Caerwent: Britain's Best Preserved Roman Town | Time Team

This wall's pretty good, isn't it? And it's all pure, rock-solid Roman. And if you think that's good, you should see what's inside it. Because this is Caerwent, the best-preserved Roman town in Britain. And it's a cracker. Here's the plan. Look, you've got a temple, forum, baths, houses, shops, but there's still pieces missing. Here, here, here, here. Absolutely nothing. That's because those areas have never been touched, never been dug until now. We've been invited here to get to the very heart of the Roman town, uncover its secrets, and fill in the blanks. Caerwent lies in South Wales near the Severn Estuary. In Roman times, it lay on the main road from Gloucester to the legionary fortress Caerleon. Today, this small rural town is the best-kept Roman secret in Britain. Over the past hundred years, archaeologists have been piecing together a massive archaeological jigsaw puzzle. And now, pub and post office rub shoulders with temples and villas. Fantastic sight, Neil. Isn't it? We're walking down the High Street, one of the major Roman towns of Britain. Forum over there, baths here, temples here. You know, what could be better than that? Yeah, except this is not a Time Team tourist trip. What are we likely to find? Well, I don't know, but if I were to guess, what would you expect to find on the High Street of your local town? Fancy shops, fast food outlets, vegetable market, meat market, anything. And it could all be in here, right on the High Street. I mean, look at it. Greenfield has never been dug or geophysed ever, and yet we're right on the major street of a major Roman town. There's only one thing that's perplexing me. Why is Mick Aston here, the famous medievalist who hates anything Roman? They're not keen on the Romans, but we're right next to the church there. That's medieval. So I think there's going to be a lot of medieval stuff here on top. Yeah, but Mick, we've got three days digging the center of a major Roman town. We can't spend all that time up in the top of six inches looking for the medieval. He's the boss this week, right? That's right. So what are we going to do? Well, obvious, isn't it? Geophysics first. Let's look at that and get a trench in. We've got to do it quick. We haven't got times against us. Yeah, I still think we'll have a meter of medieval stuff on top, though, to get through. Mick, we will get through that fairly swiftly. Let's see. So under the watchful eye of our medieval policemen, our conquest of Caerwent begins, right in the heart of the Roman town, as the archaeologists investigate this field for the first time ever. And while we wait with bated breath for the results, Helen's finding out about the town's history. I can see there's lots of Roman buildings here, but what else do we know? We know that the Romans called it Ventus Silurum, which means the marketplace of the Silures. They were the local tribe who lived in this part of South Wales. So were the Silures friendly to the Romans? Initially, they were the opposite of friendly. They were the most unfriendly of tribes in Britain, and it took 25 to 30 years for the tribe finally to be subdued and to be incorporated within what became the Roman province of Britannia. So how did these wild barbarians end up with a Roman town? Because the Romans thought that the only civilized way to live was in a town. They founded towns, and they relied upon the local elites to rule for them. So the local elites restyled themselves from being warrior elites, and instead become urban magistrates, a bit like a town councilor. So Kiowent was both a market town and an important political center, and this might give us a clue to what's going on in our field. And as the digger arrives, the geophys is hot off the press. But it's causing some confusion. What I'm not sure about is whether we've got a monumental building or a series of small buildings. That's the only problem. What it looks to me, John, is you've got a range of runes going down there, runes there, runes there, another range going across there, and then perhaps a central courtyard. Now, because you're opposite the temple, you might have public buildings, and that wouldn't be out of place as a meat market. But you're making a big assumption, aren't you? Mick said that it might all be overlaid with medieval. Could this stuff be medieval? No, I think that looks Roman, but what you can't see, I think I'm right in saying, John, is anything like burials on that. No, we won't see burials in these conditions. No, see, well, we know that there are medieval burials up to that wall coming in this direction. We don't know if they come across this site, so there might still be medieval stuff on the site. Problem, what are we gonna do? Well, let's open a trench in here. Let's prove these walls, test the inside of one of the rooms, be at the courtyard area, then expand accordingly. Looking at the geophys, Neil thinks this building could be a Roman macellum, a type of covered meat market. So we're opening our first trench here to test his theory. And having barely scratched the surface, Phil's already struck it lucky. Even you know what that is, Phil. Even Tony knows what that is. So I'd say it's second century AD. First piece of art. Phil. Oh, lovely job, cheers. Why are we saying this could either be a huge building or a meat market? Well, I guess a meat market has a fairly standard plan. It has ranges of rooms, almost booths, if you like, around a central courtyard. And I guess in those booths, you might have people selling cooked meats, legs of lamb, that kind of thing. And I think the point is, it's got a single plan, therefore it's paid for by one entrepreneur who then rents it out to individual butchers. So it's all about mercantile activity. What do you think of that then? Is that mortar? Mortar. That is, isn't it? Ooh, that's one wall line. Is this more or less where you're supposed to be? Yeah, does it correspond with what you've got in the geophers? Well, it was meant to come through the middle of the trench, so we're not far off. So much for our resident medieval misery guts. It's only 11 a.m. and we're right down among the Romans. Not enough to convince me we've got a meat market yet, but considering the fantastic ruins over the rest of the town, it is pretty tantalizing. Because looking at the plan of Roman Caia Wendt, previous digs have already revealed a grid system of roads which surround blocks of shops, temples, and houses. And at the center of it all, the political heart of the town, the Forum. When Neil said the Forum was here, I was expecting something grand and towering with great roofs and columns and things, but it's not much here really, is there? For Roman Britain, this is actually quite impressive for standing remains. This is one of the very few uncovered Forum Basilicas in Britain. But look, there's virtually nothing here. I mean, this can't be old, surely? No, this isn't ancient, but it was based on what was excavated and this has been reconstructed. So this gutter around here. So that gutter would have been original, yes. So what would this have looked like? It would have started as this big open space for commercial activity and also an important political meeting space. They would have had pillars at the front and then there would have been an open space behind it. And then behind that, there were probably shops, which you can see there. There's one there. So this is a shop? This is a shop, yes. This bit here? This bit there. And when it was excavated, there were a lot of oyster shells found in it. So it might've been something like an oyster bar. Really? With these impressive steps in front of the Forum? Yeah, they may well have been lined with something. There may well have been statues flanking on either side, leading people into here, which is the Basilica. What's the Basilica? The Basilica is the sort of political chamber that's attached to it, a bit like a modern cathedral in that you have two side aisles and a central nave. And you can see where you've got those really big wide walls there. Yes. They're so wide because they have columns going up them, huge columns to give this aspect of height. So this is really the heart of the political activity in a city. Well, that's quite enough talking politics because over the road, Phil's exposed more of the possible meat market. So Phil, it looks like you've got another wall there. Yeah, it's quite a narrow one, this one. It's only that wide, look. It's just running back in that direction. Okay, so that's kind of at right angles to this one, which you got earlier on, isn't it? Well, I think it's more complicated than that because we got this face of a wall in there. Look, you can still see that's running down there. But we seem to have a face in there and one out there. I wonder whether we haven't got two walls. Yeah, built from the side to side, yeah. Which brings up all manner of interesting, you know, problems and questions. Lots of walls, great. Lots of problems, not so great. And it doesn't look as though things are about to get any easier since John's got the geophys results for the rest of the field. Look, we've extended the resistance server and there's Phil's trench. And now we've got this really strong high resistance anomaly. So what, is this a wall or a ditch? Well, it's a wall, a substantial wall by the looks of it. Look at the overall plan within the town. This wall we've got, it is on that sort of line. So it's almost as if those thin properties, we're picking up the same in here perhaps now. I mean, maybe what you've got is you've got your linear strip shop because you're a fair way back from the road here. Maybe what you've actually got here is a more high-class living apartment. You don't want to smell the noise at the front, but you kind of live out the back. So we should certainly put a trench across this thing, John. Oh yeah, I think something in there on the corner, don't you think? Yeah, right on the corner, I should say. I thought you might say that. Oh, he's done it already. Look, he always does that. So I'll get on with it. So we're cracking on with a second trench, but I'm feeling a bit out of the loop. Having turned my back for a minute, Neil's given up on meat markets. Now he's talking about shops and living rooms. Water should be kind of coming up on this line according to the geophys. There should be a face here. Okay. And another one about there. So if we can get that, we know we're on the money. As digging continues, everyone's beginning to home in on the Romans. At one end of Phil's trench, Matt's got an amphora, while Phil's absorbed in an intriguing oval dish. But although the finds are coming in thick and fast, they could have come from all sorts of Roman buildings, and we can't tell what we're digging yet. What's more, there are lots more gaps in the Roman jigsaw puzzle. So we've sent geophys away from the hustle and bustle of the high street to the outskirts of the town. We're wondering whether this might have been a quieter, more residential area, and surveying it will help get a fuller picture of the town layout. Looking at this plan, I find really interesting, because there's five little grids along this way, and four down here, so that's 20 in all. And the whole town's described in this very neat rectangle. It's almost as though the planners preordained what they were going to do, and just laid it onto the landscape. Is that what the Romans did? Essentially, it's exactly what they did. One of the oldest laws in Rome was that the dead could only be buried outside the town walls, and so you needed to demarcate the urban limits so there were various ceremonies and rituals that they employed while laying out these towns that involved soothsayers, and also the ploughing of a ritual furrow around it with a brown ox and a white ox, and all sorts of things. There is one flaw in this perfect plan, though. If you look at this north gate and the south gate, they're walking. That's one way of describing it. All sorts of factors can affect how you lay out that kind of Roman template. There's a very interesting quote from Vitruvius, who was an architect and engineer of the period. They will be properly laid out if foresight is employed to exclude the winds from the alleyways. Cold winds, disagreeable. Hot winds, favorable. Moist winds, unhealthy. So literally, I don't want the winds whistling down the alleyways. That might affect how they orient things and how things are laid out. I want to try and understand why you've got a wonky gate system, why the layout of the town is this shape and this size, and why it's here. Back in the town center, we've thrown everyone at the trenches. Although still confusing, clear wall lines are beginning to appear. And what's more, we're now finding evidence which might tell us what the buildings were used for. Just keep rocking it. Give it plenty of support underneath. Up she comes. And then. Fantastic. Yeah. Would you call it a fish dish? Fish dish, yeah. See that, Matt? Lovely. What have you got there by your knee? This, I'm just cleaning down here. It looks like the rim of an amphora, I think. So that might be for oil. Yep, so we've got foodstuffs everywhere. We could have a chip shop, couldn't we, with the oil and the fish? Well, it's just a suggestion. And quite frankly, the archaeologists don't seem to have much of a clue. But over in trench two, the walls finally seem to be coming together. Rich, there's been a lot of activity in this trench. What's this big feature coming through here? Well, that seems to be what the geophysics was picking up. I think it's just the old crappy material that's been thrown back in. But I've got high hopes for an intact wall being under there. Then you've got this, another wall here? Well, that's it. I mean, this was a really unexpected find. An intact wall that's actually 90 degrees to this robbed out wall. And interestingly, I was talking to Tracy, and we realised that, of course, they line up in this direction. Right, so potentially we've actually got one building running all the way back to here. Back wall along here. I mean, that's quite a sizable building, isn't it? It really is. So, end of day one, and it looks like we might have a huge long building running right down the length of the field. But what on earth is it? This is our first trench, trench number one, and it came down bang on the money. There's Roman structures everywhere. We've got a wall here that I'm standing on, and next to it, there's another wall, but that seems to be of a different period. And we've got another one here, but that doesn't seem to tie in to this one here. And we've got a little wall here. Is that part of this wall here? And is that wall there part of this one here that's parallel to it? And do either of them have anything to do with this one, which is underneath them? And how deep are we gonna have to dig in order to find out the answer to any of those questions? No one knows the answer to any of that yet. But look at this geophys, which John just did in a quieter, more residential part of the town. Can you see that there? Could be the wing of a house, maybe. Something along there, something up there. Could it be a Roman villa? What about this here? Is that a hypercourse, the Roman central heating system? And what about this enigmatic black blob? Could that be a mosaic floor? We'll find out tomorrow. Beginning of day two here in South Wales, where we're trying to fill in some of the archeological gaps in Caerwent, the best preserved Roman town in Britain. Yesterday, we put our first trenches in here, slap bang, in the middle of the Roman town. And people were talking about a great municipal market or long rows of shops. And we were getting very excited. Although by the end of the day, all we'd got was a tangle of walls. Actually, what we've got is still very difficult to work out. If you want me to guess, I think we actually have one shop here and then perhaps another shop back there behind Fay. But the other alternative yesterday was that it might be a load of retail outlets under one massive roof. The walls are quite flimsy. They're not that well built. I think the market expects bigger walls, more monumentally constructed. To me, it looks like private enterprise. You know, one person here, one person there. So it's more Oxford Street than Smithfield, but it is early days yet, isn't it? Yeah, absolutely. We've got to excavate down in this area here. This is perhaps the living room where people were living at the back of the shop, selling at the front. Digging in here, we'll find finds. You know, what were they eating? What were they drinking? And then we need to open up a trench up there. Why? What might be up there? Well, that's what actually selling. And that will tell us, you know, was it a fishmonger's? Was it a cheesemonger's? So we're opening our third trench by the road, hoping to find the shop front and what kind of Roman retail outlet we've got. Because at last, Neil seems to be confident that we're dealing with individual shops with living quarters stretching out behind the shop floor. He thinks our first two trenches picked up the walls in those living areas. And as we continue to dig, we should learn more about the lives of Kiowent Romans. Looks like it's continuing down a little bit. Oh, here we go. There's these sort of two rather sharp prongs off the end of it. Sometimes with these things, they're part of toilet sets and they were cleaning under your nails with. You'd maybe get a set of tweezers and a little ear scoop. It's like having a cotton bud, but without the bud on the end. You're supposed to scoop the wax out so maybe that's cleaning nails under your ears at the same time. Okay, we wanted to get close to the Romans, but that's just a little too close. As part of our quest to fill in some of the gaps in the plan of Roman Kiowent, we're not only concentrating on the center of the town. So Stuart's scrambling over the walls, looking for clues to understanding the layout of the town, while Louise is hauling a somewhat bemused Helen into the village church. I'm not usually dragged into a church by a Romanist. Well, I brought you here to show you this inscription. Oh, isn't that lovely, what fantastic lettering. Yeah, it's absolutely brilliant. And it's set up to a guy called Tiberius Paulinus. And he was in charge of the second legion Augusta, which was just up the road at Caerleon. So this is leg two Augusta. Yeah. What's this doing at Kiowent then? Well, this is where you get to the next bit of the inscription, because it says here that it was set up by a decree of the town council of the Siliures. And so they've set it up to this guy. The way that a sort of small town like Kiowent would have fitted into the Roman political system was they'd have had somebody important to intercede on their behalf at Rome, to sort of put petitions to the emperor or the Senate. And what it shows is that these people, the Siliures, really know how to work within a really big complex political structure. This third century monument is the only record in Britain which documents a Roman council at work and proves just how Romanized we Brits had become. And since we've got a whole forum at our disposal, it's a perfect chance to experience the cold face of Roman politics. Mind you, it took 30 years to civilize the local barbarians. So if you guys are town councilors, one of the things you have to do is show that you are good men, morally virtuous men, and you do that through the way you are rate. To what? To make a speech in a Roman manner. It shows through your moral worth. So what do we have to do? Well, you have to give a speech following certain gestures, which we know about from a second century AD handbook. So some of the things you have to do is the way in which you gesture. You extend the arm with your shoulders well thrown back and still with your head up, you touch your thumb to your middle finger and extend the other to three fingers. And you might use that to denigrate your opponent or to make an emphatic point. Is this the sort of thing that I would gesture on a roundabout if somebody cut me up or something like this? You go like that? But you only ever use your right hand because otherwise your toga might fall off. Toga. Now this is the first mention of the word toga. There are a couple of togas. We may as well use them. Particularly if you want to make a sincere point, perhaps like that, or you grip your toga as you're getting more and more into your speech, you might let it drop slightly off your shoulder. There will be no falling off of togas. Also for emphasis, another thing you can do is you can slap your thigh if you want to make an emphatic point. Oh! With your right hand. With your right hand again, but not quite so panto. Well, the mark of a very good sincere speech is that Nora should look slightly more disheveled when he finishes than when he started. Those two more disheveled, unlikely. That said, I think everyone's going to get a little grubby if we're going to make any impact on the town plan. All day yesterday, we were digging right in the heart of the town, roundabout there. But this field here, which is right behind our incident room, is this one up here, which is at the edge right by the wall. And it's where, yesterday evening, John came up with this really tantalising geophys, which seemed to indicate that there might be some kind of villa here, which I found particularly puzzling because I thought that a villa was essentially a country house, not something that you'd find in a town. Well, not necessarily. Look at the town, Tony. You've got these big houses in the corners of the Roman town. One there, one there, away from the noise and smell of the high street, all that hubbub. It looks like we've already got one in our field. Does that mean that a villa's already been dug here? One, yeah, just behind you over there. It was excavated about 20 years ago. And John's done some geophysics over here. And what amazes me is the results are so clear. You can see a range of rooms here coming along and back down this side, all set round this courtyard. What about this checkered dog tooth bit here? You'd like to think that could be a sort of hypercourse system associated with the villa. It's a massive building. Which rather poses the question, how much of it are we gonna dig? About 1%, I should think, Tony. We're just gonna have to evaluate it. So a single trench coming in across the range, trying to see if we can get the central courtyard. Let's look at these rooms. Are they really posh? Have they got hypercourse? So we're opening our next trench over John's geophys to see if we've got a villa. I have to say, it seems like he's reading a lot into a few fuzzy blobs. But yet again, the diggers hardly scratched the surface and Phil struck it lucky. How about that then? That ain't bad for a start of the trench, is it? Nice twisted little bracelet. Bit small for you. I don't know. Very fetching, Phil. But not all the finds are so easy to identify. Most of them are caked in mud and dirt and it's a painstaking process to identify the real gems. You know, this really did look like a piece of bone. And in fact, actually now that I'm cleaning it up, I think it's more likely to be antler. It looked like these two tightly entwined lovers gazing into each other's eyes. But you know, now that I'm looking at it closely, well, it's two gladiators. Tightly enclinched in combat. While Bridge continues to do battle with her fantastic gladiators, we're still busy trying to understand the building in which they were found. Tracy, that's a lot neater than it was, you know, two or three hours ago. Yes, it's really coming up. It's looking a lot better, but it's not what we expected. So what's going on? Well, we're not sure yet. We definitely got a bit of surface though. Down just below where you're sitting, all those small rounded flints. And that's a nice surface. That may be pavement in front of the shop. So the actual shop is further that way. Ah, right. So what are you going to do now? Well, I think at the moment, we're just going to carry on cleaning back. And then I think we think about going that way. Okay. Day two, three trenches open. But I can't believe we're still being defeated by a few Roman retailers. I mean, it's so complex this, isn't it? Why do you have two walls side by side? And I suppose if I had to guess, one explanation might be that this is an original shop here coming along, turning the corner. And then a new shop is built next door. And perhaps, you know, a bit of a boundary dispute here. So they actually built a new wall for the side of the shop here. So this is shop one. Little alleyway or gully here. And this is shop two here. So it's a bit like a kind of frontier where they're pushing each other back and forth. A bit like your boundary dispute, you know? What? I think they're making it up as they go along. Yes, we've had some lovely finds, but in reality, we're still dealing with a mess of walls. You said to me, both of you said, this is the best preserved Roman town in the UK. And yet, when I talked to the archaeologists, all they tell me about is walls. One wall parallel to another, one underneath another. I'm getting no picture at all of what was going on. But that's why I really want to show you these shops, Tony, that excavated 100 years ago. I mean, look at it. It looks like an absolute maze of walls. It's hard to understand. But really, what you've got is actually a very simple story. You've got an early shop here, but then you get lots of later activity complicating the picture. And this isn't a tiny little narrow room like this. This wall was built first. This goes out of use. They build a new wall to replace it and cover this with a floor. So can this kind of jumble of archaeology tell us anything? Well, it still can, because what you have is a large workshop that's fronting onto the main street. So the street is what, out here somewhere? Yeah, that's the main east-west road running through Kowend. With this gully in front of it. Yeah, exactly. And then the shop starts here somewhere. Somewhere around here. And then as it goes on, you come through this way. So this is all one building, yeah? Here you're into the big main workshop-cum-shop itself. Yeah. So you've got the family making the goods and selling them from the same place. And there was a forge found in here. So you can imagine the blacksmith working away, sort of banging away at his anvil with sparks flying everywhere. And the back wall of the workshop was all the way back here. And then behind you, you've got a couple of rooms for living quarters where the family would live. It's a big place, isn't it? It is quite chunky, yes. That's not all. This is Louise's shop, okay? I'm next door in my shop. Now, I'm selling, I don't know, vegetables or I'm a butcher. Just imagine the smell and the noise. You know, I'll be chucking out my rotten meat and my rotten vegetables into the gutter in front of the street. Think of the noise again. You said Oxford Street to me, Tony. Nothing's actually anything like Oxford Street. It's more like a bazaar in the Middle East. You know, people are living above the shop. Just imagine babies crying, people going to the toilet. You know, smell, smell, and the noise. Looking around here, the different phases of development are very complicated, but living quarters, workshop, and shopfronts are quite clear. And Neil thinks that this is what we've got in our field. But it's afternoon of day two and we've also got a possible villa to deal with. Yesterday evening, I got really excited because of this geophys, which seemed to show a Roman villa there. Although it is quite eye of faith, isn't it? That's magnetometry. And today, John decided to run the radar over it. And this is what he found. Isn't that spectacular? If that isn't a Roman villa, I'll eat my hat. Except when we put a trench in, this is what we found. Nothing, nothing, nothing, nothing. Phil Harding, rubble. Phil, where's the villa? It's here, I'm standing on it. What do you mean you're standing on it? There isn't anything there, mate. Yes, there is. So what's that hard surface then? Solid wall. And if you really want class, that is class. So that's plaster with red paint on it, yeah? Yep. And that's got red and white on it. That's right. So you reckon that we do have a high status building here? I don't think they come much higher status than that, Tony. Thank you, Phil. That is something of a relief. Thank you. Finally, one of our trenches seems to make sense. And what's more, Bridges Find has turned out to be even more stunning than we first thought. Well, this is actually the decorative handle of a Roman folding pen knife. How do you know that? Because when I started cleaning it up, you could actually see this groove that runs down here. And that's where the blade would have folded up into the handle for safekeeping when it's in that Roman's pocket. It's two figures, isn't it? It's actually two gladiators and they're jarring up against each other. You basically got what seems to be the heavyweight and the featherweight of the gladiators. This one here is called the murmurlo. And he has got this, it's actually a fish-shaped helmet over his head. You can just see his eye poking out there. We would have looked through. This heavily armored coming down and he's holding the short jabbing dagger. And the other one? Well, that's it. This is the retarius and he really is the light, sprightly gladiator. He would have been holding just a net in his hand with a pitched fork, but on his shoulder there, he's got a protective piece of metal work, which is the only thing that would have been protecting his face and head. You can actually see he's not wearing a helmet at all. Would you agree that it's important? Oh, goodness, yeah. I mean, I've seen any one of these elsewhere in Roman Britain and that is of a quality that could easily go on display in the National Museum of Wales. Back at the villa trench and the finds just keep on coming. Ah, Peter. Yes, Joe? Oh, fantastic. Can I give that to you? Wow, look at that. Roman brooch, isn't it? Copper alloy. Almost complete. The spring is up here and there would have been a pin to attach it to your cloak. Your toga, your cloak. Keep that in place up there. That's lovely. A fantastic find to end a great day. And I know a couple of would-be Romans who'd be very grateful for that toga brooch. Well, the next lesson is voice coaching. Your tone of voice has to be very agreeable, very persuasive. Nice, deep voice. And part of the way in which you speak is also to do with sort of exercise. So you might want to go for a bit of a walk before you give your speech. Or you might want to rub down with some oil. Sounds about right. I'm up for a bit of a rub. Yeah, yeah. But you must abstain from sex before you give your speech. I'll manage that. In those costumes, I think you probably will. And finally, you must avoid any trace of a rustic accent. Oh, there's no chance of that, that is. Deary me. I think this is going to be nearly impossible. Togas in high wind are not a good look. Slope off for a pint? I think so, yeah. Yes, I think so. Rub down. Beginning of day three here at Caerwent in South Wales, home of the best-preserved Roman town in Britain. Yesterday was a great day with some superb finds and some really good geophys, which predicted that around here, there would be a huge Roman villa, maybe 60 metres across. So what did we do? We put in this puny trench about as wide as a flamingo's leg. Why is it so thin? Tony, coming to the 21st century, this is modern archaeology. We're doing this very scientifically, very carefully. All right, I've been told off, but what about my hypercourse? Your hypercourse has actually disappeared. When we actually looked on the radar, it proved this was a very superficial deposit. It was only in the top six inches, so probably it was just like a load of old horseshoes or a bucket of iron nails. But hey, we've got these fantastic results down here, all these very clear rooms and evidence of burning. And in here, the radar suggests very deep deposits. This probably is a bathhouse. Where's that on the ground? That's just behind us over there. At last, it looks like we've got a really juicy target. So we're opening another trench over the possible bathhouse shown on the geophys. But it is day three, and I hope we haven't bitten off more than we can chew because we've now got two trenches open here, and we're still struggling to identify our shops in the centre of the town. We don't seem to have anything that looks much like a wall in here yet. Petra, I've got this little coin here. Back in the villa, Phil's having more luck. Fantastic. You can see at the end, you've got a sort of few lines coming out from the top. I will do if I put my glasses on. Big rocks, I can see. That's part of the emperor's crown. And this kind of coin was made in the very end of the third century, sometime between 275 and around about 300. So that should give you quite a nice tight date for the destruction of this building. This is a copy, probably made in Britain. So it's a forgery? It's not a forgery because the intention wasn't to defraud anybody. These are known as barbarous radiates, and they were made locally because the Roman state wasn't making enough money, so people took it upon themselves to make their own. Well, everybody was just turning out money. Almost, yes. I like the sound of that. Yeah, me too. We might be on the money in Phil's trench, but not all of the finds are exactly what some of us expected. I hear we've got some human bones at last. We have indeed, but not everybody would necessarily recognise them as human because they are so tiny. Because these are from a newborn baby. This is the tibia, that's the big shin bone. And you can see this, it's got this same basic triangular form that it has with this ridge down the front. That's the bit that if you get kicked, it hurts. Why are these found in the Roman buildings then? Well, the thing about individuals of this age, that's individuals of less than six months, which is what you'd class newborns as being, is that they were commonly, at this period, buried within settlement areas rather than out in the cemeteries with the rest of the dead. So it's almost as if, with these young individuals, because they've had no life of their own, they were kept within the realms of the living. I love anything like that. You know, that gets us really close to people at the time, doesn't it? And the other way you can do that, if you look at this piece of ceramic building material, can you see the finger impressions? Oh, crikey, yeah, look at that. Looks like you've actually got fingerprints. There's a lot, lots more than mine. There might be a child or something like that. Yes. That's wonderful. It may be wonderful, but it's mid-morning, day three, and everyone else is busy trying to solve the problems in the trenches, except for Stuart, who's dragged me off to play with his new toy. Stuart, my instinct tells me this isn't a rotary clothesline. This is a Roman surveying instrument. It's called a gromer, and one was found in Pompeii in 1912. So we know this is the instrument they use for setting out roads and the grid patterns in streets. Now, how they do that is using this gromer, which basically is like a cross at right angles to each other. What you would do is you line these three strings here, and you stand back from it, you line the three up. I've put a pole at the end of it down there. Yeah. So that's my baseline. That's the line of the road, effectively. So what I would do is come over here. Hang on, I've seen the design floor already. It's really windy today, and this is swinging around like a conker. We actually know that the Romans used windbreaks, and they also used to make the string heavier by putting almost like sealing wax or olive oil on it to make it more rigid. So if you could now be my glamorous assistant. You're Debbie McGee. That's it, with that pole and that bit of string, which is exactly 88.71 meters long, because that's 300 Roman feet, the exact size of the insular up there, and we'll set out the forum. Got a long way to go yet, Tony, at least three times that distance. Ah, I may be some time. But over at our potential bathhouse, at least they seem to be cracking on nicely. I'm there! Right bit! Stop that! Stop! That does look pretty square, doesn't it? It is, I've checked it with my modern survey square, and it's pretty damn close, actually. What it does demonstrate is that when you're setting out something, as the Romans did, they could achieve very good regular grids with this. But you've already shown me that there were flaws in this Roman perfection in Caerwent. Yes, I remember you talking about the wonky gates, as you call them. It's not because they're badly set out, there's some other clues. There's an earlier routeway through into the town, through here, before this wall is put in here, and they're continuing the use of the same routeway. Also, this group of buildings just here, but that's so badly off-line. And what that's actually showing me is there was a routeway that came through here before this grid system was actually made. The Roman surveyor would have never tolerated that in a plant system with that grid. You certainly wouldn't. If you want to learn more about how the Romans laid out their towns, log on to the Time Team website. While Stuart's ancient methods give us a great insight into the town's general plan, ultra-modern technologies revealing the details of our villa. So these are the radar results of the villa complex, the time slices, as we call them, where we actually start at the near surface and work our way into the ground, getting deeper as we move. What Jimmy's done is take this to the next stage, and we start to get the ground plan, but we gradually move into the ground, and you can actually see the courses and going down into the foundations and all the rooms coming into view, really. It looks like Manhattan, doesn't it? I mean, you almost don't need to dig it. Wow. Well, I wouldn't mention that to Phil right now, since he's just been dragged into the bathhouse trench. Phil, you're digging a big hole. We've only got two hours left. I know, but what I'm trying to do is restrict the size of it to enable us to get down. We've got this edge, this feature, this wall coming round here. What we want to do is drop a little hole in the corner here just to trace that wall round if we can, see how it relates to this wall here, see if we can get some depth to it. I can see in the tray, Phil, we've got some hypercourse box tiles, suggesting hypercourse. That's right. At last, we might have my hypercourse. But we're really going to have to crack on now. And over in the town centre, we're still struggling with those shops. Has this trench sold what we wanted then, Tracy? Not really. This has been a trench that hasn't quite worked out as to how we wanted. So what have we actually got now? Well, we've still got the pavement running along here. Yeah. But as you can see, I mean, all of this has been heavily disturbed and we've no evidence for the front of the shop in here, really. So there's a lot of archaeology here. Yes. But it would take a lot bigger excavation, longer time, bigger area to actually sort out what it all meant then. Yeah, I mean, I think you'd be looking at a much longer and more detailed scale of excavation rather than evaluation. Definitely. Disappointingly, it seems that the shops have finally got the better of us. But although the walls haven't revealed as much as we hoped, the finds might have saved the day. Well, we've come down to the shops in Pound Lane, which were found in earlier excavations, and I brought some of our finds that illustrate what I think it offers one of the major purposes of a town. It's the market. And the very name of Caerwent, Ventus Silurum, is the marketplace of the tribe. We've got things like the pottery, of course, that contained olive oil and things like an oyster shell, which could have been street food. Yeah. So you don't have to go home for lunch. And then other things that represent butchery. We know from the writings of somebody called Plautus that butchers were famous for palming off elderly mutton as freshly killed lamb. In fact, we have got a series of sheep jaws here, but this is just fantastic. This is a cattle scapula. So you can see that a hole would have been driven through there to let it be hung up on a hook. Oh, so displayed in the shop. Exactly. That's very good, isn't it? And another thing that a lot of the ancient writers say about life in towns is that it's incredibly noisy. We get Seneca saying things like, the hubbub makes you sorry that you're not deaf. Here we have an object which the sole purpose is to make a noise. It's a buzz bone, a kind of toy where you put a cord through and you twist it up and you pull it and it goes. Yes, I've seen modern versions. It's lovely to find that. Some annoying little child. Thought there wasn't enough noise. Yes. Wonderful. So using a combination of finds, foundations and the previous excavations, I do think we've got a sense of the hustle and bustle and can build up a pretty vivid picture of the Roman high street. It's now 5 p.m. day three and we're coming to the end of our Roman investigation. But has Phil managed to find our bath house? Phil, the time's moving on. Do you reckon you've cracked this trench? Absolutely, Tony. What do you reckon you've got? Well, it's been a hell of a struggle but it really has been worth it. We do seem to have the plunge pool of a bath house. Yeah? Yeah, we've got this wonderful curving wall that goes round there and extends out into the field there. And then on the backside, we've got this straight wall. So we've got this lovely semi-circular plunge pool. And the idea is obviously when you have your bath, you can actually lounge about in there and you've got this glorious view out to the west. The sun is coming in from the west. Bit nippy but beautiful. A fantastic end to a really tough three days. And I think we've achieved our challenge, filling in some key gaps in the archeological jigsaw puzzle of Roman Kiowent. Much more excitingly for me though, I think our finds have brought us so much closer to the sights, smells and sounds that we Brits would have experienced in Roman Britain. But we've one final Roman experience in store and I wouldn't miss it for the world. Ladies and gentlemen, for your delectation and delight, please give it up for Matt Williams and Fighting Phil Hardy. Matt, will you please mount the podium? I shall. Sicis diligentius reputit in nulla parte operasia vita est. Try that again. Caeu non salubarinerium ad potas aquae lecurium natura. Dederit quosetera omnia animalia atuntare. And now Phil, who did you get to? At nos vinum, bibere. Il menta cogimus, tantoque operae, gignat. Milibus scelerum ob et editis, et brutus, et Julius, et Victor Ambrus. So ladies and gentlemen, were you convinced by Matt? Were you convinced by Phil? Phil, you have just persuaded them that water is the greatest drink and alcohol is just for pack animals. I didn't mean it, I didn't mean it, I didn't mean to say this.