Page 67 - Hindsight Issue 26 April 2020

HeRItAge
latter site had been excavated during the 1980s by stephen Young, a professional archaeologist living in the parish.
With the agreement of the landowner, Dave and steve reported the new site to stephen Young. He then arranged a programme of geophysical survey, field walking and an initial exploratory small scale excavation in 1999. the full scale Whitehall project commenced in 2000 with the excavations continuing until 2012 utilising a force of volunteers, coupled in the earlier years with students both from the UK and as far away as the south Pacific Islands.
the Whitehall site, which is still subject to ongoing post excavation work and report, has produced two bath houses, each containing several phases of redevelopment and probably purpose. Whilst the actual villa is not unusual, the site has produced various enigmas including the bath houses and a nationally important collection of hare bones. the reason for these has yet to be established. the latest firing of the last bath house was circa 450AD; this has been scientifically confirmed. It must be stressed that Whitehall is a society member of CLAsP and therefore informs the CLAsP project.
Watling Street cemetery
In addition to the Romano-British element at Whitehall we also have an immediate post Roman to early Anglo-saxon cemetery adjacent to Watling street, the earliest burial here being of a similar date to the last use of the bath house. A further excavation is scheduled here later this year, which, coupled with a programme of scientific testing, will hopefully permit us to begin to develop some conclusions about the story of the people buried here and also the wider question of the transition from the Romano-British period into the earliest phases of the Anglo- saxon era.
Romano-British sites
since the earliest days of CLAsP our work has been focussed on revealing the holistic identity of the Romano-British landscape of west northamptonshire through our Local People – Local Past project. this work has identified several new sites from this era and collated information about others. A significant interim report on this project can be seen on our website: www.claspweb.org.uk
In addition to our work on the network of villas we are also researching the relevance of the towns equally spaced along Watling street; currently we are focussing on Bannaventa to the east of Daventry. through structured programmes of field walking, metal detecting and geophysical surveys we have fully identified the extent of the previously unknown defences of the 1st to 2nd century town, double the size of the later 3rd to 4th century town. We have a lot more work to do at Bannaventa understanding the defended town and its hinterland, including
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