Hi there! Steve Willis, of the department of Classical and Archaeological Studies at the University of Kent.
I'm just introducing myself to you; I'm a field archaeologist and lecturer,
and my specialisms are: the Iron Age - the Celtic period - and the Roman period in Britain and Europe.
We're here today at Bourne Park
because this is one of the locations
where we undertook our training
excavation in 2016 for students and it's
the only this is a tremendous site a
classic its picturesque
really downright lies the Roman Road
from Canterbury and it's from that road
that you would have seen this villa this
is one of the great thoroughfares of
Roman Britain from the Port of Dover to
Canterbury to London one of the ideas of
having a villa in the countryside is to
be seen: you show off your wealth, your
importance, your "Romanitas," and it would
be here to see for all those travellers
passing by into and out of the province of Roman Britain.
The villa was found here following up on aerial photographs and geophysical survey.
very very interesting site.
And the other trench examined
what is likely to have been perhaps a
ceremonial building which may also have
had a religious function to it so all
sorts of interesting things going on
here so where our students went last
year for their excavations with us were
training activation and also our
excavation project in Lincolnshire do
look at our blog, "Our Neighbours the
Romans" just Google "Our Neighbours the
Romans"
you'll find out the story of this
site and the excavation experience
representative of what this is all about
a great asset of field archaeology
teaching field archaeology alongside the
classroom based lecture based practical
lab work we do at the University of
Kent is it brings the point of
discovery to the students they learn the
methods they are discovering things at
the point of a trowel they're learning
through those methods and it's really
exciting there's no substitute for it it
brings the theory together with the
practice the understanding how the sites
were laid out how the finds relate to
those sites and the wider picture of how
people lived in the part of three
programs of study you can study ancient
history you could do classical studies
you can do archeological and classical
studies but whichever program of study
you take you know have the opportunity
to participate in these sorts of
excavations discovery modules like that
if you want to take this as a formal
module, you can do. The University of
Kent open for business and we'll be up
and running in our full program this
September. So we look forward to greeting you with the start of a new term!
