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The small Lincolnshire town of Ancaster lies on Ermine Street, which is a major Roman road heading north from London. The only Roman remains visible today are some massive earth banks and ditches, which have been dated to the 4th century. So what was here before these defences and why were they built?
As modern Ancaster has grown, more and more Roman finds have been made locally. The surface of the local fields well beyond the defensive banks and ditches is scattered with Roman brick, pottery and other artefacts. This indicates that the Roman town was actually much bigger than the defence works would lead us to believe. Many of the finds are early, indicating that the town was settled very soon after the Roman invasion. Even a cemetery has been found, containing more than 250 Roman burials, including 11 stone sarcophagi.
Much of the site of the Roman town has been scheduled as an ancient monument, which means that excavation can only take place in special circumstances. So, in its quest to discover the full extent of the town, Time Team has restrictions on the areas it can excavate. Starting work in gale-force winds and driving rain, two areas outside the 4th-century defences are targeted.
Time Team field archaeologist Phil Harding sets to work on the western side of town, looking for the extent of the Roman cemetery previously identified in the area. On the other side of the town, Carenza Lewis is looking for evidence of settlement. Dr Jeremy Taylor, Roman small towns expert, is very enthusiastic: 'Judging by the finds from the village there are very good indications that the Roman town would have extended outside the earthworks in all directions.'
By the end of Day One Phil has hit and gone through some iron deposits, and found a number of small features in the ground, but no human remains. Carenza, meanwhile, has found lots of human and animal bone in mixed deposits. As the site begins to look more and more confusing, the geophysics team is stretched to the limit of its resources to try to come up with a fuller picture.
Day Two brings with it the relief of good weather. Two new trenches are started for Phil over a possible ditch and another anomaly picked up by geophysics. Carenza also opens a second trench to try to make sense of her mixed remains. Stewart Ainsworth, of course, is busy walking the landscape with his maps and notebook.
'Ancaster would have been very near the original Roman shoreline,' says Stewart. 'Perhaps the defences were connected with that. They would also have helped control the road through the town.'
In Phil's trench some late Iron-Age pottery fragments from a storage jar are unearthed - evidence that there was settlement here before the Roman invasion. Carenza also has some luck when she discovers the foundations for Roman walls outside the defence works. It's starting to look as though the defensive walls cut a large part of the town off. The excitement builds as Phil uncovers what looks like a stone coffin, but he has to wait until the final day before he can investigate further.
Day Three, and Carenza's field on the east of the town has revealed five enclosures on the geophysics survey. She also discovers walls built on top of earlier finds. This indicates that these Roman 'suburbs' of Ancaster were in use until quite late in the Roman period. The general consensus among historians is that Roman towns expanded rapidly in the early years of the occupation but then fell upon hard times in the later Roman period. Saxon raiders on the eastern southern coasts from the end of the 3rd century onwards meant that the Romans had to build a series of fortifications. Many towns were also forced to build their own defences in the 4th century as the threats increased and the society of the time became more hostile and dangerous with the decline of the empire.
Phil's trench yields the most exciting discovery of the whole dig. What looked like a stone coffin is actually a cist (pronounced kist) burial. This is one in which stone slabs are used to line a pit into which the body is laid; a further flat stone (or stones) is used to cover the top.
The individual buried here turns out to be a male who was around 70 years of age when he died. Both of his legs had been broken at some time in his life and he would have walked with a pronounced limp. One of the stones used in the cist has an inscription to the god 'Viridios' (possibly meaning 'great god') who may have been worshipped locally. Was this man an old pagan buried with a credit to his old religion, or was the stone just reused material? We will never know. ago.
It can be difficult enough to excavate within the restraints of a scheduled ancient monument or built-up area, but the 'geofizz' (geophysics) team was pushed still further on this dig as demands for their services were high. Working on several large areas in different locations didn't help, and the fact that large fields needed to be surveyed quickly, and the team couldn't be in two places at once, added to the tension. There was even some debate as to whether trenches could be dug without geophysics being done first. 'We have to have geophysics done,' insisted geophysics team boss John Gater. 'It's a matter of prioritising the workload. They have to make their minds up about which are the most important areas.' Though it can be frustrating for the archaeologists to wait for results, geophysics can save a lot of time wasted digging sterile ground. They may not be right all the time, but they do help enormously when it comes to prioritising the trenches in the limited time available on a three-day dig.
Gustav Milne, a Thames waterfront specialist from the Institute of Archaeology, UCL, is something of a local expert and well renowned in archaeological circles as a leading authority on the river.
'The Thames is a fundamental part of the history of London,' says Gustav. 'The remarkable thing is that we know so little about it. I've spent the last 25 years of my life exploring the Roman and medieval Thames and that's been a revelation to me. Here on this project we were actually trying to go back to over 3,000 years ago. We found lots of new stuff doing this project and the whole thing was very interesting'.
So what was it like for the Team leader, Mick Aston, starting filming on his ninth series of Time Team?
'I approached this with some trepidation,' says Mick. 'When I got to the site I thought "Oh dear here we go again", but by the morning I was caught up with the buzz and well on my way to getting into another series. It's always the same. The programmes look like they carry on into the distance but then when you're in the swing of it things are fine.'
Last year Mick was fully booked with his professorship at Bristol University, Time Team, a couple of books, his Shapwick medieval village project and a busy lecture tour. This year he's reorganised things a little.
'I've actually taken a year's sabbatical from Bristol University. I'm still working with my postgraduate students, but otherwise I'm taking a bit of a break. This lets me concentrate on Time Team, the writing up of the Shapwick project post-excavation reports, and my monasteries book. I've been saying that I'm starting my monasteries book for ages - well now I really have!'