Archaeology at the Roman Villa

Our favorite Roman ruin, handily located a few minutes down the road, has some pretty amazing mosaics already preserved in a big temperature-controlled building. But a few years ago they discovered a new set of mosaics in another part of the villa. They don't have the funds to excavate and properly preserve them, so instead this year they planned a two-week long excavation to uncover the mosaics. They will laser scan and photograph them, and then...cover them back up! The best way to preserve them is to keep them under dirt until they have enough money to properly take care of them uncovered. I think they are trying to raise funds to do that, but in the meanwhile, as of next week the two-thousand-year-old mosaics will be put back under dirt and grass. (If my preferences dictated economic outcomes in the world, Hollywood and professional sports would get a lot less money and old stuff would get a lot more!)

Fortunately, for the past two weeks, visitors have been able to see the excavation in progress. We've gone three times so far, and we're going back one last time today to see it before they re-bury it tomorrow.

These bins below are all the loose tesserae, as well as other finds they discovered while digging. While we were there last Tuesday they found a Roman coin (they've only found five on site, so it was pretty awesome to be there when they found one. I may or may not have begun to fantasize about a career in archaeology...)

Here's the site about to be excavated:

And here are some of the mosaics. We have walked right over these so many times, and just inches below our feet, were mosaics. It makes me want to take a shovel and just dig in front of me everywhere I walk to see what is underneath. (Although I do realize that would not be proper technique...)

They are also excavating some of the walls along the side.

Here are some of the pottery pieces they found. One of them has writing, but not enough to decipher, just what looks like the letters BUL...

Can you see that big snail shell in the corner? Those big snails were imported to Britain by the Romans for eating. They still live here, two millenia later, in the woods around the villa, but they haven't traveled any farther. How fascinating is that?

I don't know what this is, any ideas? It's right outside the corner of the building that was a latrine on one side and an office on the other.