Villa Magna

Area G1, 9-15th June 2008

We have pretty much managed to complete our trench this week and we finally understand the stratigraphy, despite a few moments of doubt . What we don’t really understand yet though is what was actually happening in this room.

There is a fairly large division between what is happening in the east and west ends of the trench. In the western corner the stratigraphy was fairly straightforward. Two later layers of clay were overlying what we have assumed to be the construction of the Roman room. This consists of a clay layer overlies a thin gravelly layer which in turn ovelies another layer of compacted clay. This is very similar to what I saw last year in the cella vinaria, which was overlain by the pavement preparation. So many yellow clay layers in a dark room soon make you start to go a little bit crazy, but makes for a lovely section.

Further across several different layers (mainly yellowy and clayey) overlay the large cut in the wall. A lot of discussion has centred around the purpose of this cut, with suggestions ranging from a cut for a door, to a later robber cut or even a cut for a Medieval structure. Once we came down onto the actual fill it was (unsurprisingly) a layer of very clean compacted yellow clay. This was seen to be similar to those to the east and in my eyes associated with either the original construction, or even a later phase of the room. I can’t see how any robber cuts would be backfilled with such clean, construction material, so it is possible that the cut represents a method of construction which involves making a cut in the foundation of the wall, meaning that a door or an entrance way is not an implausible section.

Further east we had a few moments of confusion when we identified several holes in the upper layer of the clay, we excavated these as postholes, although we were not entirely sure if they really were postholes. However once we removed the clay we realized that there was an enormous cut in this corner, the fill of this cut went on for ever and was clearly associated with the destruction of the pavement and preparation in this corner. The striking difference in the two areas makes me think something different was taking place in the two areas of room – with possibly only the eastern corner being paved. We have pretty much finished here now and just need to do a bit of cleaning up then the matrix can e done and the report written.

— Janine Young· Jun 13, 09:55