.

More than 100 fragments of Roman writing tablets have been unearthed, while 700 boxes of pottery fragments will be analyzed by specialists.

This site has provided the largest quantity of Roman leather to have ever been unearthed in the capital, including hundreds of shoes.

Sophie Jackson, from the museum, said: ‘The site is a wonderful slice through the first four centuries of London’s existence.

‘The waterlogged conditions left by the Walbrook stream have given us layer upon layer of Roman timber buildings, fences, and yards, all beautifully preserved and containing amazing personal items, clothes, and even documents – all of which will transform our understanding of the people of Roman London.’

Everyday Life In A Bronze Age Village Emerges In U.K. Excavation

Must Farm, an extraordinarily well-preserved Late Bronze Age settlement in Cambridgeshire, in the East of England, drew attention in national and international media as ‘Britain’s Pompeii’ or the ‘Pompeii of the Fens’.

The major excavation was funded by Historic England and Forterra Building Products Ltd, which owns the Must Farm quarry.

What did villagers in England eat for dinner 3,000 years ago? And what were they wearing?

These are the kinds of questions that archaeologists believe they can answer with a Bronze Age-era discovery at the Must Farm Quarry, some 80 miles north of London.

“What’s special about this is, it’s not the archaeology of the important people. It’s not burial mounds. This is the archaeology of the home,” David Gibson from the Cambridge Archaeological Unit says in an interview with All Things Considered.

The research team says say these circular Bronze Age homes were perched on stilts above a river.

Archaeologists believe that when a fire started, the residents fled, and their dwellings sunk into the river where they were preserved by the silt, creating a unique snapshot of everyday life thousands of years ago.

Among this treasure trove are whole pots with food inside, textiles made from plant fibers, a longboat, weapons, and colorful beads.

Gibson says they’re sending off pots for analysis. “It might even tell us exactly what their last meal was before the fire struck,” he says. And somewhat chillingly, “we know it was sudden because one of the pots with the food still had its wooden spoon stuck in it.”

He adds that they’ve found 29 complete food vessels and pots, ranging in size from 2 feet high to 2 inches. “It’s almost like someone has gone to the department store and ordered the full set for their house,” Gibson says.

It’s the “best-preserved Bronze Age dwellings ever found in Britain,” preservation group Historic England says in a statement.

Historic England and the Forterra Quarry are funding this $1,588,000 project over four years.

“Normally, when we do archaeology, we see the decay of a settlement, we see it going out of use, and we see the slow back-fill overtime of the ditches and the pits.

We don’t see a snapshot. So this is almost like, you get the opportunity to peek through the curtains and see people actually in their daily moment,” archaeologist Selina Davenport told the BBC.

Archaeologists are still excavating the site. They say the findings will eventually be displayed at nearby museums.