The past is a foreign country, but it's very handy for Bristol

[steepholm]

sovay tipped me off about the Roman port excavations at Caerleon, which are finishing at the end of the month, so I wandered over the Severn Bridge to have a look. I always forget how close Wales actually is: it was 30 minutes from my front door to the Caerleon amphitheatre. Luckily I arrived just as a nice young archaeologist was beginning a guided tour of the dig, so I tagged along and took pics. Apparently this is only the second Roman port to be excavated in Britain, but it's much the grander affair of the two. Where London was a ramshackle timber-built trading port, Caerleon was the military gateway to Britannia, complete with prestige buildings and imposing frontage. They even discovered part of a monumental inscription - or what they think is a monumental inscription - reading not "Croeso i Gymru" but something to do with Augustus (the only word they actually found). The whole gubbins sits in a single field between the amphitheatre and the river Usk, which is invisible here behind a veil of bushes, though actually meandering all around the site:

Nice young archaeologist explaining things:

A high-pressure lead water pipe, in situ. This is rare, it seems.

A bronze ox-head bucket mount. Pretty!

The Time Team trench. They were hoping to find a temple, apparently, but the ceramic (rather than stone) walls and lack of a floor have made people think "port authority offices", or maybe just "cowshed". Nice young archaeologist clearly wasn't a huge fan of Phil Harding...

The port front, which tiered down to another (later?) piece of harbour:

More photos at my Flickr site, for anyone interested - as is this fascinating picture of a pair of slugs leaving for work They have recently become my familiar friends:

Comments

[kalypso-v.livejournal.com]

For a moment I thought that stone fragment with the bucket mount said WC, but I suppose AVG is more likely!

[steepholm.livejournal.com]

Now you mention it, so it does!

[sartorias.livejournal.com]

Amazing! (And astonishing to see all those long sleeves and even sweaters in August.)

[steepholm.livejournal.com]

The strange thing is that in a couple of days it will all be filled in again.

The weather wasn't bad today, actually. I'd say around 63 degrees F - slap in the middle of my comfort zone.

[calimac.livejournal.com]

My comfort zone too.

I've been to Carleon - thanks for the virtual return visit.

[sartorias.livejournal.com]

Holy crom--the dead of winter! (All two weeks of it!)

[sovay]

Luckily I arrived just as a nice young archaeologist was beginning a guided tour of the dig, so I tagged along and took pics.

Sweet! Thank you!

I like the bucket mount.

(Also, those are awesome slugs.)

[strange-complex.livejournal.com]

Those are some awesomely-clean trenches, there! Someone is obviously running a very tidy excavation, at least to coincide with the visitors, anyway. And a lead pipe with a join in it like that certainly is pretty interesting - all the more so if they find a producer's stamp on it. Alas, 'AVG' is pretty much the least helpful word-fragment to find on an inscription, since it was part of every emperor's title - and it won't mean the first emperor, since he pre-dates the conquest, and thus also the start of the epigraphic habit, in Britain. Still, here's hoping they find a bit more to help set it in context. Thanks for sharing your pictures.

[steepholm.livejournal.com]

Actually, on dating they were pretty pleased, because the tiles use in the construction of the port front had no stamps. So they must date between 74 CE (when Caerleon was founded) and 93(?) CE (when they started stamping the things. That seems a tidily narrow window.

[endlessrarities.livejournal.com]

Who needs Current Archaeology? I did like the bucket mount...