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The final two full weeks of the work, with our third hard-working
rotation of volunteers and students have resulted in a totally new
interpretation of the Maryport pits. The old story that the Maryport
altars were reverently and ritually buried has now been comprehensively
overturned.
The weather has continued hot and fine, and on Monday of week six the
Maryport retained fire brigade attended to wet down the site. 1,500
gallons of water (three fire trucks full) were hosed onto the site. This
allowed us to see the archaeology better, and softened the ground
briefly, but we were soon back to a baked-out site.
The extension of the site at the beginning of week 5 has been key to our
new understanding of the site - no fewer than ten actual Roman pits have
now been excavated in addition to the four previously reported that were
the result of early excavation.
The excavation of these pits has produced extraordinary results.
Although all but the one intact pit noted in the last blog have been at
least partially investigated by previous excavators of the site -
principally Humphrey Senhouse in 1870 – the other six have retained at
least some element of their Roman fill.
Like the completely undisturbed pit, this fill consisted of a mass of
stone, broken red sandstone predominated, including the characteristic
square-faced and tapered Roman building stones, but there were also many
granite boulders, some of them extremely large.
An archaeological phenomenon that occurred in all of the pits had
puzzled us. All featured a 300mm square, greenish sandy stain in the
base. This was explained by the excavation of a pit in the edge of the
excavation. In this pit the Victorian excavators had stopped when they
encountered a huge granite boulder. We were not deterred by this, and
Mike managed to get the stone out of the hole using chocks and levers.
The boulder was in the top of surviving Roman pit fill 450mm deep.
In section, when this fill had been removed was the clear impression of
a timber post, rotted in situ, 300mm wide. In the edges and base of the
post-pipe was the same light green stained sand as we had observed in
the base of the pits that had been fully or extensively previously
excavated. It had become clear that these stains represented the bases
of enormous timber posts, 300mm (basically one Roman foot) square,
placed into post-pits averaging 1.2m square, and 1.3m deep. The posts
were packed around by a mass of heavy stones within the pits.
Two pits gave us the full story, however. These had been disturbed by
our predecessors, but while most of the disturbed pits respected the
shape of the original Roman features, these two did not. They had been
approached from one side and the antiquarian pits thus removed only a
small amount of the top of the Roman stone filling. In both cases the
300mm square post-pipe could be seen in the surface of the Roman fill,
and it was possible to properly record the full depth of the post-pipes,
and to see the layered stone packing with relation to the original post
position. This showed how impressive and massive these posts, and
therefore the structure to which they belonged, really were.
 In the antiquarian fill of one of these two pits a fragment of the
corner of the capital of an
altar was found. All Roman altars, and certainly all of the
Maryport collection, were different. The basic shape was consistent, but
the decoration is never the same.
Our fragment showed a six-petalled rosette on one face and a circle
on the other. Jane and Emma compared the fragment with the altars in the
museum, and soon realised that our fragment was the missing back corner
of one of the stones dedicated by Marcus Maenius Agrippa, tribune of the
first cohort of Spaniards during the reign
of Hadrian (RIB 823). Tony looked the stone up with the hope of
identifying which pit the altar was discovered in during the 1870 work.
A sketch plan of the pits by John Collingwood Bruce identified which
altars came from the nine (out of 57) pits on his plan in which complete
altars were found. The hope was that we might make some sense of this
unreliable source. The result of the research was surprising, for this
altar was not found in 1870 – it was first recorded by John Horsley in
the garden of Netherhall, where it was being used as the base of an
ornamental sundial in 1725!
This has a number of exciting implications. Firstly, the presence of the
fragment in the pit is clear evidence that the altar was originally
found in our pit. The date of the first recording of the altar shows that it was dug out in the
seventeenth or eighteenth century, and the over-cut of the Roman pit
shows that these excavators did not share the apparent respect for the
shape of the Roman pits shown by their successors in 1870. As the altar
was clearly deposited in the top of the pit, it seems likely that this
altar was, like the 1870 group, discovered accidentally in ploughing,
removed - losing one corner in the process - and taken to Netherhall.
It is a little ironic that this altar, the circumstances of whose
discovery were completely unknown, is now the only Maryport altar for
which the archaeological context is now firmly established.
This context revolutionises our understanding of the buried Roman altars
at Maryport which have been so widely discussed. The space at the top of
the pit containing the altar fragment within the post-Roman fill was
virtually identical to the dimensions of the altar laid flat. The altar
had been reused in the packing of the pit around the timber post. This
shows that the Maryport pits containing complete altars are, in fact,
massive post-pits in which the altars have been used simply as packing.
There was no ritual deposition of these stones - when buried they were
simply convenient foundation packing material.
Although we have not discovered the original context in which the altars
stood when in use, we have spectacularly shown the circumstances of
their burial. We have also opened up a new question – just what was this
massively-founded timber structure on the top of this very prominent
hill? We have six post-pits in line, forming one wall of a building, but
we do not have the dimensions or plan of the building. As well as the
line of six, we also have a curving group of four pits. Were there two
successive buildings – one with a curved shape and one straight – and
how do these relate chronologically? Michael Jarrett wrote in 1966 that
he had seen an accurate plan of the pits (as opposed to the Bruce plan).
This document, now lost, apparently showed that some of the pits intercut. Perhaps these intercutting pits reflect successive buildings
based on these massive post holes.
In other developments, continued work on the curving enclosure ditch has
revealed an entrance on the west side – towards the extramural
settlement to the fort which is known from geophysical survey. Pottery
from the ditch fill is now dated to the late third or early fourth
century. The ditch is associated with the pits because an altar fragment
was found in its primary fill, but we do not have real evidence to prove
that the ditch and the pits go together. This can only be demonstrated
through a stratigraphic link that does not exist in the area currently
open.
We are now entering our final week. It remains to complete the
excavation of the last few features and to complete recording.
Backfilling will take place on 21st July. We would like sincerely to
thank all of the many people who have worked so hard and so cheerfully
on the site, students and volunteers, and who have produced such
spectacular results from the project.
- PETER GREGGAINS, chairman of the Senhouse Museum Trust said: "The
excavation has really brought the site to life. The altars excavated in
1870 are an internationally important find because of the information
they provide about the lives of commanding officers in the Roman empire.
Now we are beginning to see how the site here at Maryport developed too.
"As well as the archaeological team 28 local people have been involved
as volunteers. We hope they have enjoyed the experience and we would
like to thank them for their valuable contributions, alongside our
regular Senhouse volunteer guides, allowing the team to do so much on
the site."
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