The latest season of excavation will take place at Cocks Farm, Abinger June-July 2019. This season will further explore Roman and Iron Age features in the field adjacent to the Roman villa first discovered in the 1870s. The dates are:
Saturday 15th - Wednesday 19th June
Saturday 22nd - Wednesday 26th June
Monday 1st - Wednesday 3rd July
Saturday 6th - Wednesday 10th July
Saturday 13th - Tuesday 16th July
A trip to the Isle of Wight to visit Newport and Brading Roman villas is planned for 29th September. The programme is below and if you are interested please contact John Felton -
Ruth Shaffrey is a worked stone specialist currently working at Oxford Archaeology. She has reported on querns from several Surrrey sites and recently had a paper published in Surrey Archaeological Collections, 110, 71-142 Roman Ewell: a review of the querns and millstones and implications for our understanding of the organisation of grain processing.
Site director, Emma Corke, will update us on recent fieldwork at Cocks Farm Abinger. Work in the field adjacent to the scheduled Roman villa, targeted using the results of magnetometry, has revealed a concentration of Iron Age grain storage pits, enclosure ditches and related activity, Romano-British field boundaries and agricultural ditches, and evidence for Bronze Age activity on the site (up to 2017 season).
David Graham, RSG vice-chairman, will be talking to us on archaeology in the East Hampshire border area, centred around the Romano-British small town of Neatham. He will draw together evidence for RB activity such as villas, a bath house, cemeteries and a pottery industry.
Garum was a favourite condimentof the Romans. It was made made from the fermented blood and innards of selected fish and was produced across the empire to meet the wide demand. Luckily, ancient sources describe the different types of garum and how it was made. The written sources are complemented by evidence from Pompeii, and it appears to have been a very lucrative trade. Salt was also a significant contributor to the Roman economy, and was vital to the preservation of foodstuffs including meat, dairy and fish.
Martyn Allen is well known to many in the Roman Studies Group, having talked to us previously, and as a freelance osteoarchaeologist he has provided expert bone reports for some of our excavations. He is currently a Post-Excavation Project Manager working for Oxford Archaeology Ltd. His research focuses on the settlement and agricultural economy of late Iron Age and Roman Britain, with an emphasis on the zooarchaeological evidence.
Sadie Watson is an experienced archaeologist who has extensive experience excavating and supervising complex urban sites. She was responsible for leading the excavations at Bloomberg London 2010-14, and has agreed to talk to us on this work, including the writing tablets found, and to give us an update on the post-excavation work.
Saturday 19th May 2018 - Lullingstone Roman Villa and Eynsford Castle
Brian Philp, Kent Archaeological Rescue Unit, will lead us around both sites. Brian has spent 10 years digging on the Lullingstone Roman Villa and 40 years digging in the area.
The annual excavation took place at Cocks Farm Abinger in June-July 2017 under the direction of Emma Corke. Volunteers excavated two trenches in an area of high agricultural activity on the hill adjacent to the known Roman villa site. This area was identified during a magnetometry survey looking at the environs of the villa which uncovered a Roman field system, a Roman lime kiln and a concentration of pits.
