Villa sites could be considered the bread and butter of Time Team - there's something uniquely appealing about the Roman period in the history of Britain - especially when it's under a live firing range.
When Martin Brown, archaeological advisor to the Ministry of Defence, contacted us with a mystery to solve at High Ham in Somerset the research team swung into action. Our first task was to check all records of 19th century excavations at the site still held by Taunton Museum. Two local amateur archaeologists, Munckton and Fry, who originally investigated the site, had left us a lot to work with including beautiful paintings of several multi-coloured mosaics they discovered. Although plans of their trenches existed these had not been drawn with any reference to landscape features meaning they were impossible to fix within the fields of Langport Firing Range.
Luckily we had some geophysical survey results to get us started, which John followed up with more intensive radar and magnetometry focused on specific features. However, on Time Team it's a good idea to expect the unexpected and, as so often happens, as trenches started going in, the weather turned. Usually late March is pretty fine weather wise. Instead, we were treated to continual rain and freezing temperatures. Eventually this led to something that has never happened on Time Team - a mutiny! Phil made it clear that the team couldn't go on working in sub-zero temperatures without protection from the wind chill and somewhere to keep warm. It would have helped had we had had an incident room which was nice and warm - instead we had a marquee...
Despite the hardships the site really delivered. The finds, including some great coins and a dolphin brooch, gave us a clear date range for the site. High Ham had been damaged by the previous excavations and more recent agricultural practices but enough remained to give us a great insight into the lives of those living at the site over 1500 years ago, despite the weather...
