The Festival of British Archaeology at Fishbourne Roman Palace

The Festival of British Archaeology at Fishbourne Roman 

Palace

This year will be my fourth consecutive year helping out at Fishbourne Roman Palace’s Festival of British Archaeology Event (FOBA), so I thought what better way to celebrate this then write about what makes this event so much fun to work on, and why I would urge anyone to come along!

The festival’s main selling point is the archaeological dig at the palace which anyone can join in. The excavation takes place on top of the spoil heaps at the site which are the two large mounds visible near the car park. The spoil heaps were chosen as the best area to excavate to help identify what was missed in the original excavations at the site. From the last four years of working on the spoil heaps, the excavations have shown that roof tile and oyster shells were very commonly ‘missed’ however some smaller finds were also missed as well.

Figure 1: Roman Tesserae found at Fishbourne’s FOBA event. Rare anywhere else in Britain, but if you have a good eye you are likely to find one here!

Over the past 4 years, as well as copious amounts of roof tile and oyster shell, I have seen people unearth building stone used in the palace (Very commonly), pottery and samian ware (quite commonly), Roman Tessearae (Also quite commonly), and animal bone and roman metalwork (A bit rarer). However my top finds from the past working there have to be one of the few Roman coins we have found in the spoil heaps, and my personal favourite which was 5 or 6 tesserae which were still mortared together, a chunk of a now lost mosaic.

As well as having the a large amount of finds, another positive of excavating the spoil heaps is that there is no ‘stratigraphy’ or contexts to record, meaning any levels of experience can come and have a go at digging without worrying about going through anything too important!

The excavation aspect of FOBA can go on for as long or little time as you want, however other activities are available at the site as well. Previous activities have included practicing archaeological drawing (See figure 2), using archaeological equipment such as dumpy levels (See figure 3) and geophysics and finally washing and recording your finds to take to an expert to identify!

Figure 2: Our planning grid/archaeological drawing activity at FOBA.

Figure 3: Our survey equipment/dumpy level activity at FOBA.

Although I can’t say for sure what activities will be available this year, I have been promised that the excavation is going to go ahead and will be one of the biggest yet. So if you fancy a day out excavating one of the most famous archaeological sites in Britain, this is a great opportunity to do so, and have a fun family day out at the same time!

I will be there every day that is not a Monday, Tuesday or Wednesday. So if you are around one of the days I am there and find something exciting (Preferably bone), remember to bring it to me first!

Fishbourne Roman Palace’s Festival of British Archaeology Event Runs from the 19 – 29^th July. The event is free to all paying visitors to the museum, however there is a suggested donation of £1 per digger to help pay for all the equipment etc that is used by the event.