Tour of the Marcham/Frilford Excavations 2006

2006 is the sixth year of the annual 5-week summer 'dig' by Oxford University archaeology students at Frilford, in the parish of Marcham near Wantage, under the direction of Dr Gary Lock.

Once again, the circular structure on the east of the site, referred to as the 'big round thing' (see Newsletter Autumn 2005 or Marcham 2005 report in this website), was opened up. Speculation continues as to whether it was an amphitheatre or a sacred pool. The arena is 40 metres in diameter, surrounded by a wall to a depth of 1.5 metres, the interior of which was plastered and painted pink. It had a series of interior drains, the ones to the south sloping steeply towards the nearby River Ock. This year, work on the western section has revealed an entrance and a pathway into the arena, and also a small building to the west of the bank. Two wooden posts associated with the creation of the drains have been dated 90 AD. This also dates the first phase of the building of the arena wall.

Excavation of the outer bank of the arena has revealed a stone revetment resting on Iron Age soil surface. Small altars around the outside of the back of the arena show evidence of votive depositories of animal bones including the complete skeleton of a cow with its legs bound, and personal offerings such as tokens, bronze artefacts and jewellery from cheap items to fabulous brooches which were worth a fortune.

The arena is connected by a stone pathway through the 'temenos', the sacred walled temple precinct, with workshops/shops selling artefacts, to the Romano-British temple on the west of the site (excavated in the 1930's). Further excavation of the temenos this year has revealed votive deposits including a plastered altar and shrine next to the bones of a goat buried with a pot. A three-walled building contains furnaces for votive offerings. Another three-walled building facing the pathway between the temenos and the arena contains a furnace which is so clean that it is thought it may have been used solely for a continuously burning sacred flame and which has been irreverently been nicknamed the 'pizza parlour.'

Although there were Roman villas scattered throughout the Vale, the area was not a settlement, but purely a religious site, with the temenos being one of the largest known. The area was an important one in the pre-Roman period. An Iron- Age settlement lies underneath the Romano-British temple. In a large cruciform-shaped building of the late 4th century AD, coins were found with the Greek chi-rho, the symbol of Christianity, on them. This gives rise to speculation that there was a change from pagan to Christian religion. The site was, however, closed at the end of the 4th century.

The project's website is: www.arch.ox.ac.uk/research/research_projects/marcham