The Ostia Excavations of 2009 will be presented in a public lecture at the Kent Archaeological Fieldwork Evening on 24th November in Canterbury, in the Grimond Lecture Theatre 1, on the Canterbury Campus. The evening lasts from 7.15pm to 10pm. Entrance is free and all are welcome.

For details click here

I escaped this morning at 7.30am. Family commitments (my 10 week old son) mean that I cant stay longer though I will return if more remains to be done. Poor Judith was left to backfill the last corner of the palaestra, along with Axel and his team who are trying to get some (dry)  photos of the inscriptions preserved in mortar within their area. But the backfilling was completed and Judith, probably our hardiest digger this year, was finally able to go home. I managed to arrive back just in time to pick up my son Aidan from the Eurostar station at Ashford, after he had spent the month in Paris with his Mum. Aidan is now transformed: he is a little boy who smiles, giggles and looks like his Dad, who wonders quite what the stress of the last five weeks was all about, when there was this little chap to look after.

Luke Lavan 23/09/2009

Today was hard. We are down to just Michael Mulryan, Judith and myself, and we spent the day back-filling, with some help from a volunteer from the German team in the afternoon. A large area was covered but it was not quite enough. When we were turned off the site at 7pm, a half of the temple area in the palaestra was still to be done, though all other holes had been backfilled. I am amazed by Judith Wolf’s stamina. She is a model digger, who has got the technique of shovelling down to a fine art. The boot hits the back of the shovel and whack, the dirt goes in the barrow, as fast as I can empty it, hour after hour. Without her we would have been in big trouble.

The rain won’t entirely go away. There is some sun, but also thunderstorms, giving the workers a drenching from time to time. This was particularly annoying when moving the finds to the depot in barrows. Unfortunately we discovered a big problem when emptying the shed – that we had forgotten a whole stack of finds there which needed to go into the depot. However, the depot is full, so we have had to use a temporary storage outside for half of these finds until the sopraintendenza, who treated us very kindly in this matter, can find a little more space. We will have to organise ourselves better next year, as this mistake led to us getting both our storage estimate and pottery selection strategy wrong.

Luke Lavan 22/09/2009

Today we tried to store all the domestic and digging equipment in a lockup garage in the west of Rome. Easier said than done. At lunchtime Bill and Luke went off to hire a van. They did this with surprising speed, via the metro and a taxi across the city which allowed Bill to take in a few of the sites after weeks stuck on the road driving from campsite to dig site, everyday since August 14th. We saw the Porta Ostiense, Santa Sabina, and drove up the Janiculum past a great view across the city. Getting the domestic and digging equipment back to the lock up was not easy. A classic Roman thunderstorm made mid-afternoon driving into something of as challenge, as Luke got drenched, as did those working on site. In the end we got all the equipment into the store in time, though both Bill and Michael Joyce had pulled muscles by the end of it.

Back on site the job of back filling is pre-occupying everyone, apart from Michael Mulryan who is accessioning the finds for the depot. Axel is trying out the  Holmes boom on his part of the site and is enjoying the experimenting, though as you might guess, the Germans can think of an easier way of doing this, than with this improvised English device. Provisionally it looks like the boom is working well, especially now that we have a new more powerful remote control: a good photo mosaic is likely to result. Today the German team have started to outnumber the British group – as nearly all of the staff have now gone home or are leaving tomorrow.

Luke Lavan 21/09/2009

A core team now remains on site, of about 7 diggers and specialists, who are trying to backfill and finish off the remaining jobs. New discoveries have not entirely stopped. Luke has revealed a definite cut in the sondage in the façade, which helps to confirm the relative phasing of the forum, by cleaning up a wall. In doing so he found an enormous amphora fragment with two handles and a spout that will certainly be datable. There was also an attempt to photograph the cistern, although this was less successful. Good shots were taken of the well-preserved baths praefurnia under the forum, but the cistern wall as a whole could not be caught in a photo mosaic – it will have to be planned. Axel is still making discoveries in his area, notably about the destruction of the baths under our forum, which he now believes were destroyed in a sudden catastrophe such as an earthquake, before being levelled down. Late phases of the cistern are also appearing, that may by early medieval in character. Here Elizabeth  Pamberg, our pottery specialist may be able to help, as she has identified Byzantine pottery in this area, which may relate to the medieval houses found here.

Luke Lavan 20/09/2009

We are now doing the back-filling across the site. This involves putting a white cloth (tessuto) down on the site and then covering it with spoil. This is a somewhat depressing process, which resembles putting a shroud on the site, although there is the opportunity to make togas, or to pose as Sarauman the White in Luke’s case. Today is the last day for the Americans. They have made a great contribution to the site, having come (in most cases) from having no experience to a good level of competence in just four weeks. Let’s hope that it is not too long before we see some of them in Canterbury.

Lloyd Bosworth is now trying out our modified version of the Holmes’ Boom. This is a crane-like device which allows horizontal photographs to be taken at speed, permitting a photo mosaic to be established across the whole palaestra area. Just so long as no one gets hit on the head by this camera on a window- washing pole (which is what our version is), everything goes ok,, and the device works very speedily. Luke has finished a final bit of cleaning in the foro della statua eroica portico. This revealed that the floor make up layer is composed of a very rich rubbish deposit, full of bones and large pieces of ceramic – we hope to environmentally sample it next year.

Luke Lavan 19/09/2009

We have today removed two large blocks from the 4th c. temple in the palaestra. This has revealed yet more of the revetment around the cult statue pediment and the opus sectile (marble tile) floor that surrounded it. Sometimes there are bits of marble tile in situ, otherwise there are traces in the mortar where the paving used to be. We are now trying to draw and photograph the whole structure before we leave.  Hopefully from this work we will be able to obtain enough information to reconstruct the decoration of the interior of the building.

The Kent students left today, cutting our workforce by over half. This was a sad occasion for the UCLA students and all the staff, although we were all buoyed by the knowledge of what the team has achieved in the short space of four weeks, or, in the case of some students, only three weeks. We had a last drink at Luigi’s bar in the Borgo and then it was off to the airport. Despite our parting, the enduring feeling was of achievement and adversity (from heat, rain and a demanding schedule) overcome. It was truly difficult to do any archaeology in the time frame, given that much of the time was spent either removing backfill or putting it back, or drawing what we found, but the reality is that we now have a good idea of the maintenance and use of public space at Ostia in late antiquity that was not available four weeks ago. Well done team!

Luke Lavan 18/09/2009

Ana continued to work on the mortar this morning on site, providing new observations about the decoration of the nymphaeum opposite the forum, and surveying the mortar across the palaestra. We were all very sad to see here leave, as her skill in both excavation and conservation has brought a whole new area of scholarship  to the study of our site, from which we have benefited enormously. She has also cheered us all up enormously, especially the Spanish speakers amongst us.

In the evening the team went off to have a pizza at a children’s restaurant (Chi Qui Park in Ostia Lido) run by an English lady. Sounds a bit weird doesn’t it? We discovered it by accident and it does excellent pizza, easily the best we have eaten on this trip. The restaurant also has a children’s gym complete with ball baths, which the team greatly enjoyed diving into to let off steam at the end of their excavation.

Luke Lavan 17/09/2009

Luke, Michael and Paolo today visited the archives of the sopraintendenza. We were able to find a range of old photographs from the early excavations of the palaestra which provided some details of the clearance work that took place in the 1920s and at other times. We have been able to confirm that no serious records we taken at that time, especially not detailed archaeological plans of the complex, meaning that our work there is not in vain, and is really recording new archaeological features. It seems that the early diggers really were far more interested in the baths. However, we did find out that the columns which now stand upright in the palaestra portico were all out of position when found, some of them being at the centre of the palaestra in a group. We were also able to study some of the statues found in the square, including one of a late antique governor, and also the head of a sheep, which was perhaps part of a mythological group.

The evening brought rain – lots of it. It rained heavily for about 10 hours, leaving three of the tents flooded. The intensity of the rainfall provided some entertainment for the team, although by two in the morning it had become a little wearing, and even more so at four and at seven, by which time it hadn’t stopped raining. Many of us decided to entirely abandon drenched washing, that was unlikely now to dry before departure. This has been added to a growing heap of rejected shoes, which through being soaked or ruined on site are now piling up as rubbish outside the office chalet door.

Luke Lavan 16/09/2009

Today the heavens opened, with an almost comic timing. Luke was giving a site tour to the whole team and had just reached the late Roman temple. He stood there speculating that it might be a temple to Hercules or Jupiter, as official personifications of late Roman pagan emperors. The skies darkened and thunder rumbled. It seemed that the thunderbolt would strike at any moment, as Luke discussed the details of where the cult statue would have stood. He was absolutely not tempted to mount the pedestal, despite the feelings of the onlooking team that a lightning strike might well lighten up the character of their director somewhat. The heavens did open however, and we all ran for cover in the adjacent vaulted room, until the sky cleared for a few more hours of digging.

We are hoping now that the rain has come digging will be easier. The dig is now reaching a climax, as we are reaching the best material in the last few days. So far things are going well, but it will take all of our strength to keep our nerve, when faced with changing circumstances this week, to finish the recording on time. We have started conserving inscriptions imprinted in reverse into the mortar and also have begun studying the mortar levels elsewhere. This work has allowed us to confirm that the mortar level of the forum paving really does cover over a Constantinian apse of the Forum Baths, giving us a clear terminus post-quem for the whole complex. Also the sondage by the façade, dug by Maria Chavez- Hoenes and Kelly Madigan has revealed that the great porticoed entrance to the forum cuts through a wall of the demolished baths under the forum, and that both cut an early road: the sequence is finally seems clear, after much confusion.

Luke Lavan 14/09/2009