The image for Day 185 of the VM_365 project shows another fragment of painted wall plaster from the Roman villa at Minster. Fragments of painted plaster from the same site were featured on Day 178 and Day 182.
This fragment of decoration depicts a seed head or flower, painted on a dark grey background. The edge of the flower or seed head has been painted in white with a yellow stem. The internal part of the flower may have originally been painted the same colour as the stem with additional detail in dark red although the paint is now worn away. Green leaves, possibly extending from the stem can be seen on the edge of the fragment.
In contrast to the figurative painting of the Deer shown on Day 178 and the architectural emulation of marble shown in Day 182, this fragment shows an abstraction from nature where a natural object has been used to inspire a painted motif.
Our image for Day 184 0f the VM_365 project is of one of the later buildings associated with the Roman Villa at Minster which has featured in a number of previous posts about important finds and artefacts that have been discovered at the site. The picture shows the two chambered furnace of a kiln that was built in the open space of the courtyard to the south of the main villa building, toward the end of the period of occupation on the villa site at the end of the 3rd century AD.
In the picture the furnace is viewed from the stoke hole across the two chambers of the kiln.
The structure was created by lining a rectangular pit that was cut into the natural clay geology with walls formed of chalk blocks. The central dividing wall was constructed partly of chalk blocks with some large rounded beach cobbles. The chalk walls were coated internally with clay, which had been fired into a hard surface by the hot air running from the stoke hole through the chambers and out through some form of chimney or vent on either side At some point one of the two chambers had been blocked and abandoned. Post holes aligned with the outer edges of the furnace demonstrated that it originally stood at the north east end of a post built barn. What had this structure been used for?
Within the soot filling the chambers were burnt grains of wheat and other cereals which suggest it was used for processing these staples of Roman agriculture. Buildings like this are often called ‘corn-driers’, but in the Roman period it would not have been necessary to reduce the moisture content of grain for storage in bulk, as is the practice in the present day. It is more likely that buildings combining long barns with kilns at one end, which are common on Roman Villa sites, were used for a process such as malting, where the controlled germination of grains allowed enzymes to turn starch into natural sugars, which could be extracted and used in other processes. Substances with a high sugar content could be used in a variety of ways to create highly nutritious or long lasting sources of food and drink, but there were few natural sources of sugars in the Roman period. One common application of artificially created sugars would have been to produce alcohol by fermentation.
Malting required the application of heat to grains over several progressive stages. To create sugar from cereals in the malting process, the grains must be made to germinate by creating the right levels of heat and moisture. The right conditions could be created by laying out the grain in the long barn, watering it and raising the temperature by firing up the kiln. As germination proceeded, it could be controlled by moving the grain up the length of the barn floor toward the heat source. Finally, once germination had reached the point where sufficient natural sugars had been created in the grain, it was arrested by laying the grain directly on to a high heat, probably by putting it on to a surface that lay directly above the two heated chambers of the kiln. The sugars in the malted grains could be washed out with hot water, the resulting sugary solution being used to feed yeasts and brew the liquid into alcohol, or the liquid malt extract could be refined into malt syrup.
The barn and the active kiln would have been a smoky and unsightly presence within the yard in front of the main villa buildings, suggesting that at this point in time it had declined in status. However, the villa complex always contained several bathhouses and heated rooms and would perhaps have had a smoky and semi-industrial character itself. The addition of another furnace in the complex was possibly less significant than it appears. Throughout its life the building had been used to direct the flow of clean water from a nearby spring, to feed the hot and cold pools of the bath-houses. The control and direction of clean hot water was a skill that would have been developed by the people who operated the villa’s facilities and it would not have been a major leap to controlling the furnaces of the malt kilns or managing the supply and heating of clean water that would have been needed to brew with the malted grains.
Many modern breweries were founded on artesian wells, using gravity to control the flow of their brewing process through its various stages. Perhaps the rest of the heated rooms and furnace chambers in the villa building had been put to similar use, the natural downhill flow of the water that had been supplied to the pools of the bathhouse being utilised for a new industrial use? The conversion of the villa complexes from grand houses into industrial facilities has been seen as a symptom of decline in status for these sites. However, the products of the malting industry would have been valuable commodities. Perhaps it is better to see the conversion of the villa site to a malting as the utilisation of a location that combined significant resources for a new use, which rendered the ornamental aspects of the earlier occupation redundant.
The VM_365 image for Day 183 shows a sherd of samian pottery from the excavations at the site of a Roman Buildings at Broadstairs which has had a hole drilled through it, so that the vessel could be repaired.
The sherd is from a first century Dragendorf 37 form bowl. made at the La Graufesenque workshops in Southern Gaul. The decoration on the bowl showed a bead border with a running animal motif, but it was poorly impressed.
The vessel must have been broken at some point and the area represented by the sherd in the picture was drilled through so that a lead rivets could be used to repair it. Lead wire was passed through two holes and either joined in a loop, or the ends may have been cut off and hammered flat on the inside of the bowl.
Today’s VM 365 image shows another example of a fragment of painted wall plaster from the Roman villa at Minster. An example of high quality naturalistic painting was shown for Day 178.
This fragment of plaster shows paint being used to imitate expensive marble panelling that was often used in very high status Roman buildings. This piece shows a dark panel border dividing two sections of pink marble. The marbled effect has been applied using splashes of dark red, white, black/grey and yellow to achieve the illusion. Large areas of wall surface decorated in this way would have produced a very striking effect intending to emulate the marble clad walls of buildings across the Roman empire.
The image for VM_365 Day 179 shows sherds of a second samian ware beaker found at the Roman villa, Minster (see previous VM 365 Day 175).
As with Day 175’s vessel this is a type known as Déch. 64, after the French archaeologist Joseph Déchelette who complied a study of decorated samian ware made in Roman Gaul which remains an important publication to this day.
This autumn has seen the 100th anniversary of his death: Déchelette was killed in October 1914 during the early campaigning of the First World War as the French Army fought the Germans in the Aisne Valley, in southern Picardy. Although over 50 he was a captain and combatant. His contribution to archaeology is being marked in several ways including a special exhibition at Mainz RGZM Museum.
Several samian ware forms are named and numbered still following his catalogue. Form 64 is rare and so to have found two such drinking beakers at one site on Thanet is an indicator of the status of the villa and its occupants. The precise detail of the shape of this beaker type can vary as the drawings of complete examples (from Oundle and Colchester) shown here demonstrate.
Oswald and Pryce 1920, Plate XXI
The beaker from VM Day 175 has a more obvious bead to its rim and its appearance is more orange whereas this second beaker is more cherry red. These sorts of details can help us with dating these vessels. Day 175’s beaker probably dates to the Trajanic – early Hadrianic period, whereas this one is slightly later (Hadrianic). Perhaps this later example was a replacement for the earlier one, or the villa owner wished to create a pair. The decoration shows a chase scene, evidently hunting dogs pursuing a hare. The images on these beakers take us directly to the Classical world and remain as fascinating to us today as they did to Déchelette in his time.
Dr Steve Willis, University of Kent
References
Oswald, F. & Pryce, T.D. 1920. An Introduction to the Study of Terra Sigillata. London.
This is day one of a series of images from the Roman painted plaster collection from the villa at Minster.
Like many Roman villas excavated in Britain there was evidence that the buildings walls and ceilings had once been decorated with finely painted plaster which served a number of purposes. It allowed the rooms to be decorated with figurative representations of familiar scenes and allusions to literature and the natural world. It also allowed the more basic materials these buildings were constructed of, to be given the appearance of more expensive and exotic materials such as marble.
The majority of the fragments from the villa site are simply painted with solid colours forming backgrounds for decorative scenes and motifs. The fragments from the site demonstrate that many of the scenes were of very high quality.
Today’s image shows an example of one of the fragments of the very high quality decorative wall paintings depicting the hind quarters of a leaping deer which can be compared with an example from Stabiae, near Pompei.
The image for VM_365 Day 175 shows sherds of a samian ware beaker found at the Roman villa, Minister.
Samian ware was the high quality table ware of the Roman world, made in Gaul, and it came in both plain and decorated types. At a villa site we might expect to see quite a bit of samian ware but whilst it is often present we have to wonder if the villa owners and guests also had something better to call on too to drink and eat from such as glass or silver vessels.
Typically samian drinking vessels are undecorated cups, but this vessel will have been more striking, more costly and more prestigious with its decorated design. It is an example of the type we call Déch. 64, after the pioneer French samian scholar Joseph Déchelette who described many samian vessels and their decoration (there will be more on him in a later post).
This is a rare form even amongst imported samian ware and so may have been especially prized at the villa. In this case we can fortunately see the name of the maker of the vessel as his workshop stamp is present. Decorated samian was made using a mould; here the potter making the mould impressed the die stamp bearing his workshop name in the mould, only it was impressed upside-down. Hence on the vessels made from this mould the name appears ’round the wrong way’ or ‘retrograde’ and upside-down.
Thoughtful potters took care over how the design appeared, but often we see mistakes in the impressed names. The stamp here reads ‘OFFILIBERTI’ (the ‘o’ is missing’) representing officina Libertus (‘the workshop of Libertus’). The lower photo shows the stamp here turned 180 degrees to read correctly. Libertus ii, as he is known, was active in Lezoux in Central Gaul in the early second century (c. AD 105-130) and his workshop has been found by archaeologists and examined. This stamp is his stamp die 2a as catalogued by Hartley and Dickinson in their monumental corpus of the stamps of samian potters.
A mould for this type of beaker was found at his workshop, but very few examples of the actual beaker with this stamp have been found in the Roman provinces. The decoration here includes a figure with arms raised which may be a rather bulky depiction of Venus, or it is a type where the figure holds a large theatrical mask above its head, only in this case there is no mask. There is a rather plump bird and also on the right side of the figure is the front part of a small deer with its head turned backwards on a tilt and its antlers therefore are pointing to the ground. These small figure types are appropriate for the size of the beaker and typical of the Roman classical world where animals are often shown.
We might imagine the Roman owner exclaimed their unhappiness when this vessel broke, especially if it contained a nice beverage at the time.
Dr Steve Willis, University of Kent
References
Hartley, B. & Dickinson, B. 2010. Names on Terra Sigillata. An index of makers’ stamps and signatures on Gallo-Roman Terra Sigillata (samian ware), Volume 5, London.
Stanfield, J. & Simpson, G. 1958. Central Gaulish Potters, Oxford University Press, London.
The image for Day 174 of the VM_365 project shows fragments of a nearly complete vessel carved from a chalk block found at the Roman building at Fort Hill, Broadstairs in 2009.
The vessel was found in a deposit of building tumble within the remains of a cellar. The edges of the separate fragments are worn and the breaks are abraded. The vessel is roughly diamond shaped and its outer dimensions measure 0.25 metres by 0.25 metres and 0.22 metres high.
The base and edges of the vessel are rounded and the outer surface has been dressed with small tool marks visible on the surface. One edge may be incomplete although its edge appears worn rather than broken. The inner dimensions of the vessel measure 0.12 by 0.12 metres and 0.13 metres deep with near vertical sides and a slightly rounded base with a smooth, lightly pitted inner surface.
The function of the vessel is unclear. Its size and shape raises some interesting possibilities in its interpretation. The bowl could have been supported upright by a free standing frame or set into a structure. Although there is no evidence of mortar adhering to it, it could have been set into a wall possibly to form a niche. It may be that it was not originally intended to rest on its base at all, but one of its flat sides. It is also feasible that one edge was originally shallower in depth than the others.
What could the vessel have held? There is no residue remaining in its interior to aid with interpretation. As a vessel it could have been used in a domestic kitchen or perhaps it was used in a more religious or ritual context perhaps for washing hands or for water purification possibly with a subsidiary vessel inside it. As a niche the vessel could have been used to hold a candle or perhaps form part of a shrine holding a household deity.
The image for Day 154 of the VM_365 project shows a 2nd to 3rd century Roman seal-box lid, found in the excavation of the Roman villa at Minster.
Seal-boxes were small bronze containers, used to seal the openings of documents and parcels. The box protected inside an impression made in a piece of wax from an intaglio seal, a carved image on a hard stone which was perhaps mounted on a signet ring. The wax seal impressions from an intaglio served as private or public signatures, guaranteeing that the contents of the sealed document or parcel were authentic.
To secure a parcel, a cord was passed through a central hole in the base of the seal-box forming a loop. The two ends of the cord were wrapped around the parcel and through two additional holes on the underside of the box. The loose ends were passed through the central loop and pulled tight, through two notches either side of the base. The cords were held in place with beeswax and the personal seal iwas pressed into the wax, protected in transit by closing the lid of the seal box over it.
Our example is a leaf shaped seal box lid in bronze, with an enamelled heart shaped design on the lid.
Further reading
Holmes, S. 1995. Seal-boxes from Roman London. London Archaeologist 7.15, 392-395.
For Day 143 of VM_365we have an image of a Roman personal grooming set excavated from the villa at Minster in 1997.
This set, all made from copper alloy, comprises (left to right) an instrument for cleaning fingernails, tweezers and an ear scoop or cosmetic spoon. The three items would have been suspended together with an iron loop, traces of which you can see adhering to the end of the ear scoop and inside the end of the tweezers. The end of the nail cleaner has broken but you can just make out the curve where the hole for the ring was.
Personal grooming sets such as these would probably have been used by both men and women and are commonly found on both settlement sites and within graves.
