Working with the military

The military presence on Salisbury Plain over the past 102 years has protected many ancient remains from destruction by development or ploughing. But those same remains are also under threat from military activity – and increasingly so due to the use of ever heavier equipment and vehicles. Ian Barnes, the Ministry of Defence archaeologist for the Salisbury Plain area, with responsibility for over 2,500 monuments, has the task of trying to balance the needs of the military with the conservation of this historic landscape. He called in Time Team to investigate this particular site, at Haxton Down, to see whether it needed special protection.

A geophysics survey carried out here a few years previously identified a number of circular and rectilinear features, together with a large enclosure or boundary ditch. Along with various surface finds made in the area, these suggested possible continuous occupation of the area through both the British Iron Age (about 700 BC to the first century AD) and the Roman era. Could the circular features be Iron-Age roundhouses and the rectilinear ones later Roman buildings?

Trench warfare

Unfortunately, it didn't prove easy to locate the earlier geophysics results precisely on the ground, so the first trench – on the line of the boundary ditch – wasn't started until halfway through day one. Trench 2 didn't properly get under way until the beginning of day two. And because this is an army training ground, the area where each trench was to be dug had first to be checked by the army for unexploded shells before any digging could take place at all.

Once things got started, though, the finds came thick and fast. In Trench 1, they began with late Roman finds near the surface – including a hypocaust tile, from a Roman underfloor heating system, the base of a 4th-century Roman beaker and a Roman rilled pot fragment from the early 5th century, at the very end of the Roman period in Britain. While he was still pondering where best to position Trench 2, Time Team 'geofizz' expert John Gater also found a Roman child's bracelet from the 2nd or 3rd century AD just lying on the surface.

Base of a 4th-century Roman beaker.

Victor's reconstruction of a Roman beaker.

Hypocaust tile.

Roman child's bracelet.

The banjos

As the results from the geophysics survey came in, they began to reveal more of the prehistoric landscape. Great excitement resulted, in particular, from the discovery of what is known as a 'banjo enclosure'. So called because of their banjo-like shape, a circular enclosure with an entrance like the neck of a banjo, these were originally thought to be stock enclosures. Now it's considered that they were definitely residential in purpose, probably very high-status Iron-Age structures with the 'neck' representing some sort of ceremonial approach. Trenches 2 and 3 were situated to explore the banjo.

Finds in these trenches included a classic late Iron-Age bead-rimmed jar, dating from 50 BC to 50 AD, a beautiful bone comb dated at between 500 to 100 BC and a perfectly preserved quern stone at the foot of a storage pit. Peter Reynolds, the director of Butser Ancient Farm explained how the pit would have been used to store grain. Sealed with a clay layer at the top, this particular pit could have stored up to 10 tons of grain. The clay would have sealed in the air, allowing the top layers of grain to germinate in the dark, warm atmosphere. Once the oxygen in the pit had been used up by the germinating grain, the sealed, anaerobic conditions would have provided a perfect storage facility.

As if one banjo enclosure wasn't enough, the geofizz also indicated the presence of a second. But with the three days by now already more than half over, the focus of the Team's efforts was shifting elsewhere, so this one was left undug.

From the Iron Age to the Roman era

The reason for this switch in focus had already been indicated by the volume and quality of Roman finds. At the beginning of Day Two, for example, there had been the discovery of a limestone roof tile from a Roman building. The stone would have had to be brought from 40-50 miles away, so it provided further evidence of the existence of a high-status building somewhere nearby. The question was: where?

Eventually, after further large-scale geofizz surveying, Trench 4 was situated in an area where the geofizz results showed what looked like a Roman villa. And so it proved, although it was, in Mick's words, 'hellish complicated' to interpret the various wall lines, collapsed masonry and other materials found in the trench.

The picture that emerged of the site was of a prosperous agricultural community containing high-status settlements dating throughout the Iron-Age and Roman periods. This was an area in which the indigenous population were quick to adopt Roman ways, moving from a typically Iron Age way of life very early on in the Roman era – and sticking with the Roman lifestyle until the very end of the Romano-British period, as the discovery of a Roman coin minted between 388 ad and 402AD (the very last mint of bronze coinage brought into Britain) indicated. The buildings in which the local upper classes lived may have changed, but the boundaries of their estates seem to have remained largely unaltered.

Roman coin.

Building a roundhouse

The Team uncovered enough evidence in the three days to enable the MoD archaeologist, Ian Barnes, to make his case to English Heritage to have the site scheduled as an ancient monument. In locating the banjo enclosures and the villa, it also made it possible to tell the army which areas to avoid in order to preserve the remains.

But the achievement that most impressed those who took part in it was the reconstruction of an Iron-Age roundhouse in just three days. Using more than a ton of timber, 250 bundles of water reed weighing another ton and endless barrow-loads of mud-and-straw daub, an army team, led by reconstruction experts, erected a wind- and weather-proof structure that offered a welcome respite from the rain that swept across the plain at regular intervals throughout the three days. You can follow the construction of the roundhouse in pictures in our Photo gallery.

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