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Moss Brow Farm in Warburton, Cheshire, had been the focus of intense study by local enthusiast James Balme for almost a decade before he invited Time Team to investigate further. In that time, the site had produced a range of artefacts, discovered as a result of intensive field walking and metal detecting including a rare snake's head bracelet, a silver denarius and a collection of Roman metalwork.
The assemblage of finds is unusual in the context of the north west of England. The evidence for Roman activity in the area is relatively sparse. Sites tend to produce few finds and aerial photography is rarely productive. In fact, there is a huge gap in our knowledge about the extent of both Roman military and civilian occupation in the region.
Time Team was keen to try to fill in some of that gap, and in particular to discover what lies beneath the bean fields of Warburton. And they left virtually no stone unturned in the process of doing so.
Er, not a lot actually.
Time Team dug some of its biggest trenches ever over the course of the three days at Warburton. Its mechanical diggers left great scars across the sandy surface of the north Cheshire landscape. Teams of fieldwalkers were set to work scouring the bean fields for evidence of past habitation. Metal detectorists set their machines a-buzzing in the hope that they would come up with something to match the finds that had brought Time Team here in the first place. Geophysics tried whatever tricks it could muster in entirely unpromising circumstances. Stewart Ainsworth sought out assistance from the lumps and bumps on the ground and old maps from the past.
All to no avail. Or was it?
Certainly there was no disguising the fact that in terms of actual finds this was the least productive dig that Time Team has ever been involved in. None of the trenches yielded more than a few scattered shards of pottery. And virtually everything that was turned up by the fieldwalking and metal detecting dated from relatively recent times and certainly not from the Roman period, which had been the focus of interest in the site before Time Team's arrival. Even the apparent features in the ground, which had led to speculation that this was once the site of a Roman fort, turned out to be natural rather than man-made.
Yet the archaeologists did not leave entirely empty-handed – or at least not in terms of their knowledge of the site. Phil Harding's keen eye and Francis Pryor's long experience in identifying evidence of past agriculture combined to discern the marks of strip lynchets, or agricultural terraces, perhaps dating from the Roman period. The finds made by metal detectorists in the past – including the silver snake's head bracelet that provided the inspiration for the reconstruction cameo in this programme – were all the result of chance losses in what had always been an agricultural landscape.
So why were finds so scarce when metal detectorists and fieldwalkers had enjoyed such a rich yield in the past? The answer, quite simply, was that a decade of their searches in these fields had stripped them bare of artefacts. There was little left for anyone else to find.
Channel 4 is not responsible for the content of third-party sites.
The discovery of a rare snake's head bracelet as a result of metal detecting at Warburton gave Time Team the opportunity to try its hand at some Roman jewellery making for this programme. The reconstruction was carried out by Andrew Lacey, a renowned sculptor, bronze founder and specialist in archaeometallurgy. Using the same techniques and materials that would have been used in Roman times, he crafted a beautiful copy of the silver bracelet. Here he explains how he did it.
What materials did you require for the bracelet at Warburton?
Casting the snake bracelet required using beeswax for the sculpting of the snake and the casting system of vents and runners (see below). Clay mixed with sand was used for the mould material and silver was cast into the mould.
What tools did you use?
In modelling the snake in the wax version I used mostly my fingers and a fine wooden or metal tool.
What were the main steps in the process?
First a wax model of the snake was made. Little rods of wax were attached onto this and connected to a small wax funnel. These rods and the funnel are called the 'sprue system' and allow the molten silver to go in to the mould and air to escape.
Sandy clay mixture was then applied to the wax until it was about 15mm thick. This forms the mould. The mould is allowed to dry and then heated up in a charcoal fire, which melts all the wax out.
At the same time that this is happening a small crucible with silver in it is put in another very hot fire so that the silver melts. The mould is then taken out of the fire and placed so that the funnel is facing up. The crucible is taken from the fire and silver poured into the mould.
When the mould and metal are cold, the mould is broken open and the casting revealed. The little runners, vents and funnel that were once wax are now silver and are cut off with a chisel. The final cast snake is then chiselled and punched in order to decorate the surface. Finally the snake is burnished with a steel tool.
What was the hardest part of the bracelet reconstruction?
The most difficult part of the process was getting the clay mould to dry in such a short time and in damp conditions.
Would you change anything if you did the reconstruction again?
I would have liked to have time to have made a bracelet by cold working (hammering) raw silver bars.
Andrew Lacey's website is at www.andrewlacey.com.
With so few finds turning up at Warburton, our quick quiz to accompany this programme focuses on archaeological tools and techniques. How many answers can you get right?
Why might archaeologists use an auger?
To get samples from beneath the surface
To cut through solid layers
To foretell the future
What is a 'sondage'?
A very muddy trench
A small exploratory pit
A four-edged trowel
What is 'bosing'?
Hitting the ground to listen for echoes
Hitting a trowel to shake off dirt
Hitting the pub to recover from digging
If dendrochronology enables us to date wooden objects by reference to the annual growth rings in trees, what is 'varve dating' based on?
Layers of pollen
Layers of ice
Layers of sediment
What did the US chemist William Libby publish the first of in 1949?
An archaeological site report
Geophysics survey results
Radiocarbon dates
Coprolites can be used to work out past diets and diseases. What are they?
Fossilised faeces
Residues on cooking utensils
Brightly-lit microscopes
Answers here.
Channel 4 is not responsible for the content of third-party sites.
Techniques of Archaeological Investigation by Philip Barker (Routledge, new edition 1993) paperback £28.99
The standard work on the techniques of excavation, now updated and expanded to cover the very latest developments.
Get this book
The Handbook of British Archaeology by L and R Adkins (Constable, 1998) paperback £14.99
Diatom? Quern? Clactonian? These are all explained in this handbook, which has a chapter on techniques as well as ones on all periods up to the Middle Ages. Although it has not been updated since 1998, it is still an essential reference work.
Get this book
Archaeological Finds: A guide to identification by Norena Shopland (Tempus, 2004) paperback £17.99
Up-to-date handbook for anyone interested in archaeology and keen to learn more about identifying the artefacts they discover.
Get this book
Channel 4 is not responsible for the content of third-party sites.
Andrew Lacey
www.andrewlacey.com
Andrew Lacey is a renowned sculptor, bronze founder and archaeometallurgist, who carried out the reconstruction cameo of a silver Roman snake's head bracelet for the Warburton programme.
Metal detecting … What's it all about?
www.ourpasthistory.com/metal/
This website, run by Time Team enthusiast Corinne Mills, contains a comprehensive guide to responsible metal detecting in England and Wales as well as some history and archaeology from both England and Scotland. The image gallery contains over 5,500 images taken in the UK and abroad of locations, places of interest and artefacts.
National Council for Metal Detecting
www.ncmd.co.uk/index.htm
The National Council for Metal Detecting website contains information on clubs, membership, the Treasure Act – in fact, just about everything you'd need to know about metal detecting and the NCMD.
Portable Antiquities Scheme
www.finds.org.uk
The Portable Antiquities Scheme is a voluntary recording scheme for archaeological objects found by members of the public. Every year many thousands of objects are discovered, many of them by metal-detector users, but also by people out walking, gardening or going about their daily work. Such discoveries offer an important source for understanding our past. This website provides background information on the Portable Antiquities Scheme, news and access to the PAS database of more than 60,000 finds and 18,000 images; from prehistoric flints to post-medieval buckles.
For details of other archaeology websites, organised by both period and subject, see Archaeology websites.
Why might archaeologists use an auger?
To get samples from beneath the surface
What is a 'sondage'?
A small exploratory pit
What is 'bosing'?
Hitting the ground to listen for echoes
If dendrochronology enables us to date wooden objects by reference to the annual growth rings in trees, what is 'varve dating' based on?
Layers of sediment
What did the US chemist William Libby publish the first of in 1949?
Radiocarbon dates
Coprolites can be used to work out past diets and diseases. What are they?
Fossilised faeces