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First shown 10 March 2002
This programme sees Time Team travelling north and back in time to the Roman period. The Yorkshire town of Castleford, though home to a successful rugby team, has fallen on hard times. The people of the town are eager to establish a new museum to display their heritage and Time Team is keen to help.
Castleford is situated on a strategically important river crossing and excavations carried out previously in the area suggest there could be important Roman remains here. What can the Team uncover in the three days available?
Ambitious objectives
The problem with carrying out archaeological work in a town is that you can only dig where space permits – and that is not always where you would like to be digging. But this doesn't stop Time Team setting itself some fairly ambitious objectives. The questions to which it is hoped to find answers over the three days include: What was the route of the main Roman road (the Roman equivalent of the M1) that ran through the town? What is the boundary (or boundaries) of the several Roman forts that once stood here? And what is the location of any 'vicus', or associated civilian settlement?
The area designated for Trench One, behind a British Legion Club, is fenced off. The theory (based on past excavation work) is that this site, now a barren patch of urban wasteland, should cover the remains of the Roman vicus. The geophysics team, using both magnetronomy and ground-penetrating radar, has highlighted some anomalies worth pursuing. Stewart Ainsworth, Time Team's landscape archaeologist, meanwhile, is enthusing over his maps: 'From what I can see it looks like nothing has been built on top of the Roman archaeology until the late 19th century. This looks quite promising.' Field archaeologist and Time Team regular Phil Harding is keen to get going: 'What's important here is to find out if the Victorian buildings that were here have destroyed the Roman archaeology underneath.'
Roman forts and Victorian cellars
While strategies are discussed at Trench One, a second site, in the middle of a supermarket car park, is surveyed before work gets under way on Trench Two. Here the Team hopes to discover the boundary of the Roman forts. (These are known to be complicated, overlapping structures that will require careful excavation and analysis.) The geophysics team is also searching for evidence of the main Roman road, assisted by Stewart Ainsworth with his maps. 'What I'm looking for are any clues in the modern shape of the town to how the Roman settlement may have looked,' says Stewart. 'I'm also looking closely at where Roman roads may have gone out of the town to the north and south.'
As Trench One progresses, the excavation reveals rubble and the outline of cellars from demolished Victorian buildings. In the midst of the rubble, however, the first pieces of Roman pottery are also found. As the afternoon moves on, Trench One gets bigger. It's now a large 'T'-shaped trench in which the red brick walls of a Victorian cellar are clearly defined.
Simon Tomson, the local Roman archaeology expert, explains what's going on: 'The modern road here could well be on top of an original Roman road. A row of Victorian houses was built where we're digging now and this is a cellar from one of those houses. On the old tithe maps we can see that these were just fields before the Victorians got going, so the only material these cellars went through would have been medieval plough soil and then the Roman archaeology.'
Has the Roman archaeology been preserved under the Victorian cellars? Some further excavation is needed to find out.
Backyards and backfill
Day Two sees the excavation break through the Victorian cellars in Trench One and uncover some well-preserved Roman pottery. The trench is extended to cover an area that would have been Victorian backyards. It's hoped that the Roman archaeology here will be even better preserved.
Over at Trench Two, meanwhile, Ian Powlesland, veteran Time Team digger, is hard at work. 'What we've done here is excavate a lot of backfill from a previous excavation,' he says. 'We've reached the full extent and found the level that the old archaeologists got to. We've found evidence for compacted turfs (used for a rampart wall) and now we can dig on down. Hopefully the conditions will be right to discover some well-preserved organic finds.'
Digging up the football pitch
The afternoon sees the geophysics team keen to open a new trench on the town football pitch to continue the search for the line of the Roman road. Trench Three is duly opened, following up their strong survey readings. In Trench One, beneath the cellar floor, Phil Harding has discovered a well-preserved compacted gravel surface: it could be the remnants of the Roman road at this end of town.
Tony Robinson is particularly excited about some of the pottery coming out of this trench. 'Some of the pieces have makers' marks,' he enthuses. 'They're a bit like the "Made in Stoke on Trent" you can see on the bottom of a modern saucer. The Roman ones are stamped into the pot and tell us who made the piece. That's one of my favourite types of find – where you can connect something to an individual. It makes the whole thing more personal.'
Work on Trench Two is slow going but it is starting to smell: a good sign that preserved organic materials are close by. Over at the football pitch, though, Trench Three is completely empty – another geophysics blip. It's decided to run a bore-hole survey across the pitch to try to determine where the road could be, but this also proves disappointing.
As the end of the investigation draws near, Trench Two is extended to uncover a larger area. This exposes the edge of a Roman midden, or rubbish pit, leading to the conclusion that the organic layers found in a previous excavation were not, as had been thought, a continuous layer running under the ramparts. Trench One is also leading to some rethinking: it looks as though the gravel surface uncovered there is a courtyard or a surface for workshops or something similar rather than the Roman road. The Roman finds are plentiful though. They include small pottery vessels used for making offerings and an abundance of domestic wares; there is even some evidence of cremations. It certainly looks as though this area, outside the forts, was a hive of activity.
Taking to the water
Finally, the geophysics team has taken to the water. Using ground-penetrating radar, pointed through the bottom of a boat, they are trying to find any traces of a ford or bridge that could indicate the location of the Roman road. (They just don't give up, do they?) The boat's motor packs up while they are busy midstream, but not to be outdone they resort to ropes to pull themselves back and forth. The outcome is a series of readings, which Stewart and the geophysics crew alike, insists indicates the line of the now submerged Roman road crossing. We believe them, don't we?
Here's a quick round-up of a few of the behind-the-scenes crew at Castleford, some of whose names you may recognise from the Time Team titles.
Name: George Pagliero
Production title: Researcher
Description: This is the second series for George. His job as a researcher involves checking out all of the work that has previously been done in the area of a Time Team excavation. That includes the sites and monuments records, archaeological reports and archives by archaeological units. He also gets involved in reconnaissance trips to sites before the whole production team arrive.
Name: Garry Owen
Production title: Sparks
Description: Garry has worked with Time Team for years. He's the main electrician on the shoots and brings with him a van stuffed to the roof with lighting rigs, colour films, cables and scaffolding. You may have seen his van driving along with the tyres rubbing under the wheel arches.
Name: Raysan Al-Kubaisi
Production title: Graphics
Description: Raysan works closely with Stewart Ainsworth and the specialists that appear on the programme. He's responsible for producing those amazing computer reconstructions, uses a monster computer, and is a regular fixture in the incident room. When not on recording shoots he's busy putting things together in post production.
Name: Jamie Wiggins
Production title: Unit Manager
Description: A long-standing member of the team, Jamie has covered lots of recordings and was particularly popular on last year's live broadcast as attending viewers shouted his name over the security barriers.
Mick Aston gives his thoughts on the Castleford shoot:
'This programme was a good one to do. With a Roman fort you have an awful lot of finds and stratigraphy so you have to ask yourself how far can you get in three days. Having said that, we had a lot of previous work to draw on. Finding those Victorian cellars allowed us to drop to a level that would have taken weeks of excavation to achieve. The gap in occupation (from the Roman period until the Victorians) was an interesting factor. It appears that nobody lived here after the Roman period and I find that a little bit hard to follow. The thing is medieval records from that area are scarce and that certainly added to the intrigue.'
Time Team has carried out a number of other investigations into Roman sites in Britain, details of which can be found in the Past programmes section of this website. These include the 1997 Live dig on the site of a Roman villa at Turkdean, in Gloucestershire. As well as a detailed report on the dig, our special Live website included a chronology of Roman Britain, a range of Roman recipes and other links and resources.
Time Team returned to Turkdean as part of its 1999 series to see if it could make sense of the spectacular geophysics results that there had not been time to investigate during the Live programme. That same series also included a programme on a Roman bath house found at Beauport Park, East Sussex, and another programme based around a Roman settlement next to a fort at Papcastle, in Cumbria. The 2000 series included an excavation of Roman remains at Cirencester and at Birdoswald on Hadrian's Wall. All of these pages contain further information and extensive links to Roman-related websites.
As well as investigating another Roman villa, this time in the Waltham Villa programme, the 2001 series also saw Time Team searching for the remains of a Roman villa at Lower Basildon in Berkshire. There is a special feature on the web pages for that programme on Roman mosaics, including an extensive list of Roman mosaic websites and suggestions for further reading and places to visit.
The 2002 series featured Roman digs at Castleford, Ancaster and Cheshunt, while the 2003 series featured those at Dinnington and Sedgefield. The 2004 series featured three Roman sites, at Whitestaunton, Ipswich and Cranborne Chase. For the 2005 series, Time Team investigated Roman sites at Drumlanrig and South Shields, as well as a multi-period site at Standish, Gloucestershire, that was occupied into the Roman era.
Roman Britain by Tim Potter and Catherine Johns ('Exploring the Roman World' series, British Museum Publications, 1992) hardback £19.95; paperback £12.99
A survey of the effects of Roman culture on Britain and its people, by two British Museum curators. Includes evidence from the latest archaeological discoveries, including the Vindolanda writing tablets and the Thetford and Snettisham treasures, as well as a gazetteer of noteworthy sites to visit.
Roman Britain by T W Potter (British Museum Press, 1983, 2nd edition 1997) paperback £8.99
The four centuries during which the Roman presence in Britain rose, flourished and declined changed every aspect of life: industry, trade, government, the arts and learning. This book gives an illustrated outline of the period.
Roman Britain by Martin Millett (English Heritage, 1995) paperback £15.99
Making full use of the archaeological material available, this introductory study of four centuries of Roman presence in Britain explores the central themes of daily life, laying particular emphasis on the social, economic and cultural history.
Life in Roman Britain by Joan Alcock (Batsford/English Heritage, 1996) paperback £15.99
An excellent social history of life in Roman Britain covering food and drink, clothing, recreation, administration and religion. Richly illustrated.
Companion to Roman Britain by Guy de la Bédoyère (Tempus, 1999) hardback £25
This book is a comprehensive compilation of historical and epigraphic facts about Roman Britain and seeks to set the record straight about where facts end and opinions begin. Includes a complete breakdown of all military units, when and where they were stationed and so on, together with details of buildings, officials, administration and the first full list of the Gods of Roman Britain.
An Atlas of Roman Britain by Barri Jones and David Mattingly (Blackwell, 1993, 2001 edition) paperback £15.99
An amazing accumulation of archaeological evidence has been used to map every aspect of Roman life on a countrywide scale, including the distribution of Roman forts, towns, villas, potteries and quarries. Lots of additional plans and useful descriptions on each topic.