Provenance of chalk tesserae from Brading Roman Villa, Isle of Wight, UK

Abstract

Thin section petrographical analysis of chalk tesserae at Brading Roman Villa, Isle of Wight, England, identifies a range of planktonic foraminifera and the calcareous algal cyst Pithonella that identify the Late Cenomanian Rotalipora cushmani Biozone (BGS Foraminiferal Biozones 4iii to 7). The local chalk crop to the north of the villa includes rocks of R. cushmani Biozone age, and indicates a likely local, rather than long distance, source for the tesserae. Microfossils provide a powerful tool for identifying the provenance of artefacts in Roman Britain.

Provenance of Chalk Tesserae from a Roman Town-House in Vine Street, Leicester

“…1 Neal 2006, 2010;Cosh 2002, 2009 2 For example, Rainey, 1973;Johnson, 1987;and more recently, Ling 1997;Witts 20053 Smith 1969Johnson 19874 Wilkinson et al 20085 Tasker et al 2011 For example, by Cosh 2002, 69. 7 Flügel andFlügel 1997;Flügel 1999, 20048 Allen and Fulford 2004Allen et al 20079 Hayward 200910 Wilkinson et al 2008Tasker et al 2011 11 Flügel 1999 12 Flügel and Flügel, 1997 13 Clay and Pollard, 1994, 46 22 Mattingly 2007, 140-1 23 Cooper 2006, 147;Higgins et al 2009, 3 24 Johnson 1980 25 Connor and Buckley 1999 26 Higgins et al 200927 Johnson 1980Higgins et al 2009 28 Cosh 2002, 110-115 29 Neal andCosh 2002, 123, 127 30 Archaeological context numbers for the locations of the redeposited tesserae and the Small Find 1084 are given in Tables 2-5. These can be related to the relevant context descriptions in Higgins et al 2009.…”

Microfossil-determined provenance of clay building materials at Burrough Hill Iron Age hill fort, Leicestershire, England

“…Using a process discussed by Tasker et al (2011) for the disaggregation of chalks, four small samples of late Iron Age potsherds were broken into cm-sized pieces and dried in an oven, then soaked in a supersaturated solution of Glauber's Salt (sodium sulphate decahydrate, NaSO 4 .10 H 2 O) at 25e30 C for 2e3 h. After soaking, the solution was decanted off, before the sample was placed in a freezer overnight and thawed out the next day, with this process being repeated if necessary to disaggregate the potsherd. The rapid chilling of the solution encourages high nucleation with small crystal growth of sodium sulphate decahydrate, and this is designed to break the potsherd apart without damaging the microfossils.…”

“…Coupled with the knowledge of the spatial distribution of particular rock strata, microfossils can then be used to determine the provenance of sedimentary rock materials in archaeological and historical materials (e.g. Perch-Nielsen, 1972;Horrocks and Best, 2004;Quinn and Day, 2007;Wilkinson et al, 2008Wilkinson et al, , 2010Wilkinson et al, , 2013Tasker et al, 2011Tasker et al, , 2013. Microfossils are especially useful in this context because of their abundance in small samples, and they have particular value in landscapes where the underlying rock strata are lithologically uniform over wide areas, but that are characterized by stratigraphically distinctive fossils.…”

The geological history of the Isle of Wight: an overview of the ‘diamond in Britain's geological crown’

“…Jenkins et al (2011) provides an overview of the landslide hazard across the island and emphasises the cause and effects of landslides away from the much studied ‗Undercliff' along the southeast coast. Tasker et al (2011) uses geological knowledge to determine the likely provenance of tesserae found at the Brading Roman Villa and point to a very early use and possible industry based on the locally available tectonised Chalk.…”