Young Archaeologists Dig at Castleshaw

The path up to Castleshaw

It was a very wet day when I met members of Manchester Museum’s Young Archaeologists Club in the car park opposite the site of the Roman fort site at Castleshaw near Oldham last Saturday. Despite the weather, it was too good an opportunity to miss because the site is currently the subject of a four week community archaeology excavation, which is funded mainly by the Heritage Lottery Fund.

For those who are not familiar with the site, the fort was made of  turf and timber fort and was built around AD 79. It was abandoned about 15 years later but the Roman army returned to the site around AD 105 and erected a smaller fortlet, which in turn was abandoned after about 20 years. In the 1980s Greater Manchester Archaeological Unit (GMAU) led a project to investigate and landscape the site of the fortlet. More recently, attention has turned to the remains of the larger fort which are poorly understand and difficult to access. Features uncovered so far during the excavations include an extensive area of the Roman road exiting the east gate, the east gate itself, defensive ditches, internal roads and barrack blocks, a  workshop area overlying prehistoric features, and a 17^th century cottage.

17th century cottage converted into a cow byre

I understand that around 300 school children, 150 adult volunteers and various special groups are involved in the project which is being led by the Friends of Castleshaw Roman Forts supported by a small team of professional archaeologists. The dig finishes on Friday 1^st August so the Young Archaeologists Club visit last Saturday was a rare chance to see the excavations in progress before the trenches were backfilled. Incidentally, given that the vast majority of parents naturally  want to encourage their children to do well at school, one way of helping them is to register them for membership of the Young Archaeologists Club. One former member recently told me that his time in the Manchester YAC had a huge influence on his  interests and particularly on his desire to study archaeology at university and his enjoyment of History and Classics at A-level. He said the excavations he did with YAC at sites around Manchester were so exciting and inspiring for him, as well as the other events organised.at the Museum.

Young archaeologists digging at Castleshaw

The Young Archaeologists from Manchester Museum were allocated a section of a trench where the Roman road inside the fort had been exposed and cleaned. The photograph above shows the youngsters lined up and trowelling back from the cleaned Roman road surface. This was till within the plough soil and so the pieces of pottery that they found tended to be of post-medieval date. There on the surface I found a sherd of mustard yellow slipware with two concentric ribs, probably dating from the 17th century.

2000-year-old turves still showing in the rampart section

After seeing some of the objects that had already been found the Young Archaeologists were treated to a tour of the site with site Director Norman Redhead. In one of the trenches Norman showed us the section of the Roman rampart with dark linear stains. These were the tell-tale marks left by turves that the Roman soldiers had cut and stacked one on top of the other to create a defensive rampart. It’s amazing to think they are still clearly visible after some 2000 years.

Looking at finds afterwards

In view of the appalling weather and following site tour the Young Archaeologists decided that discretion was the better part of valour and finished early. Our sincerest thanks to Norman and everyone else who enabled the Young Archaeologists to go out and experience this truly wonderful piece of Roman frontier archaeology.

 

 

the Son of Mars exhibition at the Museum of Lancashire

Roman legionary at the Museum of Lancashire, Preston

The Bank Holiday weekend treat was to go and see an exhibition of the work of archaeological illustrator Graham Sumner at the Museum of Lancashire in Preston. Graham used to work for the Greater Manchester Archaeological Unit. He specialises in showing the soldiers as individuals, with well-researched, historically-accurate uniforms and equipment. It’s great to see the soldiers presented as individuals. I  understand their facial features are based on people Graham knows, making each reconstruction virtually unique. Some, like the Roman soldier from Egypt featured on the blog a few weeks ago, have an encaustic portrait as a guide: https://ancientworldsmanchester.wordpress.com/2013/08/11/reconstructing-a-soldier-from-roman-egypt/ 

Sons of Mars at the Museum of Lancashire

The exhibition occupies two rooms on the first floor of the building. Visitors are welcomed by two life-size cut-outs of a Roman legionary and an auxiliary soldier. I recognised the  auxiliary from Castleshaw Roman fort that I visited a few weeks ago following the session with the Friends of Castleshaw Roman Forts to see the finds from the early 1900s excavations at Manchester Museum https://ancientworldsmanchester.wordpress.com/2013/07/13/friends-of-castleshaw-roman-forts-visit-the-museum/

Sons of Mars at the Museum of Lancashire

In amongst the usual first and second century AD reconstructions are paintings of a Roman fort by a Dutch river and sailors in the navy of the 3rd century British usurper Carausius.  A small display of finds illustrating ‘everyday’ life from Roman Lancashire seemed a bit tokenistic but it would be churlish to criticise the exhibition on that account.

Ideally the exhibition would be supported by Roman military equipment or material showing the evidence on which the reconstructions were based. To a degree visitors do get some insight into the process. One of the soldiers from Roman Egypt is shown with interchangeable objects in his hands. There are two versions of the auxiliary cavalryman Insus, whose spectacular tombstone, or rather commemorative stone, was found in Lancaster in 2005. Each image shows the cavalryman with different versions of sword and scabbard. It reminded me of a children’s spot-the-difference puzzle!

Everyday Roman exhibits

Some of the later Roman Empire soldiers are particularly colourful. A painting of the Byzantine emperor Heraclius  (610-641 AD), complete with headress of peacock plumes, may challenge some visitors’ preconceptions. These aren’t characterless, identically-uniformed catapult fodder but popinjays seemingly better suited to a catwalk. Talk about never mind the quality, feel the width!

Gaudy Roman soldiers in the Son of Mars exhibition

Admission to the Museum of Lancashire is free and the exhibition runs until 3rd November. Combined with a visit to the Harris Museum, also in Preston (of which more later), this made a most enjoyable (and low-cost) day out.

Friends of Castleshaw Roman Forts Visit the Museum

Friends of Castleshaw Roman forts at the Manchester Museum

On Friday 12th July members of the Friends of Castleshaw Roman forts came to the Manchester Museum to see finds from the excavations that took place in 1907. I got out a lot of the finds from the store and took them up to the seminar room in the Collection Study Centre. The session was organised by Norman Redhead Heritage Management Director (Archaeology) at the Greater Manchester Archaeological Advisory Service, University of Salford. Norman is in the early stages of a community project to promote interest in what must be one of the most spectacular locations for a Roman fort in Britain. It is on a spur leading off the Standedge, the most important crossing point of the Pennine moors, between Marsden in West Yorkshire and Diggle in Greater Manchester.

Aerial photo of Castleshaw Roman fort and fortlet (courtesy of GMAAS)

It was here that the Romans ceated a fort to control movement across the Pennines during the governorship of Julius Agricola in the late 70s AD. The fort was garrisoned by an auxiliary regiment of the Roman army until about AD 90 and replaced about AD 105 by a smaller fortlet, which sits inside the larger auxiliary fort. At this time the garrison was only about 100 men.  Some time in the 120s the fortlet too was abandoned. The site was excavated in 1907 by Francis Bruton and during the late 1950s and 1960s by Rosser and Thompson.

All the material ought to date, therefore, from the 70s to the 120s AD. This seems to be the case with the glass and the pottery. Pieces of rusticated ware have been found. There are pieces of samian ware although the surface has not survived very well. A piece with gladiators was featured in the 1911 report. Pieces of amphora used to transport wine, olive oil and fish sauce or garum were found though curiously there are relatively few body sherds. Were they weeded out by the Edwardian excavators? There are quite a lot of mortaria, some with stamps.

Mortarium stamp from Castleshaw

I speculated that they may have been making special mashes to feed to the horses that pulled wagons crossing the pass. There are also pieces of Black Burnished ware which was coming into northern Britain from the 120s with the building of Hadrian’s’ Wall. My favourite piece is a piece of tile with a stamp which reads COHIIIIBR(E?) – the fourth cohort of Breuci (?). These were men originally recruited in the Balkans.

Tile stamp from Castleshaw

Finds from the 1907 excavations at Castleshaw

Further work was done by Rosser although the finds from that dig have vanished mysteriously. Sadly the excavator killed himself. Francis Thompson continued the work. One of the discoveries was a pit with broken pieces of beaker pottery, which we have in the Museum. I got out the most complete beaker – which also happens to be the most complete prehistoric pot in the Manchester Museum archaeology collection. Perhaps people in prehistoric times, 4000 years ago, were attracted by the view.

This was probably the first time in many years that the material has been out on a table for people to see. It was great to see a selection of the finds. Although metalwork had not survived particularly well and even the samain pottery looked as though the surface had deteriorated badly in the acidic conditions, some things had survived in very good condition. The glass for instance: there are broken pieces of a beautiful pillar-moulded bowl and several shards from a square vessel with raised circles on the base. There were also three glass gaming counters and a fragment of a glass bangle or bracelet and a number of melon beads. It is not clear whether some of these could have belonged to women or whether men were using them. All of these can be found amongst the Roman finds from  Manchester.

There is great potential to look at the 1907 finds again with the benefit of all the research that has been done since then. Let’s hope Norman’s proposed project with the Friends of Castleshaw Roman forts is successful! You can find out more by reading Norman’s article ‘Renewed interest in the Castleshaw Roman Forts’ in Bulletin of the Saddleworth Historical Society Vol.42, no.3 (autumn 2012), pp.65-74.