Time Team S20-E08 Mystery of the Thames-side Villa

In the 1960s, a young PhD student decided to excavate a South Oxfordshire field where a farmer was regularly ploughing up Roman remains.

He found a mosaic and the stone walls of what was clearly a Roman building, in an area where the remains of few Roman buildings had ever been found. But he never found enough evidence to prove exactly what was there.

Now aerial pictures show clear building lines in the ground, indicating that there was something big in the field, and the farmer who owns it continues to turn up Roman brick and tile.

But what is the building, and why is it here? And does its location indicate how the Thames's course has shifted in the last 2000 years? Time Team aim to finish the job the student started 50 years ago.

Geophysics get to work and Roman pottery almost falls out of the first trenches. With finds like that, clear crop marks and old drawings, what can possibly go wrong?

Видео Time Team S20-E08 Mystery of the Thames-side Villa канала Reijer Zaaijer