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iversity/UCL iff Un : Card PHOTO Above The flagstone floor alteration to the warehouse under excavation. “ 34 opened in Golledge’s Field, where a previous excavation in the 1930s located what are thought to be the centurion’s quarters for the Second Augustan Legion’s senior First Cohort. These trenches found that the Roman archaeology has been only minimally disturbed by later activity and also that Priory Field in particular could well contain important evidence for the history of Isca in the later Roman period, when the archaeological story becomes less clear. The opportunity was taken to continue the excavation programme in Priory Field in This was the first-ever research excavation undertaken within the fortress and the results show the value of opening large trenches in Caerleon. ” 2008, this time opening a large 25 metres by 20 metres trench over the front range of the probable warehouse. We returned this summer with a team of undergraduates from our universities for the first of two six-week seasons to find out whether or not the building was a store of some kind and, for this year in particular, to understand what happened in this part of Caerleon in the many centuries since the Second Augustan Legion moved on. This was the first-ever research excavation undertaken within the fortress, and the results clearly show the value of opening large trenches in Caerleon. Finding late and postRoman Caerleon Although the location of the trench opened up in June 2008 was determined by the layout of Roman military buildings, what we found this season does indeed relate to later times. The ending and aftermath of the legionary occupation at Caerleon has always been something of a mystery. Excavators of the pre- and immediately post-War periods typically found limited evidence of habitation even in the 4th century, and Medieval remains have also been scanty. Evidence of demolition of buildings like the headquarters building (principia) and fortress baths in the years around AD 300 has encouraged the idea that the Second Augustan Legion packed up and left Isca at that time. The 4th century is a period when many of the earlier imperial legions were broken down into smaller units, and the late Roman fort at Cardiff or the Saxon Shore fort at Richborough (where a legio II Augusta is recorded in the 5th century Notitia Dignitatum) would be plausible homes for detachments like this. However, while 4th century material from Caerleon is limited, it is not altogether absent. The swimming pool in the courtyard of the baths was used for extensive rubbish-dumping by somebody, and a few of the barracks were still inhabited. The settlement outside the walls on the eastern side was still going well into the 4th century, as a long series of rescue excavations conducted by Glamorgan-Gwent Archaeological Trust in the later 1980s revealed. All of this has supported a dissenting view that at least a detachment of the legion may have remained for a time after AD 300. Whether soldiers or not, though, it is clear that people were living in and around Isca archaeologycurrent 226
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Caerleon iversity/UCL iff Un : Card PHOTO during the 4th century and beyond; in planning this project, we hoped that they would have left some evidence in Priory Field. Our hopes seem to have been fulfilled. From an early stage in the cleaning of the site, we could see a short length of wall and some broken flagstones near the centre of the trench. At first, we thought this wall might be part of the Roman warehouse building, poking through layers of debris from the collapse or demolition of this structure. As the season went on, though, and more and more of the rubble covering the site was revealed, a different picture emerged. We discovered other lengths of walling, running at right angles to the first. We also found a slablined bin-like feature in the middle of the area of broken flagstones. Towards the end of the season, in limited parts of the site, walls which belong to the Roman warehouse were uncovered, and their relationship with all of these other features tells us a lot about the chronology of the site. Although we still have much work to do on the Roman building, we can trace the lines of the range of rooms discovered by Tim Young through a mixture of robber trenches and small pieces of thick masonry. A crucial piece of evidence that suggests major changes to this structure came from one corner of our trench, where excavators found that a well-laid flagstone floor had been put across the main inside wall of the warehouse, perhaps extending a passage-way through it. This strongly suggests quite a long life for the building and we hope to confirm this by finding later Roman dating evidence for this alteration in our next season. Post imperial changes At some time the use of the building ceased and gradually its walls were robbed for building materials. During this long aftermath of the store building’s life, other buildings were constructed over the top of the Roman warehouse, perhaps re-using bits of standing masonry. The various lengths of walling that we discovered early on in the season seem to belong to the first phase of these buildings. We can put these together to form one or two rectangular structures with quite narrow stone walls that overlap the Roman building and were quite a lot smaller than it. Although we are not sure how many of the Roman walls were still standing when this was built, we do know that the new structure used a rather different style of building technique, and that it collapsed (one of the walls was found  Above walls of the postwarehouse building(s). These are the thinner walls running vertically through the picture. archaeologycurrent 226 35

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iversity/UCL

iff Un

: Card

PHOTO

Above The flagstone floor alteration to the warehouse under excavation.

“

34

opened in Golledge’s Field, where a previous excavation in the 1930s located what are thought to be the centurion’s quarters for the Second Augustan Legion’s senior First Cohort. These trenches found that the Roman archaeology has been only minimally disturbed by later activity and also that Priory Field in particular could well contain important evidence for the history of Isca in the later Roman period, when the archaeological story becomes less clear. The opportunity was taken to continue the excavation programme in Priory Field in

This was the first-ever research excavation undertaken within the fortress and the results show the value of opening large trenches in Caerleon.

”

2008, this time opening a large 25 metres by 20 metres trench over the front range of the probable warehouse. We returned this summer with a team of undergraduates from our universities for the first of two six-week seasons to find out whether or not the building was a store of some kind and, for this year in particular, to understand what happened in this part of Caerleon in the many centuries since the Second Augustan Legion moved on. This was the first-ever research excavation undertaken within the fortress, and the results clearly show the value of opening large trenches in Caerleon.

Finding late and postRoman Caerleon Although the location of the trench opened up in June 2008 was determined by the layout of Roman military buildings, what we found this season does indeed relate to later times. The ending and aftermath of the legionary occupation at Caerleon has always been something of a mystery. Excavators of the pre- and immediately post-War periods typically found limited evidence of habitation even in the 4th century, and Medieval remains have also been scanty. Evidence of demolition of buildings like the headquarters building (principia) and fortress baths in the years around AD 300 has encouraged the idea that the Second Augustan Legion packed up and left Isca at that time. The 4th century is a period when many of the earlier imperial legions were broken down into smaller units, and the late Roman fort at Cardiff or the Saxon Shore fort at Richborough (where a legio II Augusta is recorded in the 5th century Notitia Dignitatum) would be plausible homes for detachments like this. However, while 4th century material from Caerleon is limited, it is not altogether absent. The swimming pool in the courtyard of the baths was used for extensive rubbish-dumping by somebody, and a few of the barracks were still inhabited. The settlement outside the walls on the eastern side was still going well into the 4th century, as a long series of rescue excavations conducted by Glamorgan-Gwent Archaeological Trust in the later 1980s revealed. All of this has supported a dissenting view that at least a detachment of the legion may have remained for a time after AD 300. Whether soldiers or not, though, it is clear that people were living in and around Isca archaeologycurrent

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