Silchester: Exciting Pre-Roman Finds From an Archaeologist’s Point of View

Silchester: Exciting pre-Roman finds from an archaeologist’s point of view.

Since 1997 archaeologists from Reading University, lead by Micheal Fulford have been digging on a windswept hill near to the modern village of Silchester as part of the extraordinary “Silchester Town Life project. In 2007 I was lucky enough to b involved in the dig myself, as the project also serves as an opportunity to teach students the processes necessary in practical archaeology, so when the local news reported some exciting new finds at the site I was intrigued. So what have they found and why is it important?

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Why Silchester?

First of all, why did they choose to dig at Silchester? Well, in the first century AD onwards, Silchester was the site of Calleva Atrebatum, a very important Roman town, serving as an administrative centre. However, unlike most important Roman sites, it was completely abandoned sometime in the fifth century AD, leaving some of the city walls and other structures such as the amphitheatre still standing. With no later settlements on the site, the Roman and pre Roman remains would be some of the most complete in Britain. Early excavations in the Edwardian and Victorian eras produced a pretty workable town plan. Like most specifically planned Roman towns, it had a polygonal plan and was divided up by a grid of roads. Between the roads were blocks of buildings, known as “insulae”. Reading University chose to dig at Insula IX, a block right in the heart of the town beside the two main roads which bisect the settlement.

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What is the Silchester Town Life Project?

The aim of the project is to gain an insight into the everyday life of ordinary people in Britain during the Roman occupation and prior to the invasion. We know very little about life in towns, especially in distant provinces such as Britain, since literary sources were written by the educated elite who were not interested in the lives of provincial plebs and earlier archaeologists were far more interested in extravagant palaces and treasures than social history. Being in the centre of the town, Insula IX should have a range of buildings typical of the town as a whole.

If the dig has been going for 12 years, why all the attention now?

Although excavations have been continuing since 1997, the last few years of digging has uncovered a whole new area of the site. When I was involved in the dig, we were excavating from the very earliest years of the Roman occupation, but now the team are working on the pre-Roman, Iron Age remains. This is an incredibly exciting and almost unique opportunity: if we know little about everyday life in Roman Britain, we know practically nothing about Britain in the Iron Age. In the Iron Age, Calleva was part of the domain of the Atrebate tribe (hence the Roman name “Calleva Atrebatum”) and must have been a very important site: locally minted coins of the tribal kings Eppillus, Commius, Tincomarus and Verica. If those names sound vaguely Roman, that’s no accident; the Iron Age settlement seems to have been quite a Latinised one, we even have Latin inscriptions, graffiti and legends on coinage. It seems that following the customers of the powerful Romans was quite a trend at the time.

Now I can’t say for sure what more has been found at the site as it is yet to be published (and the local news reports aren’t particularly detailed) but with a good month left of the digging season and plenty of new material to work through, it’s unlikely that the Insula IX excavations are going to be abandoned for many years yet.

For more about the Silchester Town Life project, go to their website at http://www.silchester.rdg.ac.uk/