Re-investigating Richborough: Correcting the Narrative

Description: An online talk by Philip Smither on the reinvestigation of Roman Richborough. Richborough, a Roman site on the east coast of Kent, has been studied academically since the 16th century. In the 1920s and 30s, excavations took place under the auspices of the Society of Antiquaries and the directorship of J.P. Bushe-Fox. For almost 100 years the Richborough archive has been left understudied and the tome that is Richborough V has been the sole source on which to base the conclusions of subsequent studies. This paper re-examines these conclusions focusing on Richborough from AD 43 to the mid-second century. In this time Richborough changed from an invasion harbour to a bustling port town, but not in the way described in the literature, and places Richborough in its wider archaeological and historical context. This re-examination has been achieved by using up to date analytical and digital techniques, including mapping the site in GIS, to modernise the site archive. This study also highlights why it is important we revisit and digitise antiquarian archives before they become further removed in time from their context. The digitisation of the archive makes it more accessible for future study which has not been possible until now.

Transcript: okay all right I think we're about ready I'm really sorry for the uh slight delay to our proceedings today but uh welcome everyone um to another talk uh in our series of exclusive online talks for the Kent archaeological Society I hope you can all hear me okay as ever we are aiming to bring a wide range of fascinating subjects direct to your living rooms and we have some excellent speakers lined up um over the course of for the rest of this year so as you have already noticed um we are still figuring out all the intricacies of online offerings but fingers crossed it will the rest of it will run smoothly um but please do bear with us so to kick off uh just going to go through a little bit of housekeeping um the talk will last for around an hour after which there'll be time for some questions if you have any I hope it goes without saying but please be courteous and polite to our speaker and to each other you can either raise use the razor hand feature um and we'll unmute you and when it's your turn you can ask a question or if you prefer you can type your question into the chat box and we will read that out for you if I could ask you all to please keep yourselves on mute and have your cameras off um for the duration of the talk uh that way we can concentrate on our speaker and hear them all without any problems um we will be recording the session and uh with Phil's permission it may be posted to our uh video channels in the future but no personal data will be shared and if you ask a question but would prefer not to be published please just send me an email saying so or send any of us an email saying so and we'll make sure that is not included okay so on to our f fantastic speaker philli is fins leaon officer for West Berkshire um dealing working for the portable Antiquities scheme he has a degree in archaeology and ancient history a masters in archaeology from the University of reading and is working on a PhD thesis in Roman on Roman Richboro at the University of Kent under the supervision of Dr Ellen Swift Joan gray Tony Wilmore and one of our own advisory Council Dr Steve Willis now Phillip has a particular interest in Roman artifact studies in ancient Metrology he's worked for Oxford archaeology Museum of London archaeology and has excavated at silchester which I am extremely jealous about more excitingly I think uh philli built his own home gym parted at a Star Trek convention in Las Vegas and played Cricket in year six at the oval during the interval of Australia vers versus India so there you go tonight Phillip's going to be reinvestigating richborough and correcting The Narrative of early antiquarian archives for that important site focusing on richb from ad43 to the mid 2nd Century his re-examination has been achieved by using upto-date analytical and digital techniques to modernize the site archive so without further Ado Phillip welcome the floor is yours I am going to turn off my camera because for some reason my normal one isn't working and it's going to uh interfere with that and what I'll just do is share where's the sharing G I'm using two screens uh oh I can't share my screen at the moment okay Jacob can you okay you should be able okay yep so share and I should be sharing this one tell me if it's if it looks good on people's screens because I've got two screens here and sometimes it doesn't quite yeah that looks like it seems to be full screen right tonight's talk is I'm gonna see where I go with this so I've kind of got this split into two parts because everyone who's been to richb knows richb in any way knows it's a complex site pretty much top and tailing the end of Roman Britain or the beginning of and end of Roman Britain as we see it so I'm going to start with partly the beginning but partly the surprise from my research which was um the giant quadrans Arch um that stood in the center or stands would have stood in the center at at the port at the entrance to brania and was later like um enclosed Within the Sha for walls and eventually demolished as part of that and come on to some other stuff as well but the big surprise was the redating of the monument um this was a bit of a shock to me um it came three months before I was du to submit and I told to Ellen Swift and I was like have a look at this we just thought yeah you can't exactly submit stuff that you know is wrong um so I quickly rewrote one of my chapters reorganized a bit and it passed in the end and my external examiner was quite excited by it so here's the results of that I'm going to present first now firstly the redating evidence the big part was um a coin of antoninus Pius which was embedded inside the building material for the quadron Arch now the only way that could possibly happen is if the quadron Arch was being constructed or at least partly constructed in the coin seems to fit a 140 date um so this would be approximately 50 years just gone after the original date suggested um as a dianic or even like the earlier um basically yeah first century Arch it doesn't really fit the narrative anymore with this piece of evidence um so that's my talk um has anyone got any questions or do we need more evidence on this um the main thing here is to understand richb as it as it is today and this is as it is today if anyone's being there you'll see this new um uh this absolutely new Gateway uh built there which is an absolutely it's a really fantastic piece of architecture to show off what the claudian Gateway would have looked like coming into the uh coming into the site and it doesn't really take away from the r view of the site today but what I'm talking about here is the quadon arch the book cruciform platform that had lots of different interpretations don't really have time to go into but then in the 1950s based on or 60s even as well based on Ian Richmond's notes Donald strong um wrote up this quadron Arch and followed the excavator narrative that it had to be Demian based on the um excavated evidence so this will be split into two sides the old and the new narrative so basically the bush Fox narrative who excavated rich in the 1920s and 30s and the new narrative which is mine from my thesis so it starts off with as richfood does The Invasion and Supply base which is very shortlived then no one really knows how much it was used between the invasion and then the um uh port toown in the 870s which supposedly lasted with some changes and the quadon arch through to the 3D century and then what I'll come on to in the second part of this is the triple ditch fortlet and the short for which foll so the red box here is the bit I'm going to focus on with this new narrative that the is the first bit holds there is an invasion Landing there but whether it's a supply base given the Romans already had a foothold in Britannia from the century before um doesn't really track possible military use maybe biver wacking intense there's some sites in the Netherlands which are quite similar um then we come on to what I think is an imperial Supply P or with some um civilian or some like the trying to think of the words for this now really but some civilian input some contractor input to uh supplying the continent because really that's space at this stage brania is the Bread Basket of the West it's it's supplying um the Continental Army a lot of the time and given my new date we get a new Port Town in the 150s which then probably lasts into the third Century so correct in this narrative though this is the The Narrative pretty much do the same for Richburg just with new dates Roman Invasion construction of the arch construction and use of the Sha those are the three stages and the image here is the old English Heritage image of the arch and surrounded by buildings which in no way have any place in the archaeology they just weren't there I really like their new drawing um it's not surrounded by these buildings it's standing on its own it's this Monumental piece of architecture that wouldn't have been crowded and cluttered by houses and businesses and all sorts around it would have been the centerpiece of Rich where the arch leads into Britannia um and sorry I thought there's something going on in the chat and okay so um it was always said to be constructed in the flavoring period possibly by demission and this is a line from Donald Strong's report that notorious Arch build and we know he did build a lot in Rome so it made sense and either seemed to at that date commemorate the invasion of Britannia which his father the spian was involved in or the end of the agrian campaigns um and the capping off in a sense of the Conquering of pania you know probably the propaganda that went along with that even though there were still there was still Strife up in the north so the new Arch interpretation I am 99% certain it is anonine um it could be very late Adrian at a start if it took a while there is one other piece of evidence that possibly puts it later towards carella but that could even be just a modification to it as well um and while you could say an antonine date would be modifications to a dianic arch what I'm going to show is actually more of the construction material being associated with anonine archaeology um so as I said in my eyes it's possibly could still be the capping off of Britannia and the building of the antonine wall and you know hindsight is a wonderful thing with things like that with the anine wall being abandoned soon afterwards and the anine plague is in um the province but it is this bigger part of a larger scheme of reorganization in the Southeast that actually has an effect on do as well so this is what happened with the strateg graphy at Richboro Bush Fox pushed all the second century material down and I've pulled it back up again essentially he saw it as intrusive I see first century as residual um both are valid based on context um but I feel as so when it came round to it Bush Fox did not consider residuality enough um to the point where features were dated based on like a being filled within a year or two of the latest date of the latest material so if the samian dated up to 110 um had to have gone in the ground very soon after that and anyone who knows archaeology or their grandparents China collection this stuff stuck around um it doesn't just get deposited straight away so the primary evidence is sorry for the lack of pictures in this um it's hard to get everything in as such but anyone who knows the site um there's a group of Timber stores on site built as part of the invasion demolished to make way for the arch however I looked at some of the other features around the timber stores and what features were overlying them and which ones they were stratagraph above and it turned out that some of the road Network especially the main roads could not have been laid down until the early 870s um there were coins at least one two coins in the um road metaling and in the drains that pointed towards a date at this point and it shows actually the end of whing street right at Richboro wasn't actually built um as soon as they came in and these Timber stores seem to last until the 850s when they were demolished seemed that they wanted to show this quick transition from Timber to Stone at rich brother some Stone buildings as well which replaced some of these Timber stores but if we look at some sites particularly places like Richboro so not silchester where you still got a Timber Forum you don't have um Timber buildings being demolished really quickly it doesn't actually make sense they would be wooden structures last a lot longer unless the there's some disaster or they're having to be deliberately demolished so it seems like it's actually more of a development of the wooden structures for a good 70 years rather than this immediate pting up and pulling down which is suggested by the new data um across the site there are 328 if I remember my numbers right hits and Wells all dating from the 1 to the fourth or fifth century ad um this caused a conundrum because you don't need to know really the locations of these but it does make sense when we look at the site as a whole um the second century material was considered intrusive in these features I've considered the first century possibly residual material um what's really interesting about these pits and Wells is that around the monument there are very few of them as you move over the road from the monument there are a few more and as you move right to the basically the next set of um insulite which were towards as you're heading into heading Inland um there's even more of them there's absolutely loads of them and what I think this is showing is a construction site phase something that we kind of miss out in the narrative sometimes of of um complete site overhuls where you've got the well pits and Wells that are used for working for water um probably for furnaces things like that near the monument next to that we've got more working areas metal working um and some storage areas for material and then furthest away from the actual Construction Site Area like you would have now on a building site we've got the living quarters for the workers and all these pits and wells around there are being dug by them and filled with their rubbish from living and working um right of their job and this is where I come on to what was concluded as the workers's houses they are far away from the monument um but all of the rubbish material over the Road from them uh suggested that they were dumping this material all material of the first and second centuries so Bush frs's evidence was they were destroyed by fire in the 90s yet within the burning layer of this there was antonine Pottery there's anonine San so it's very datable um again he considered that intrusive I've considered that as if it could be residual well as the first century stuff in that layer could be resid idual if you're talking about workers houses they're not going to have all the nicest stuff they might have some more recent um pots and pans to use and some various um various possessions but in a way you want them using the old stuff because the new stuff is more expensive so now come to one of the key elements of this which is the construction process of the monument um the monument is made of several different materials particularly green sand tuur um ultic mortar um and carara marble um again marble chickens were associated with first century material but rereading the archive and even the reports the marble chippens did find their way in to Features with late second century material so what be talking about is maybe these marble chippings lying around for half a century um I doubt it somehow they might have been continuing to use off Cuts but with this Grand new monument you're going to want the area um area clear what was interesting is not far from the monument in a mesal workshop was found a lead Ingot of nerva which was half used um it was interpreted then that this must have been used at the end of construction and then the rest discarded and deposited um but it tracks that it also could be old stock at the time of an ant construction they could have still had lead ingots of nerva around and if anyone looks in the Roman inscription of Britain volumes you'll see entire lead Ingot of the flavian period the spian name on on them that were completely intact so it goes to show that these things did lie around unused for quite a while um there would have been old stock of them now whether a lot of these you know exact dates with the context of them um but people would have found them and used them so it doesn't it means we could have Old Stock lying around there is also I mentioned on site a series of masonry buildings um so the original narrative is you've got a Timber or built just after the invasion this lasts until the early 2nd Century when they start constructing or constructing parts of the site buildings around the monument in stone so late 1 early 2 Century my new narrative would put these buildings back sorry bring them up into the midc century and and there's a first bit of a contradiction from Bush Fox here anyway from his Rockit excavations he excavated several similar houses which he Compares these masonry buildings at richro 2 so Compares them to buildings at Rox those buildings at Rox he dates to as hadriana um so he's already pushing those buildings being 203 years um at the minimum after the construction of the monument um you might suggest later quite possibly based on the actual contextual evidence at which were these buildings are very hard to date however coins associated with some are possibly associated with some of the uh walls and other features with in suggests an earliest datee of hadrianic and given a bit of time for coins to have been circulating um could be into the antai period or a very late hadrianic so there is a slight contradiction from Bush rocks right there now this is the most fun part of the research because I already mentioned one contradiction this is possibly the biggest of the locked um over near the West Wall so this feature was cut by the later West Shore Fort W um on the near side of the photo here this photo is taken facing Northeast um where the person is standing this photo I'm not sure who is with the who they are with a very fashionable Su on but um you can see the outline of a very large pit which seems to be stratagraph under uh the wall of this this room um and which it is and that's how it's described in the excavation volumes this wall um was interpreted as a Cellar um it was found to be deeper than some of the other features of the same period namely the other masonry walls which have similar Construction um and given it was sunken it was I say interpreted as a sell now this feature was found um cut into material got into the ground level fil full of first and second sensory material so this feature could not have been constructed until the second century so we've got a date on it for that um however Bush Fox dated this to the late first early 2nd Century which again based on the evidence of the ground level that was cut to the cut for this wall it didn't make sense um the walls of this include twofer green sand and marble chickens all materials that we used in the construction of the monument but it's not of as good a construction as some of the other masonry buildings on site which um have similar construction materials in them this is a bit of a a bodge job of a of a building um it's not probably meant obviously doesn't have to be great it's not meant to be seen it's meant to be functional But it includes material from the monument construction so obviously using probably cuts um to pack it out the pit there in the photograph which is being stood on again stratag graphically um below the wall was found to be filled down to the level of 8T I think it's a lot deeper than that as far as I remember 16 to 20t deep in total down to 8 fet was anine material anine pottering now this is where Bush Fox tied himself in knots to figure this out because how does anten material get 8T down in a pit under a feature under a wall that was supposedly built in the first century they suggested that the wall sunk into the pit and the pit was made good with material without second century ottery in it and I know you know things can be intrusive but Pottery intrusive down to 8 feet in this way just again it doesn't fit um again they suggested that you know part of the W could been removed it been dug but it doesn't fit that either and basically this pit is is well filled with ant material and the wall is built afterwards and given the amount of material from the monument in it in the walls it would make sense it's an ant8 so as it stands with this there's no one so phrase Smoking Gun with this there's no one piece of evidence that says yes this Monument is 100% antonine but every bit of evidence across the site adds up to suggest at least a late hant date into an ant bit of anine construction or a full anine date for the monument um so as I said I've gone through this and we including this the walls are built of Monument material Foundation trench for that wall has second Sentry material in it and the anti saing is in the pit it's it doesn't get any more clear cut than that so it's a close shot picture of it as you can see a bit clearer that pit is clear as day there um and the archaeologist is going to spot that and understand it so I think the problem was is this came into the this was dug in the 1930s and they'd already come up with this idea of an a Demian monument in the early 1920s after a couple of seasons of excavation so everything had to fit that narrative um and they again as I say they tie themselves in knots to figure this out now I did something fun when it came to found that the aium was one of the biggest pieces of evidence for the site I did what any coin specialist would do and I basically looked at the cumulative frequency of Rich Lazo stamps against the British average so I took this data from the online database of samian stamps which has recorded thousands over hundreds of thousands of stamps from various sites across Britain and the continent um and I did this against the British average what it shows is as this line drops from the first or the late first century the site as it is is adding samian I'm adding lzo samian at a slower rate than the British average site up until about the 140s the reason for this is simple it wasn't a samian using area of the sunite there's Timber stores there's no one living there there's no major open features for rubbish deposition nobody is using this Pottery around there I'm not saying it's not somewhere else on the site across the island that hasn't been dug yet but um what the line going upward shows is especially from the 170s where we've got a huge uptick we have samian Lao samian being added at richb at a much much faster rate than the British average and to me that shows a change in use of site around the 140s 150s and straight afterwards that there's different activity going on around um around the area of the quadron Arch and that is the change it changes from what I say as Felix to into Brighton it's a container Port that turns into a Seaside Town um there's a different character to the site different use to that particular area of the site um and that's where we get um our change so the difficulty is here is how do we how do we sort this in our minds was this missed deliberately was evidence missed deliberately um did they try and make sense of it based on other evidences they had um but there are three key points here as well the coin of Anton spice that I mentioned right at the beginning embedded in the otic mortar it was missed out of the coin lists in the published volumes the only place I could find it was in the archiv material in the written record from the site for some bizarre reason there was a bunch of coins missed out and it just happened to be these ones there is also a seum fragment of what was Dragon do 18 to 31 or 31 it definitely wasn't Dragon do 18 um it was labeled as such but then in the publication it was re it was um reidentified as Dragon do 18 and reidentifying it as that fits the pre A90 narrative for the arch um any later and it doesn't make sense and this fragment was found embedded in some of the material and for the life of me I cannot find that exact fragment because of how the or archive is organized but it is there it's going to be there there's also more samian in the sand levels which were used um to level up the area around the arch after the foundation was poured um they had to level things off and they used a bunch of sand that had been dug from the foundation trench for the monument um and this Pottery again pointed towards a date way after a dianic one as well so either we've got an antonine antonine arch or we've got a massive dianic white elephant and it's hard to believe that stands there for 50 years completely undone and the site is a complete mess of a construction site for 50 years there is one inscription which I briefly go over um and this is where the insistence on the narrative gets interesting um this inscription is a minor inscription on the arch seems to name nerva and hadrien so it could relate to antonus pus finishing a hadrianic arch um and Collingwood published this in 1926 and it just was not picked up on by anyone writing the ritual report um but the important thing is because it names a Divine Emperor the definite in there it w relate to demission um it just doesn't relate to it being a primary thing of a demission in a c so a hadrianic conscription ear anti inscription makes complete sense but it is very fragmented um in similar vein Martin hen and Penny we've gone back over some of the sculpture from the monument and has have dated these as tranic and hadrianic again could be additions but you see similar sculpture in the anite period and talking to Martin says given the movement of these Styles we could see um a uh we could see this being used in the time period in the provinces and furthermore from some of the material again the otic mortar used um in the arch we've got an alter of abundan here dated by potery 2 ad80 to 110 which for them would fit the demiss monument however I found this piece of seian from the pit above the altar where it's deposited in the Royal onario Museum in Canada this piece of pottery seemed to find its way into a box of stuff that was sent out to time a colonial Museum of representation of things from Britain um from the Homeland in a sense and this piece of seaman was dated um this piece of San was dated into the 120s to 140s again completely missed because it ended up in a completely different country um again just another piece of evidence where these features have been misdated and mean in this case by piece of poy completely missing so there's a bit of Contex text for the arch what else was happening around at the time we've got the construction of the anine wall um a monument by anine pus finishing the conquest of Britannia could make sense here we've also got the development of do Port now there's supposed development in the flavian period but anyone who's read the actual report shows that both Richard Reese and the same in specialist disagreed and said that the flavian coins and poy was residual um first attempt at constructing do port in the ad 130s and 140s would make sense from the evidence and that would fit um a movement of the fleet from richb down to Dover within the building material there were some odd finds of lower green stand and one piece of marble during those excavations in those layers at DOA and I wish I could get my hands on that marble because if it's carara if it's Luna marble it could help explain B these this these off Cuts being used as balanced in the ships carting stuff down to DOA for the new the new port and there's a whole thing about we can go into on clbr tiles the classes banic tiles on that and why there were very few at Rich BR and more at do what I say is think recycling so conclusion it's a bit of a mess rich um Bush Fox pull well pulled but pushed down the second century until it didn't make sense and the ideas came from the the excavations the very early excavations so anything after 1924 into the 1930s until it was all written up had to be had to fit this narrative and the problem is is like my PhD dozens of sites like this need revisiting um I'm sure he would have done it I'm sure um appears at the time would have done it and we need to look at how they analyze theography in a wider um in a wider way than just site by site and looking at how these might be done so that's a brief short part first part of this um what I say is uh would we stop sharing that screen [Music] um and I'm going to move on to I can if it lets me the latter part of all of this which is Shoring up Britannia so I've just gone from Invasion Supply base in 1843 and tearing that apart um dianic Arch richb and tearing that one apart um and then I think I think got about half an hour so hopefully keep going uh for the end and the sax and Shore um so imagine we're at the end of The Archers life um it's a bit dilapidated you got the third Century crisis going on in the 230s various Soldier Emperors trying to take control and then we hit the g Empire in the ad 260s so I'm going to briefly look at what is this ax and sha back people from going to have a good idea about this look at some of the similarities and differences and then really who built the Forts and why and short which study so the sax and Shore um I did give the presentation in German as well a little bit so there'll still be some German bits I've forgot to take out um but it's nine or 11 Coastal faults around the Eastern Seaboard and the south coast of preton and the traditional part is they're built either by the G Empire in the 260s um 270s or the bratanic Empire of crus and electus a bit later on um it's hard to it's hard to say based on the evidence that was already out there um but these are them in all their glory and some of them not so much um do one is under the building of the painted house and other parts limb slid down the coast um and brancaster is barely there Bradwell is barely there barring the sixth Century church and Walton Castle fell into the sea this is how they look in um the notia dignitatum the book of the fourth or fifth century that lists all the military installations around the Empire um the this is the page for the Saxon Shore um and it pretty much lists who was there which military units were there and oh and have no slides on I'm sharing my am I not sharing sorry did that not [Music] sure I think somebody stop me there oh I can't share again that's why sorry everyone I didn't realize I couldn't share again um here we go I'll go back over that briefly then um as I was saying here's the list of the fors um on the coastline um constructed by these one of these two empires um then we have this is I say where they are now some looking better than others Lim definitely in a bit of State I'd love to know more about the Dover one um won Castle isn't there because it's currently as I say in the sea since about the 17 1800s um and other parts of it have gone uh again this was the notia page I'm going to be showing um shows the Nam of the fors and the units based at those but don't take this as gospel as it sometimes has been um so here we go this is the main part focus on the chronology of this thoughts um brancaster kter and reculver all seem to be a bit earlier than most possibly partly San partly early second early third Century possibly uh to do with the invasions into Scotland um but they do have they do have some later phases um they do have some mid3 Century phases when it's been interpreted that they've been brought into this wider um Shore for system uh the late group seems to be split a little bit Bradwell Rich do Lim brancaster all seem to be lumped together as this mid to late 3D century pavy and porchester based on dendr chronology at pavy dating it as Elon and coin evidence from Portchester given Corian dates S Suggest they were built as Coran electon thoughts along the South Coast bur castle and wton Castle are a mystery bur Castle suggests an actual constantinian date but that's simply because there was one massive F of constantinian coins found very little earlier um so it's a bit misleading there with this one so just to sum up ready group red late Group Green this is how they tend to be seen at the moment um or tradition I then used a bit of principal component analysis to analyze the fors themselves from the structural features this came straight out of Andrew Pearson's book on the Sha fors is PhD from the early 2000s um all I did was feed this into a uh piece of software that analyzes more than just two points of data at once and splits out the most lik arrangement we call the BR world over and Casa all just seem to be completely all over the place but richb Lim heavy porchester and bur Castle very oddly bur Castle still all fall on exactly the same dot on the ground suggesting their construction features their structural features this is the height the width the foundations of the wall all of that fits that they are of the same build and so possibly all built at the same time that's the features actually the wall dimensions a bit more show they are not on the same dot but which report chest py and Lim are all again very well clustered do bran cast and coaster a bit closer and Rec B castle seem to be a bit out there but focusing on Rich report the Lim on on the south coast of Britain all along the South Coast we know there was already an installation at Dover and they're all at one bill that's what is being suggested by this so in that case who built them Gall Empire botanic Empire to make it's hard to say but this is how I think of it both in some way shape or form um my new chronology of the leak group splits them up a bit more Bradwell Li and brancaster seem to be mid to late third Century but limb I'm trying to think is probably that bit later maybe even into the crossing election period do construction feature wise and from coin evidence is suggesting a date in the 270s to 280s and this is similar to Cardiff Castle there's a for under Cardiff Castle which seems to have this date and similar construction features to DOA and I've got a funny feeling this is when the province is brought back um under Continental control after the GAC Empire but before the bratanic Empire this is them Shoring up their ports DOA and Cardiff being two main ones and what I'm going to come to as the case study is some course an Elon evidence at richb and bur castle and Walton Castle can't really be worked out on the evidence at the moment so this is how it goes um early Group redeveloped by the GIC Empire in the 260s they installations are already there some of them from the San period um and they're useful to the GIC Empire they also don't need to be a line of defense they're not on their front line their front line is over in G um there's no need for them to build new forts around the coast of Britain I'm calling the awkward middle group is do B and the short um seems to be this Iranian prus again links to card of Castle now um which could be interesting to investigate further and then what I've got is this the late group richb Lim heaven and Portchester built by cus an Alexis along the south coast and the late Lake group maybe a couple of additions so really it's the two story of two invasions a failed Invasion by maximium which um comes to us down through the panger a group of speeches given to the emperor basically maximian tries to kick electus kick corus out of Britannia um coming from the east from the r but gets knocked back by storms um and if you note from talking earlier we've got some of the we've got at least one Rec early for maybe Bradwell and won Castle depending on dating there as well um but at this time from an Eastern attack we don't have richb Limb py and porchester in place then as The Story Goes electus murders scus um and takes over and then electus is finally kicked out um by constantius Cloris invasion is noted being near Richboro at Rich and near Southampton so kind of a fork down towards Portchester away is of white um and another attack coming at richb and completely circumventing these um Southern thoughts so Andrew Pearson while J PhD wrote an article um about the the completion of the thoughts um because he was noticing different phases of construction um and he wrote this one sentence towards the end after going through people hour used um yeah so people hours all the supplies that would have been needed um all of the uh Building Material he wrote the issue of the issue of completion is particularly sensitive much of the discussion in his paper become irrelevant if the refs remained um unfinished at the termination of electus rign I latched on to this quote and ran with it given the evidence I'd seen from his PhD research to see what would happen um and I found this mid late Century forli pointed out there built around the old foundation of the quadron Arch whether that was still standing or not who really knows a late third Century fought occupied during the fourth century and abandoned in the fifth that's the simple version however the fortlet can now potentially be dated to the 290s um ad ad 290s this so this is this for that goes around kind of respects this second century building possibly used as a headquarters building by whoever built or had this fortl Con constructed around second century Monumental Arch um that's because what was again missed was Corian coins in the very bottom of these ditches now again we've got intrusiveness going on but these ditches are 9et deep um these Corian coins were found at the very bottom of some of these ditches and there wasn't just one of them there was a handful so we're looking at d is that could have been constructed earlier but couldn't have been filled until the ad 290s at the earliest um we then have a section of Fallen masonry over in the northeast corner and if anyone's been to rra and sees where this would have joined up and wonders why they didn't find it that's because after the excavations or during the excavations in the 20s and 30s the ground layer was rais because they were dumping all of their spoil over the scarp um which raised the ground level which made a false ground level around the foundations of the monument um s Antony wilmart looked at this a little um and he was trying to uh work out in his mind how this masonry given the angle it fell at and the angle it landed at could have fallen all of this way across we're talking a good 50 m it didn't make any sense um it was suggested during the early excavations that there had to be another wall further out and this eastern wall here was never actually built um but the more important thing here is underneath the main north wall in this corner was with a question mark with it was a coin of corus in underneath the wall which also parallels with Corian coin evidence in the walls at Portchester so this again could start to add construction of the north wall or the wall at least one of the walls do this for the Eastern ditches which are now over the edge of the cliff um one of them was used as the foundation trench for the East wall so it sat in trench so whoever filled these ditches in built the wall but what was even more interesting is in the bottom of these ditches as well were coins of Constantine the first now I'm not sure how coins of the three 320s and three teens get in the bottom of ditches that seem to have been filled in the 0 290s but I do have a suggestion it goes back to Andrew pe's quote of what if the fors weren't finished then we look there was um where this great black circle is a very thin layer of mortar um and it was very similar to the material used in the fort walls over that side in the Westgate area which I'll come on to as well a little in this Mora Flor again a question mark it but weathered out of this concrete floor was a coin of the House of Constantine so if this evidence along with the constantinian coins in the tripal ditches held we'd be looking at construction material at the time of um Constantine I um into the mid 4th Century we then have even further evidence of potential constantinian construction on some of the wall areas um coins were found in a couple of lime kils which were outside of the fort walls to the Northwest um near some of the Fallen masonry now um Within These there were coins of corus that there were coins of the House of Constantine again solidly in this case in um features used um for the uh construction of this are this area what's intered is in Lime kills he could have used the mar some of the marble from the monument or was lying around afterwards as part of this and Andrew Pearson pointed out that the only place the material from the quadron Arch was used at rich in the Shore Fort walls was the north wall which had a con different construction style to the east west and south east west and south walls and there was also material from the quadron arch in the west gate close to that mixing floor with the red out coin of the House of Constantine so a new timeline it could exist of Redevelopment of existing faults between recola and the others up the Eastern Seaboard as the early group DOA and now what I believe is Cardiff as his middle group recap capturing Britannia for the Empire a reoccupation of the existing fors Again by The branic Empire where it was not their front line that was still in Gul at this time um and then a construction of the Southern vaults richro rver um sorry richro orchester p and limb as part of a defensive line against an invasion from constantius glorus which didn't happen then where I suggested there a lulling settlement I suggest that electus failed in his attempt to finish these FS before an invasion happened he is also building a building in London a huge one mint Palace you know nightclub whatever anyone wants to interpret it as nobody really knows but he a lot of resources would have gone into this building in London there's a lulling settlement um at this stage and it picks up again in the 83 40s there is potential coming evidence from the Ampitheater excavations which as part of which could suggest that as well we do see a similar Gap um another Point far removed from where the excavation went in went on inside the fort so into the 4th Century we possibly have a new timeline here of a reoccupation and completion of the for under the house of Constantine um which then lasts into the fifth century I'm not part of this talk because it would be a whole other talk there's possibly a reorganization of internal features in the 380s and 390s um under Magnus Maximus and removing the legions from Britain and then the reoccupation until the supposed letter in ad410 um but it's this main bit I want to draw attention to that Andrew was person was possibly slightly right about this about electors not having competed them because it looks like they were still being made or made good in the mid fifth century sorry mid fourth Century this leaves the conundrum of Walton castle and bur castle in the east as well why nine of 11 why were there only nine faults listed in the notia dignitatum and not all 11 what I suggest is that these could be added later they're missed off an ad 340s 350s list when it seems like this position of the count of the Saxon Shore is brought in um and then further thoughts are added um at a later Point um if there was because at richb it's listed that the second Legion was present um the second Legion seems to be a Detachment possibly from the 340s and 350s and there only seems to be one unit per for listed um however we get a mix of material both continental and insula insula types of strap end over on the left here these supposed nail cleaner strap end see seem to be a product of Western batania from part of my um typology study of these and the one on the right sorry the one on the left actually the am for traditional aner shaped ones seem to be more of a a continental one in Mainland Britain these rarely mix but rich brother is 30 all of these and there's a wide mix of the Styles so it might suggest the legion brought these new styles with them to richb um from the West in the 4th Century while mixing with con ental troops um who were using this style that was known to them or Continental troops coming later on so there isn't only one unit at Rich um I have identified potential Cavalry unit there as well um very late in the 4th Century possibly replacing the Legion or working side by side with them but we don't know what this means for other faults we're assuming one per one Legion per for one unit per for but that might not be the case but what's interesting is how the Forts and local towns were Garrison if you look at the material um this late military material from Richboro um you'll see it is typologically similar to Orest and the graves at around Winchester and at lank Hills however the material the military material of the 4th century is typ typologically dissimilar to that at recol um that seems to be because Rover is garrisoned by a unit that's been in Britain since um the hadrianic period so as the crow flies recor is much much closer than Portchester but is culturally very different so these fors are being garrisoned by different units being brought from different places at different times um and the material is quite similar to the local town I'm really surprised if you look back through canterbury's archaeology and found similarities between the richb and Canterbury material but maybe not so much of a c orchester and Winchester are the same and I'm sure it would track for the other Forks it definitely does and possibly for Colchester and for Caster as well so conclusions we always talk of a Saxon Shore for system system but this is not a system until the ad 340s as we see a unified system of all the fors the forts are built at different times for different purposes by different people and are utilized in different ways whether they're already standing or need rebuilding so we see British Coastal forts built during the thir Century possibly for defensive use but it's un um it's not their only use so as I say different people different times different purposes depending on circumstance Gall Empire reusing them maybe for Supply corus maybe and elus maybe for defense and Constantine again maybe to reorganize the supply of Britannia to the continent um I say from both of these short talks though Rich for is not simple um it needs relooking in much more detail than I did in my PhD there's at least another five six or seven phds in that material as it is um and if anyone knows of any any place that would give me a huge huge Grant to be able to sort it all out please let me know because I don't think it's going to be done in my lifetime or the next um there's just too much and it was never organized well in the 1920s and 30s to start with and it' be a huge task to redo it um so that's rich BR ment to end I have gone just under an hour but I was a bit late so I'll stop there um again there's much more than I could say for an hour really um what I'll do is I'll put that on and I'll try and face the camera while listening and reading to questions so thank you so much thank you so much for that fascinating talk that was brilliant and uh we certainly some of it disappeared again I don't know why it might be for some people because of the orientation on my screens you can see I've got two screens in there that's okay I can see you now you you all Goods y yeah as it is you can match up the talk to that if you if you find a moment sure yeah um I found that fascinating I love the um the fact that you found the the construction site in there and uh I love your your comparison to Felix stow and Brighton um and I think one of the interesting things for me is um in a time when there's a lot of discussions about disposal of archives yeah you know this is this is really important showing why we shouldn't be getting rid of these archives because actually there's still a lot we can learn from them and um you know they weren't always as accurate as the F it's not never final I suppose you know it also goes to show while archaeologists need to and this is going to be controversial stop digging so many holes construction get commercial archaeology gets a pass because of the laws but postex from a century gone needs a lot of research and like I say we did that dig um the ampe rich and that's just added a load more material to a site that has a lot of material that needs analyzing sure how how do rationalize the collection like that so um we got time for a few questions now um if you want to raise your hand it's in the reactions button or if you want to ask via the chat please type it in I've got um a few already so I'm just gonna shout them out to you try and make the chat bigger for myself so I can see what's going on okay cool so the first one from Steve Smith um I don't know if it's too late now but if you could just explain the uh intrusive and residual terms maybe the difference in so essentially the pits from top to bottom let's say we got one of the pits rubbish pits at 16t Deep or so logic says you'll find material if it's gradually silted and filled up weathered in deliberately filled you're going to find the earliest material at the bottom and latest material at the top so in this case first century near the bottom second century near the top um the idea in Bush Fox's mind was that um if there was a lot of first century material in the pit and a few bits of second century um then that meant a few bits of second century had to have entered the top of the pit after it was filled it was filled completely with first century and a few bits of second just sink into the top of a field more recent say recent like the last 70 years or so um is that the pits filled up over time um or even if they were filled in in one go those few bits are the few bits that exist um um at that at that time so first centy like I said imagine your your grandmother's China which is 100 years old um if that all gets smashed up 100 years after it was made um and thrown in the rubbish it might get thrown in the rubbish with a few of the bits from today um if that's the case that first century that your grandmother's China has gone in long after it was made so it's residual it's lasted um and it's lasted in from one century to the next and that's why I'm saying it's happened with the first century material it hasn't gone in soon after the last piece was made it's gone in 10 20 30 40 years after it was made and the few bits of second century are the contemporaneous few bits and pieces that are added in when the features C off that makes sense um basically they're using they're using old stuff and people you know you don't just throw your plates away you know I mean you might do a you're you know merging two households when you move in with somebody um but again you would have had those few years sure could have been from any time thank you okay question from Mark willingale it says I've been looking at the orientation of the arch which appears to be close to 106.2 Six Degrees which is 16.26% street from state to the crossing of the great star near bigbury and is the and is the angle subtended by a 72425 Pythagorean triangle south of East has there been any investigation and debate on the orientation of the arch short answer is absolutely none whatsoever um the reason being is because I should have put some pictures in some of my slides there the orientation of wling Street changes um the line of it changes there's an earlier road than the arch and then it shifts so wling Street as was um before the Sha Fort walls um is under part of one of the part of the west gate of the Sha for and that gate is on the line of the quadron Arch the quadron Arch is not on the first century alignment um so they even change it within the second century and I tell you point there there could have been some deliberate reasoning for that I don't know if that's because of the orientation where the ships would have come in to Richboro whether it's the alignment aligning it to the road from the harbor that needs more investigation um but I wouldn't be surprised if there is some purpose to the orientation as it is um and when you say the orientation as it is is that magnetic north or True North because we know magnetic north changed basically on how we found the uh the ampat walls um obviously we know Romans did this kind of stuff we know they were deliberate and one part they were deliberate in and this was brilliant um Tony wmart was giv a talk on the um the amphitheater and it was oh the other Tony I can't remember which one um pointed out ask basically in the chat um is the Ampitheater built on the alignment of the solers and I quickly pulled up a sun um tracker on my computer put in the SCE and lo and behold first thing in the morning The Sun Shines right into the entrance of the amphitheater interesting I was like how on Earth do we not notice that when we were digging how did no one think to check that one so they were doing this stuff around that I mean throughout the Empire you see this so I wouldn't be surprised if there was some deliberate reasoning for it because the alignment of whing Street changes between the first and second century it's not much but it does you can see it when you go there look at the alignment of the cross on the platform to the new Gateway that's built and they are off thank you okay um I don't know this is an actual question or maybe an offer for something for you here uh it's from M Stevenson it says some samum from richborough was given to St Joseph's Convent School in chattan I don't know when when the school was closed down in the 1970s I ended up with this material I took some of the more complete pieces back to richb and gave them back to their surprise and confusion but I think I may still have some of the smaller bits I'm not sure there been a box I haven't looked at for years contact me if there might be any point of it for you so there you go there's some you got if they've got writing on them I'll take them um because not all the bits of poy are marked up with their context um so um perhaps what we'll do is we will circulate your work email later to our yeah then um they can get in touch with you and you can discuss that um Tim cul has asked does your research impact our understanding of when the amphitheater was built quite possibly and this will actually feed into the clbr tile question so I'm going to tackle both of those at the moment so evidence on the site and I can't completely confirm this I'm waiting to hear from Tony about some of the what I've been doing with the material suggests a date after the 870s for the amphitheater but that is very scant evidence and the problem with amphitheaters are they were public buildings that were cleaned regular so you're not going to find a lot of material in them no amp activation finds a lot of material outside of them loads there was a key difference between the inside and out not the construction ampat but when it was stopped being used inside the amphitheater or the final um final deposits in the amp suggested there were coins mostly the radiate period and some early constantinian outside the ere so there was nothing earlier than the 340s and that ending part fits nicely with what I said about new constantinian occupation and potentially a different use of the Ampitheater afterwards early Amphitheater difficult to say possibly we didn't get any first century coins and the only first century coin is one of demission known from the Victorian excavations but I'm putting my money on an a70s um an 870s build date and what we have done is I to I bumped into one of the Specialists working on the poing the building material from that excavation and I said recommend any um any tile any ceramic tile that we C samples from the walls that was in situ to test him for the material for clbr fabric I would not be surprised I wouldn't be surprised if it's a military bill [Music] um now and I think in the same way it's a bit like London you've got this early activity maybe some official military Etc and then attracts people around now going on to the clbr tile um this is interesting why do we not have a lot at richb um but we do from other places um I keep looking back at the map of supposed clbr TI sites across Kent and across Sussex and they're all inland I would not be surprised if people were buying up job lots of old tile to use now if my hypothesis is correct that is Richboro was the base for the classes Botanica that wasn't raised until the late first century BC because the main Fleet in the channel was um the gerica it wasn't the British Fleet um then they could have moved a lot of material from Rich BR we used at DOA the dates could possibly line up um it wouldn't surprise me but it is weird that we only have a handful of tiles richb which seems to them be earlier but why are they all there's so many at DOA so many STS um like I said I'd love to get hold of the building material from that archive and check the bits a marble that we found to see if they match the building material for the monument as well um we would have to see but the point being is that you have to go back and start looking at the classes Botanica because there's the famous claudian dated um Naval soldiers Tombstone a bin and everyone places ex claudian and he's a member of the British Fleet it doesn't say that on the tombstone but it's a repeated thing that nobody goes back and looks at it he's just a member of a fleet and if that's the German fate that was already being raised possibly by cicular possibly used by cicular ready to invade Britain then why wouldn't Claudius make use of it why raise a whole other Fleet we have to look at the ban CL ban again um and look more in depth at these um the tile material that sounds like an interesting project another interesting projects that um there's another PhD again yeah we need more funding for phds I feel is what we're we're getting from all of this um so that was the question from Gordon there you kind of covered that and the the tiles so we got a last question here from Mark Samuel it says have you tried to see how the long Citadel fits with your plan um fits with your plan comparisons this seems to be a Saxon sh but in the wrong place like Cardiff is it parochial to think only of a specific British organization it really is um the reason being is because if you if you're talking about that period because was there from the first century was seemingly used as a point for The Invasion whether it was the main um disembarking Point as such [Music] um if we're talking about the Sha for period it makes tot and colleague in the continent well to has done a lot on the Continental thoughts if you're rebuilding or if you're building any fors like richb and the southern fors or even the Eastern ones you need somewhere you're going to and there are similar dates to fults along the French and Belgian Belgian coasts so because both Empires G and banic they did control their front line was in G they control that Coast they're going to be building on both sides and the dates do line up quite nicely the only problem we have is and I tried getting this together but there was a lot of reasons it never came together is to talk to the people who have been working on these thoughts on the continent and we need this cross continent connection even more now because they haven't got access to our material and we haven't got access to theirs so when he wrote his book on these he was writing at the same time as I was doing rich and we could have swapped a lot of notes um as my redating came out after his book was published or like months after his book was published so we really could have and work together on that but yeah there is definitely um a lot going on there and on that last one I am uh I am interested in that horde as well that's come up recently as well as what Simon and others and Sam Warhead they're interested in limers because again we need to revisit those and Lim is a really good Contender um yeah uh there's a lot of round Rich BR that's the problem the focus has always been on the four which only makes up 11% or 10 11% of the entire occupied area of Rich Island now anyone who does archaeology knows you know when you go into a site you're probably doing a 10% sample well if your 10% sample is that one area you haven't got the sign yeah so sorry this is my sleepy daughter has just just come he should be in bed right now um anyway I think um I am going to let you uh let you get off now that yeah sorry everyone late thank you so so much um any other questions we will forward over to you and hopefully you know we can sort any ansers unless you know there's anything else you wanted to add before you no but I had just read about I had heard about stuff going on down at DOA and reading that and like oh if there is material there there knows I'm interested in that lump of marel when you do a PhD on it you end up being stressful enough what I'll do is I'll send over the slides as well you want to match them up with talk and such and yeah fantastic and um if it's okay with you we will put this up on our YouTube channel in a future if that's okay with you yeah um thank you so much Phil thank you really appreciate it fascinating talk and obviously there's still lots of work um available down there in richbo and the whole Kent Coast it seems thank you everybody for attending um it's been another wonderful talk sorry about some of our little technical issues there we are still learning and we're getting there and I'm sure we will we have it all smoothed out by the end of the year I hope speaking of which we have upcoming talks now um note that the talk that is on our website for the Thursday the 26th has had to be changed we will have a speaker for that week but the details are to be confirmed and the talk that Andrew Mayfield was going to give us about Randall Mana revealed Community archaeology excavations in sha Woods Country Park um we will be rescheduling that as well so we will get those details to you very soon uh Thursday the 24th of October we have diving with a purpose the SST Thompson project given by Tad tabara and on Thursday the 14th of November we have seia seus online talk with Dr Simon Elliot um and yes we will have more going on into next year um and if you are not yet a member please do consider joining us you know our memberships they Keep Us Alive they what we you guys are who we do it all for so um this allows us to get more things out about the history and Heritage of Kent and continue to publicize and promote and to have fantastic Talks by people like Philip um thank you all very much for joining us and we look forward to seeing you at the next one all right guys have a lovely evening thanks again for looking uh for like sticking with us and we'll see you soon