Digging Opportunities

      August 2021

Our next dig is planned for August and will be an Iron Age/Roman site near Slimbridge, Gloucestershire.  

Bookings for this site are now open.

The site has recently come to the attention through a programme of large area geophysical survey in the vicinity of Slimbridge.  Archeoscan were commissioned to do the survey following the discovery of many ancient artefacts in the local fields during a series of metal detecting rallies.  The geophysical surveys have identified a significant number of returns that suggest the presence of a large Iron Age and early Roman settlement.  A large volume of Roman coins and artefacts have been recovered in the vicinity by metal-detecting.

An evaluation excavation in 2020 identified large stone Roman buildings alongside possible Iron Age settlement.  Post excavation work on the pottery from the 2020 evaluation, supported by Radio-carbon dating of burning layers, dates the buildings from the early Roman to mid-3^rd century AD period.  The landscape location of the buildings may be significantly located as they are on a spur of land projecting towards the River Severn.  They clearly have an association with the numerous finds of small objects (coins and brooches) made in neighbouring fields  Given the dating of the buildings, and their abandonment in the mid-3^rd century AD, it is possible that the building complex is an early phase of the Roman development in this area.  It is equally possible that the building complex has an industrial, or storage function given its landscape setting.  One working theory is that the site is in the in the vicinity of a port/trading area and that the buildings on the spur of land at control/serve the port function.

We plan to place larger trenches than during our evaluation in 2020 to try and find out more about these buildings.

As at 18 July we have a limited number of places left on the following days

We are also working on bringing you some other exciting sites in the Cotswolds for 2022.