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Tour of the Marcham/Frilford Excavations 2005 Eleven members were welcomed by Dr Gary Lock, Course Director, to the University of Oxford excavations at Marcham/Frilford on 26th July. He said it had been a fantastic season, although the wet weather had been a problem. To the east, a large cobbled area has yielded further exciting finds, including coins, glass fragments, copper rings and needles. It is proving a complex area to analyse. The manner in which the stones are set could suggest a shrine or ritual area. The main interest has centred once again on the Roman "amphitheatre" at the east of the site, which might have been an Iron Age sacred pool and which, while the mystery as to its origin and purpose remains, is referred to as "the big round thing."
Unfortunately, heavy rain during the dig flooded the arena and put a halt to further excavations this year. The extent and reason for the Roman alterations have yet to be revealed and the mystery of "the big round thing" remains till the 2006 season. |
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| GREEK ROOTS Any reader whose Greek is as lacy as the editor's might like to be told that the unfamiliar word "temenos" derives from temnein = to cut up. Hence a piece of land separated for a particular purpose, especially a sacred purpose. This can be quite a large tract: Because the Nile was worshipped, its whole valley was a Temenos. Yes, OK, I looked it up in Liddell & Scott. |
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Gilbert Oteyo then conducted the group around the site starting with excavations of the entrance to the temenos, the sacred area around the temple. It has proved to be large and complex with a cobbled courtyard thought to have contained monuments and a series of rooms. Two sets of buildings have been exposed abutting the temenos walls. A series of furnaces indicate these were workshops perhaps for the manufacture of copper alloy implements. A number of coins and implements have been found there.
The arena, measuring 40 metres in diameter, is surrounded by a Roman built wall, originally plastered and painted, to a depth of 1.5 metres, retained by a bank of earth. A later entrance was made in the wall and it is undecided whether there was a colonnade or a row of statues on a platform referred to as "the royal box." This is a low-lying area and a series of drains have been exposed, those to the south being built at a very steep angle into the ground.