What they found

Finding what you seek
Sometimes archaeologists find what they expect to find. It would have been a major surprise, for example, if the boat Time Team excavated near Utrecht earlier in this series had turned out not to be Roman – not least because the tip of it had already been partially excavated, before being reburied.

Sometimes archaeologists don't expect to find something that they believe may have been on a site, but go looking for it anyway. Time Team's attempts at searching for possible Saxon palaces, such as at Islip, featured in the previous programme in this series, sometimes fall into this category. Like so many ancient monuments, their wooden structures, no matter how grand they may once have been, leave little trace in the ground when they have had a millennium or more in which to rot and decay (see How are archaeological sites formed?) – and the range of possible sites often covers a very large area.

And sometimes, of course, archaeologists find something entirely different to what was anticipated.

Past excavations
This can happen even when, as at Ffrith, a site has already been properly excavated and well documented and recorded by other archaeologists relatively recently. In this case, the excavations took place between 1967 and 69, when a number of exploratory trenches were dug in advance of housing development in the village. Time Team was even able to draw upon a geophysics survey of the village playing field – carried out in 1987, when the science was in its infancy as an archaeological tool, but clearly showing what appeared to be a row of substantial structures on an east-west alignment.

Earlier discoveries and excavations, and the huge quantity of Roman finds made in and around the village, had long established that there was once a significant Roman settlement at Ffrith, which was located on a major Roman road into Wales. Two sites in the village have protected 'scheduled ancient monument' status in recognition of the Roman remains found on them. The 'structures' identified from the 1987 geophysics survey, carried out on one of these scheduled sites, were believed to be part of the Roman settlement. And the discoveries of stone walls and other features made in the 1967-69 excavations were interpreted at the time as relating to a substantial Roman villa complex or bath house.

Unjoining the dots
The 1967-69 excavators had reached their conclusions about the likely presence of a bath house on the site by digging a number of relatively small exploratory trenches around the area to be affected by housing development and then, as Mick Aston put it, 'joining the dots'. Time Team, who had come to Ffrith to see what they could add to the knowledge of its Roman past, had no problem in finding their trenches again. There were clear maps, drawings and even photos to help locate those remains that were not now underneath houses.

But the more the Team dug, the more they began to question just what it was they were digging. An apsidal (semi-circular) wall feature that was central to the interpretation of the remains as a bath house turned out, on closer investigation, to be more of a slightly bent straight wall alignment. And it gradually became apparent that it was some sort of boundary wall, rather than belonging to a building – and that it wasn't actually Roman at all.

Other features had to be similarly reinterpreted, as Time Team began unjoining the dots and redrawing the plans of what lay under the ground. On the scheduled playing field site, meanwhile, where John Gater's current-day geophysics survey appeared to confirm the findings of the 1987 one, the row of structures turned out to be something else altogether – probably natural, and certainly not Roman.

Not a complete blank
The Team didn't draw a complete blank in the search for Roman remains, however. The excavations in village back gardens did uncover at least some genuine Roman walls, complete with plaster finds and evidence for a 'tessellated Roman pavement', or unpatterned mosaic floor. There were also some small wooden post holes and associated finds, probably relating to an internal wattle and daub screen within a Roman building.

Beyond that, though, Time Team's efforts had mainly added to the knowledge of Roman Ffrith in forcing a re-evaluation of past interpretations rather than making new discoveries. The Team didn't 'find nothing' – though even that can be invaluable in archaeological terms. They just didn't find what they expected.

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