In category: General posts

Over the past four weeks, the students have found a lot of pottery which will help with dating and perhaps in future we’ll be able to use ceramic residue analysis to find out what foods were being cooked or stored within them. This includes a lovely ‘indented beaker’, used for serving drinks, painted pottery and […]

Now that the University of Exeter fieldschool has ended, we can update you on some of the key discoveries and finds so far. The main villa (Area 1) Despite the challenging weather, the students have worked hard to uncover the full layout of the villa building. We now understanding that the first villa was a […]

We welcomed over 570 visitors to our open day on 6 June, despite the horrendous wet weather! We hope you enjoyed seeing the site. Huge thanks to all the students and volunteers who gave tours and helped to run the day. The site is open any weekday 10am – 4pm until 17 July, and our […]

We have some interactive 3D models available of our excavation trenches, thanks to Prof Leif Isaksen who has been out on site with his drone: https://scotchbon.net/battensfarm There are three models for you to explore, all captured on 8 June 2026: Area 1 (the main villa) Area 2 (outbuildings) Mosaic Leif will be out to update […]

Volunteer Dave Hennings has made a fantastically detailed film revealing the discoveries made during our two-week April excavation season:

Over the past couple of weeks, two enormous trenches have been opened up on site, one over the main villa range, and another over a series of ancillary buildings. These will be the focus of excavations over the next nine weeks. Since Wednesday, around 65 first year university students, all studying for archaeology degrees at […]

We will be borrowing a 13-seater Tiverton Community Minibus for each of our open days, the next one being Saturday 11 July. This will run a free service between Tiverton, the excavation site and Cullompton, for older residents and those will disabilities who would otherwise find it difficult to visit the site. There will be […]

During the second half of April, Cotswold Archaeology and a team of existing TAG and SPS members undertook some small-scale excavations on site, to provide more information about what we might expect to find in the summer, and to help us locate our large open-area trenches in the best place. Two trial (or ‘evaluation’) trenches […]

We have now run three community events, to provide information for local people about the project and encourage volunteers. Thanks to all the volunteers from TAG and SPS who helped to organise and run these events. Thanks especially to John Hill for bringing along his finds, and to Olly, our Roman centurion! Friday 6 February, […]

We’re pleased to announce that the SHARE project has appointed our main archaeology contractor, Cotswold Archaeology. They will be leading the community excavations, including volunteer training, and overseeing the analysis and writing up of everything we find, in the ‘post-excavation’ stage of the project. Cotswold Archaeology are one of the largest archaeological contractors in Britain […]