Posted on 08/01/2010 6:43:33 PM PDT by SunkenCiv
Exeter archaeologists believe they have found a second Roman fort on a development site in the city.
As the Echo has already reported, a team of city archaeologists has unearthed a previously unknown fort on the site of the former St Loye's campus off Topsham Road.
Archaeologists said the original discovery was set to rewrite Exeter's early history.
Now the excavations have revealed what the experts believe could be a second fort, built on top of the first...
Suspicions that there was a fort on the site arose three years ago during trial trenching.
Excavations before the site was developed for a retirement village unearthed V-shaped ditches which in places are more than two metres deep.
These would have been dug to provide protection for the fort.
Now ditches on a different alignment to those of the first fort have been found, and Mr Gent told the Echo: "The new V-shaped ditch cuts through trenches that were dug to hold timbers for the first fort's barrack blocks -- these are long fairly narrow linear trenches. This shows that the army used the site again at a later date.
"It looks as if we now have three military establishments in Exeter -- the known fortress in town, our new fort at St Loye's, and now this further new evidence"...
Archaeologists believe the fortress could date from the middle of the first century AD.
Mr Gent said: "If we are right, our first fort could have been built when the Romans were campaigning, while the area was being subdued."
(Excerpt) Read more at thisisexeter.co.uk ...
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As nearly everyone knows, the Romans legions while on march knocked off early enough in the afternoon to build a protective fort which included trenching outside of a palisade. Every tent and headquarters was erected in the same plan every day so soldiers knew exactly where they were in the encampment, even at night.
It was a routine that stood them in good stead over the years.
Every day, when the legion moved, a new fort was created at the best defensible site. So remains of an older route march fort location under the site of a later permanent fort probably wouldn’t be unusual
Comes in handy for those late night dashes to the trench. :-))
:’) One of the forts could easily be from Vespasian’s campaign in Britain, although having said that it occurs to me that I’m not sure how far west he went. He’s definitely the general who made the big move in the conquest of most of Britain, reducing the oppida with artillery (not gunpowder obviously, so nobody reading this write in, okay?) which was his main specialty. If there had been an orderly system of succession (and retirement from the supreme office by means other than death) it’s basically assumed IMO that the Romans would have finished up in Caledonia, and they apparently had a forward base in Ireland (there’s a topic in the FRchives about that). Thanks wildbill!
:’) And if someone wipes it out, you return and do the same to them, and then rebuild just to show everyone else. :’) That worked great too.
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