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The Inter-City Villa
Lower Basildon, Berkshire
25 February 2001
Roman mosaics
Time Team reconstructed a Roman mosaic for this programme. Find out more about it, plus our special guide to Roman mosaic websites and books, and a few suggestions for where to see Roman mosaics.
Aerial survey and archaeology
Simon Crutchley, Senior Investigator, Aerial Survey, English Heritage, describes the aerial survey techniques and software available to archaeologists, as used at Lower Basildon.
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Quiz
Try our quick quiz on the Romans.
VR gallery
Take a virtual trip around the excavation with our 360-degree panoramic VR clips.
Photo gallery
Photos from the dig.
The Crop marks, maps and 'geofizz'
The aerial photographs of Church Field, which is where Time Team is starting this dig, show a variety of crop marks. These are caused when structures, pits or ditches beneath the surface result in areas of lesser or greater growth, according to the moisture in the earth available for growing plants. Here there are rectilinear features, circles and trackways – all clearly visible from the air during the dry period when the photos were taken but none of them visible now in the wet spring conditions when Time Team made this programme.
One of the first tasks, then, was for Bernard Thomason to plot the aerial photographs against detailed maps of the area, match the crop marks against GPS (Global Positioning Satellite) readings and mark them out on the ground. The 'geofizz', or geophysics team, meanwhile, was concentrating initially on surveying the area closest to where a map from 1838 suggests the mosaics were found.
'We're certain that's the building'
The magnetic survey corresponded exactly with Bernard's map, which made it straightforward enough to place Trench 1 across the line of a potential Roman ditch. The resistance survey prompted even greater interest, however, because of what appeared to be evidence of a building on the other side of the railway. 'I think we're certain that's the building,' said geophysics supremo John Gater – words that he might later come to regret.
Opening Trench 2 in the second field to seek out John Gater's 'building' had to wait, however, because special permission was needed to dig in these protected grasslands near the river. While Phil and others waited for it to come through, John whetted their appetites even further as he showed them the geofizz results: 'You can see a whole series of walls, all on this alignment. You can see them quite clearly showing as black here.'
'No ... no ... yes'
When the trench came to be dug, though, there were no walls – or indications of walls – to be found, only natural gravel. 'No ... no ... yes, but there's got to be something more than natural gravel,' John stuttered. He was baffled by the absence in the ground of any sign of what had seemed to be so clear from the geophysics.
The only hint of the 'walls' identified by the geofizz were a few bits of charcoal and a slight depression in the gravel. When Tony suggested that the geofizz hadn't worked, John Gater was moved to protest: 'The geophysics has worked – you just haven't found what we've got!' 'So we've got a gravel wall cut into natural gravel?' Phil taunted.
In fact, there was an explanation – of sorts. Further work on the trench eventually found evidence of an Iron-Age boundary ditch. It didn't really make up for the absence of what had been thought might be part of the villa buildings, though.
Plenty of finds ...
As more trenches were put in, there was little sign of the main villa buildings anywhere. Trench 1 was excavating what was clearly no ordinary field boundary. A three-metre-deep ditch, it may have bounded the main villa complex. If so, it was on a scale more akin with the late Iron-Age tradition, so perhaps it was a local family who marked out their first post-Roman conquest settlement in traditional style.
Huge numbers of finds came out of this ditch. There were Roman roof and floor tiles, including one with the pawprint of a dog that had walked across it when it was still wet. There were fragments of pottery dating from the first to fourth centuries; several different pieces of a drinking urn; some locally made Oxfordshire fine ware; and a well-preserved Roman barrel padlock.
Elsewhere on the site, rabbits had been doing their own digging. Among the finds that they unearthed was part of the distinctive flange of a mortarian (see image above) – a large, strong mixing bowl used in preparing food. The bowl was equipped with a spout and the flange was for easy gripping. It would have been made in the Oxfordshire potteries, 10–15 miles upriver from Lower Basildon.
... but no villa
In Trench 4, the Team did uncover the remains of two Roman walls, but the more the three days progressed the more a consensus was reached that the villa itself had been obliterated by the construction of the railway. With the later widening made to Brunel's original track, the railway now drives a swathe 40 metres wide along the valley. If this was an ordinary Roman farmstead villa – which are far more common than the bigger, grander houses – it could easily have been obliterated.
Tim Allan, of the Oxford Archaeological Unit, compared the site with the nearby small Roman farmstead of Barton Court that he is involved in excavating. This was a farm that began in the Iron Age and evolved through the Roman period. As now seems likely with the Lower Basildon villa, it had just one building at the heart of the complex.
Neolithic flints
While the site of the villa itself lies under the railway, the crop marks represent a series of features, including boundary ditches and trackways, associated with the villa. They also represent a landscape that has been in use over thousands of years, as became clear when, towards the end of the three days, Trench 6 was put in to investigate a square feature showing on the aerial photographs.
The trench produced a variety of flint finds, including one distinctive blade core that thrilled Phil and enabled him to date the site's earliest use to around 4000 BC. It was speculated that this might have been a Neolithic mortuary enclosure, where the bodies or bones of the dead were laid out. Unfortunately the site had been largely destroyed by heavy ploughing.
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