“They found dozens of tiny gems with engraved figures of Roman gods and goddesses on them”

PROFESSOR ALICE ROBERTS (left) tells us about her returning series that charts the discoveries made over a year in British archaeology

How is the latest series of Digging for Britain arranged?

The series includes six programmes, each focusing on a geographic area. This year we have sites spanning a huge depth of time: from 300,000-year-old Palaeolithic hand-axes to Second World War defences.

What were the highlights for you? Three discoveries really stood out for me. One was the unearthing of an unknown bathhouse in Carlisle. Archaeologists from Wardell Armstrong dug down through medieval layers and came to monumental masonry that was clearly Roman. Carlisle was, of course, an important Roman town, at the western end of Hadrian’s Wall.

But it was their smaller finds that really blew me away. The drains of the bathhouse were perfectly preserved. The archaeologists carefully sieved the sediment inside them and found dozens of tiny gems with engraved figures of Roman gods and goddesses on them. These were from signet rings. In the hot and steamy atmosphere of the baths, they had dropped out and been washed down the drains. I could imagine rich Romans emerging, after a good bathe and gossip, only to find that they’d lost their favourite gemstones!

And how about the other discoveries? Another highlight was the discovery of a mysterious bronze dodecahedron found during excavations by the Norton Disney

32 of these strange objects already known from Britain, but this one was particularly well preserved. These cast bronze artefacts have different-sized holes in each of their 12 sides. Nobody knows what they were used for. I’m hoping one of our viewers might be able to come up with the answer!

My other stand-out discovery from this year’s digs was a fifth-century date for a mosaic at Chedworth Roman Villa, from a National Trust investigation run by Martin Papworth. The villa was still being added to in the fifth century, after the Roman army had withdrawn from Britain. We have this assumption that villas fell into disuse very quickly after AD 410. At Chedworth, that clearly wasn’t the case.

When we last spoke about Digging for Britain, there was a sense of archaeology being a rapidly developing field. Is that still the case!

I’ve noticed there are a lot more digital recording and aerial drone surveys happening now. Many of the archaeologists we’ve worked with have mapped their sites in great detail using techniques such as photogrammetry and multispectral imaging. I’m particularly interested in the way that archaeogenomics [the study of ancient DNA] is transforming how we unlock information from skeletal remains. I have written a trilogy of books on burial archaeology and ancient DNA, with the latest, Crypt, out in February.

Digging for Britain will be on BBC Two in January. Alice Roberts will be on tour in February and March: alice-roberts.co.uk