Wickenby, Lincolnshire
First screened 23 March 2008

What they found

'If I had access to the most powerful microscope in the world, I would still be unable to locate my interest in this roundhouse' – Guy de la Bédoyère

Competing interests
There were at least two competing interests at play in this excavation. On the one hand, Time Team's Roman expert, Guy de la Bédoyère, was most interested, as you might expect, in uncovering the story behind the 300-plus Roman items found by metal detecting on the site. These include 100 brooches, mostly dating from the 1st century AD.

On the other hand, Francis Pryor's passion for prehistory (he failed Latin 'O' level, as presenter Tony Robinson dryly noted during the programme) revealed itself again in his energetic pursuit of ditches, post holes, roundhouses, a rumoured spring that may have had some pre-Roman ritual significance and even a possible Bronze-Age barrow. Indeed, so determined was he to uncover what the site might have to reveal about the transition from Iron Age to Roman that, late on the third day, he was to be found single-handedly digging an Iron-Age enclosure ditch revealed by the geophysics.

This was all too much for Guy, who suggested that Francis's obsession with religion and ritual meant that he ignored the more obvious reason why people were attracted to water in prehistoric times: that they needed to drink. As for a possible roundhouse, marked only by the usual stains in the soil from its post holes and circular 'drip gully', where water had drained off the roof, Guy commented: 'If I had access to the most powerful microscope in the world, I would still be unable to locate my interest in this roundhouse.'

Iron Age
Francis's efforts enjoyed mixed results. There turned out not to be a spring at all, only a boggy area of land where the nearby river had formerly flooded. The possible ploughed-out barrow also evaded detection. The 15-metre diameter circle instead turned out to represent a Roman-period workshop.

Francis's work with the spade did prove effective, however, in identifying an enclosure ditch delineating the extent of the pre-Roman, Iron-Age settlement on the site. A piece of early Iron-Age pot dated this ditch to around 300-500 BC, while a post hole cutting through it was dated to around the time of Christ. A number of roundhouses, trackways and enclosures were also located from the 'geophys'.

Roman
The Roman period was marked, typically, by more linear and rectangular features. Some of these survive – and were identified by landscape archaeologist Stewart Ainsworth – in the otherwise higgledy-piggledy modern field pattern.

In one trench, Phil Harding uncovered 'three manky stones' (Tony's words) that were interpreted as being part of an unused furnace or kiln. In another (the 'barrow' trench), small chippings of stone with painted plaster on them were identified as the by-products of a stone-recycling operation.

Indeed, by the end of the dig, it was thought that the whole site had been involved in Roman-era recycling. It was suggested that the large numbers of metal objects had been assembled for melting down and reuse. As Guy pointed out, labour was cheap and metal expensive, so recycling represented an important part of the economy at this time.

Copper bowl
One of Time Team's finds was a well-preserved copper bowl that could have played a part in this recycling activity. Carefully restored by Brigid Gallagher, this had holes punched around the rim, which could have been used for hanging the bowl as part of a weights balance. It also contained abrasion marks from harder objects such as bronze or iron being dropped onto it. Another find made on the site was identified as having been part of a steelyard balance.

All in all, then, Time Team revealed a thriving community that had been active in various phases on this site right through the Iron Age, the Roman era and into the Dark Ages. Enough to satisfy both the Romanists, such as Guy, and the passionate prehistorians, such as Francis.

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