"People Call The Romans, They Go The House?"

August, 2018. – As my friends and I emerged onto the dirt track leading out of the village all we could see were fields stretching to the horizon. It was a familiar view, but one which most of us hadn’t seen in some fifteen to twenty years. The smell of sunshine and tilled soil, dried grass and fresh air assailed each of us with a warm flood of memories. Shared memories of walking this quiet track together time and again; usually listening to the sound of the sun ripened corn cracking and popping in the warm sunshine, the breeze murmuring through the rippling tide of stalks stretching as far as the eye can see.

Very little appeared to have changed, but as we walked I couldn’t help thinking of all the things I’d done since I’d last trod this path; thinking of all the places across the globe I’d visited, and all the people I’d met in those fifteen or so years. A lot of water had flown under the proverbial bridge, but suddenly it seemed as if no time at all had passed. This was one of the places where for me a lifetime of archaeological adventures had begun. Suddenly one of our group noticed a flock of tall stalks with long, sleek white fins turning silently on the lip of the horizon.

“Look! – Tripods are advancing to attack the dig site!”

They did look incongruously modern, like the strange and sinister three-legged ambulating spaceships of John Christopher’s iconic trilogy of Sci-Fi novels, in which advanced alien overlords now rule an English countryside technologically regressed to medieval times. The wind farm itself was actually several miles away on the other side of the distant hum of the M1 motorway which, as I remember it, could only faintly and very rarely be heard if the wind was in the right direction. That’s one of the reasons why this spot was so special for us – it’s a place of total escape, into the serene quiet of the land.

During the 1990s we‘d all come here each summer for the first two weeks of August to take part in one of the longest running archaeological excavations in the country. It’ll be celebrating its fortieth anniversary next year. Run by a local group, called the Upper Nene Archaeological Society (UNAS), and directed by Roy and Liz Friendship-Taylor, near the village of Piddington in Northamptonshire, the site is a Roman Villa with traces of earlier settled occupation during the late Iron Age. The dig site has yielded a wealth of information regarding the Roman era in Britain. The Villa itself must have been quite grand. The floor plan shows a large building with two side wings, along with several out-buildings including a bath house and a stone-lined well which was excavated down to the bedrock with a votive niche set into the stonework near the waterline. It’s possible that the long, deep ditch which runs straight alongside the track leading down to the site itself dates back to the Roman era.

My brooch is the one on the top right

For many years my role here was to sit in a small rusty old caravan, cataloguing and describing the “small finds” – this meant I got to handle all the wonderful things everyone excavated, from fine ceramics, to delicate bone and bronze implements such as hair pins and finger nail cleaners, as well as coins and brooches; supervising the team sifting and sorting through heaving-great bags of broken animal bones, pot and tile sherds, and fragments of tesserae. From time to time I did some digging as well, and I was lucky enough on one occasion to find a gorgeous bronze brooch which still had traces of its original silver tinning.

At the time though, due to the nature of the work I was then doing as part of my day job back at the British Museum, I was very interested in lithics and so I often used to go fieldwalking when the field which surrounded the site where we were digging had been freshly ploughed. A short distance from the Roman Villa there’s a dip in the field, which was apparently the impression left by an old quarry pit (old but modern old, rather than ancient old). There must have been a lot of deeper material cast up in this area as a result of the quarrying because this was a spot where I used to find a lot of flint debitage – flakes, blades and occasionally blade cores, and every now and then a proper tool, like an arrowhead, or a flint scraper – the sort of implement which would have been used to clean and prepare skins and hides. Most of these finds were Neolithic, but the things I was really looking out for were the much older Mesolithic microliths. These are really hard to spot as they are very small worked slivers of flint which would have been set into the shafts of arrows (it’s almost impossible to find these without sieving the soil).

It’s hard to describe the feeling of spotting something shiny glistening in the wet mud and recognising it as a flint implement from a distance, then homing in and picking it up and thinking how – very probably – yours is the first human hand to pick it up in several thousand years who actually knows what it is and what it was used for. It’s a real deep connection to the past, which for me is a genuine thrill that goes to the very core of why I first fell in love with the subject of archaeology when I was a child.

I won’t go into the elaborate history of the Roman Villa dig site itself, as this has been done by others far better qualified to do so than me (you can read more in a recent article in Current Archaeology here). Instead I want to write something about the intangible side of practical archaeology; what it is actually like to take part in a dig. Firstly, these things take a huge amount of organisation – there were a lot of people from UNAS who all contributed in whatever ways they could. Those with connections to the Army used to arrange the loan of a couple of large canvas tents as well as a bowser to supply the dig with clean drinking water. One of the members took care of the catering, providing a hot lunch each day for the diggers, along with a copious supply of tea. The ritual tinkling of a triangle would sound out across the site to let the diggers know when grub was up or that the kettle had boiled. The members’ and diggers’ subscription fees paid for the provision of portaloos. 

The village pub - The Spread Eagle, Piddington

Many of the summer diggers were university students from all over the country and from overseas who camped on site. Waking up in your tent on a sun drenched morning, listening to the sound of the ripened corn popping in the heat was an idyllic way to start the day. Being close to the starting place of the Northamptonshire Hot Air Balloon Festival also meant that on some years you’d awake to the strange sound of burners blasting overhead in the crystal clear stillness of the early hours, or you’d see and hear them passing by at dusk as the sunset. It did sometimes rain, of course. These days weren’t quite so fun, especially for those camping – but if it was too wet to dig there was always the local pub to dry off in. I remember one such soggy afternoon, when walking through the village we encountered the remarkable sight of a legion of tiny frogs on the march all intrepidly crossing the rain soaked Rubicon of the road. Of course, many evenings, whatever the weather, were spent at the village pub (which itself dates back to the 1700s) playing board games, or pool, or darts – or playing Northamptonshire table skittles.

Over the years many of the diggers became regulars, returning each summer, our shared interests in archaeology and ancient history cementing friendships between contemporaries and across generations. All of us collaborating in a combined endeavour to open up a window into the distant past, meticulously recording all the things we found. Several of the regular students wrote their dissertations on aspects of the excavation and its finds, such as analyses of the baby burials, the coins, or the oyster shell middens discovered there. UNAS facilitated the publication of some of these studies alongside the standard dig reports. It’s an impressive example of how the dedication and professionalism of a non-professional society can facilitate and make a real contribution to the wider academic world of British archaeology.

My original sketch of the Piddington Gladiator Knife shortly after it was discovered in October 2000

One of the most memorable finds from the dig was made in October 2000 in a newly opened up area of the site. A small lump of iron and bronze was discovered in what had been one of the courtyard areas of the Roman Villa. Looking at the plan of the site I realised that I’d pitched my tent on this very spot for my first summer at the dig in 1994, and so I’d spent two weeks sleeping on top of this object! – When the lump was cleaned of soil it soon became clear that it was a folding pocket knife, with an iron blade and a bronze handle cast in the shape of a gladiator. By a strange quirk of coincidence I was then working as part of the team setting up an exhibition on gladiators at the British Museum, and so I was able to help identify the type of gladiator it depicted (a secutor), and I also helped to get the knife included in the exhibition as the very latest gladiatorial find from Roman Britain. The pocket knife was later written up in the journal, Antiquity (which you can read here). It’s now on long term loan to the BM and is on permanent display in the Roman Britain Gallery (Room 49). 

The Piddington Gladiator Knife (left) with a replica, made by Nodge Nolan (right)

It’s wonderful to think of the fact that this uniquely beautiful and extremely evocative artefact was seemingly lost at random, perhaps falling from a pocket or a bag in the wide expanse of a courtyard unnoticed or unfindable, waiting some 2000 years to be rediscovered. Even more fascinating to wonder at its story – it was very likely to have been bought as a souvenir in a more urban centre somewhere in the Roman Empire. Remains of gladiatorial arenas have been found in the UK, even an actual gladiator’s helmet as well (see here) – so maybe it was a souvenir from Verulamium (present day St. Albans), or perhaps it came from somewhere further afield, perhaps even from the Colosseum in Rome itself? – It’s not hard to imagine that whoever lost it was probably pretty dismayed when they realised it was lost. I wonder what they’d think of the fate that awaited their pocket knife thereafter, travelling through so many centuries only to be found and treasured again in a museum, displayed alongside some of the most amazing Romano-British artworks made of gold and silver, such as the Hoxne and Mildenhall Treasures. Our world, with our metal horseless thunder chariots and wax tablets which talk to us and show us pictures that move, would probably seem as strange, incongruous, and alien to the old Romans as John Christopher’s tripods do stalking and probing the lost medieval world of his science fiction novels.

I suspect that the original occupants of the Roman Villa would be surprised to know that so many centuries on people would be painstakingly sifting through the ruins of their home, setting up a small museum in the nearby village – thereby recreating a picture of their life and times for the present day locals and school children to remember and appreciate them. As regular diggers we often used to joke that the fact we were all drawn back to this magical place each summer over the course of a decade or so was perhaps because we were all reincarnations of the Romans who’d originally lived there – certainly, once you get involved with the world of archaeology, especially in joining a small, close-knit society like UNAS, it can feel a lot like a family. Hence returning after fifteen or twenty years, all of us having kept in touch throughout all that time because of our common interests, our deep sense of camaraderie and a shared silliness of humour, it was more than a reunion – in many ways, it was more of a homecoming. 

The jeweller's kiln

Walking back up that track after visiting the dig again, listening to the sound of the birds chirping in the hedgerow and the breeze gently soughing through the leaves of the tall trees, having seen some of the secrets the old Roman Villa was still revealing – such as a small jeweller’s kiln, and catching up with old friends there, it was quite a wrench to leave again. But the promise of a pint or two over an evening spent in good company at the village pub (another tradition universally adhered to by all good, self-respecting archaeologists) certainly eased the way!

You have to ask yourself though: “What have the Romans ever done for us, eh?” – Q.E.D: All roads lead to Rome, but for this little band of archaeologists all our memory lanes lead us back to this magic field steeped in the mists of both the ancient and our personal pasts. 

Read more on my interest in Prehistoric lithics (and a Viking battleground) here