Brightwater
Discover the archaeology that’s helping to restore, reveal and celebrate life around the River Skerne
Dig Timeline
Catch up on all the action from site, as it happens
Jul 6 2019 - 8:00 AM
Coming up next…
As our Roman dig at Brightwater comes to an end, we’re getting ready to announce the next stage of the project; in August, we’ll be heading to Bishop Middleham to continue the investigation. Click to find out more and book your place on the dig team.
Find out more >
Jul 5 2019 - 4:00 PM
End of dig summary:
The team have been excavating for three weeks, to re-open an investigation first started by Time Team in 2003. A Roman town on the outskirts of Sedgefield.
Unlike most Roman towns in the area, this one is unusual because there’s no fort and nothing to suggest it was ever associated with any military activity. Instead, the team believes that it’s a settlement where everyday Romano-British people would have lived. It’s surrounded by a large boundary ditch, with a road passing by. Detailed excavation has revealed that at one point, the town was cut off from the road, only to be reconnected sometime later.
Over the three weeks, the team has also uncovered lots of pottery, including Samian ware, Roman Grey Ware, amphorae handles, and even parts of a Nene Valley Hunting Cup depicting a hound chasing a hare.
Thanks to everyone who joined the dig team and helped to collect all this new evidence. The team will now take it all back to the lab for analysis and will share more details about the discoveries as soon as they’re ready. Watch this space…
Jul 5 2019 - 3:00 PM
Recording 📏
On the last day of the dig, the team have ditched the trowels and grabbed measuring tapes. It’s time to make sure everything has been drawn, mapped, plotted and recorded so that specialists can pore over the details back in the lab.
Jul 5 2019 - 9:00 AM
It’s a Nene Valley Hunter Cup!
The team has found some truly wonderful pieces of pottery, decorated with animals. First this piece, which looks like the body of a dog…
Then we found a few more pieces. If you look closely, you can see a dog’s head…
This morning at #DigBrightwater we found more of the nene valley ware, including a head of a dog! 🐶 pic.twitter.com/6sXpgPsHJ1
— Indie Jago (@IndieJago) July 5, 2019
If you pieced them all back together, you’d get something that looks like this:
Cups like this one from Corinium Museum often showed a dog chasing a hare, and were made in the Nene Valley (near Peterborough) between AD 200-300. They were very expensive and fashionable tablewares, suggesting someone in this Roman town had some serious cash to splash!
Jul 4 2019 - 12:34 PM
We 💚 ditches
Archaeological lore always says that the best discoveries are often made at the bottom of ditches, and we don’t just say that to keep people digging all the way to the bottom! It really is where artefacts tend to congregate, as the team are starting to realise…
The law of archaeology: you find the biggest find on the last day 🙈#digbrightwater pic.twitter.com/eKGA7MtBvl
— Indie Jago (@IndieJago) July 5, 2019
With a little bit more excavation, the team reveals that their last-minute discovery is another cache of Roman pottery, including roof tile and amphorae.
Yesterday the big boundary ditch at #DigBrightwater produced a roman roof tile and a large body sherd of roman amphora, that would have been produced in Spain and used to ship liquid goods such as olive oil! pic.twitter.com/fBQHtUsHB5
— Indie Jago (@IndieJago) July 5, 2019
Jul 3 2019 - 1:15 PM
Road-ditch-road
This Roman town grew up next to a Roman road, but then something strange happened; someone dug a massive ditch cutting the town off from the road. And then something even stranger happened…
A few decades later, someone else resurfaced the ditch, reconnecting the town to the road. It’s quite an amazing discovery, but leaves us with some huge questions about what exactly was going on in this town!
Archaeology / In Your Hands
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