Mike Page aerial shot of the Roman site at Caistor - St - Edmund near Norwich
Picture taken on 22/08/2010
Visitors will also get the chance to see the full scale of the Roman site as the streets of the town will be painted in white on the grass, courtesy of former Norwich High School for Girls groundsman Fred Marsham.
Latest building found at Roman town near Norwich looks like a spaceship
By Rosa McMahon
Thursday, January 26, 2012
6:00 AM
A mysterious structure found at the Roman town at Caistor St Edmund, near Norwich, has been described by an archaeologist as ‘looking like a spaceship’.
The Roman town of Venta Icenorum, meaning market of the Iceni people, was discovered during the 1929-35 excavations and has been a popular place of both local and national interest, with the BBC’s Time Team filming there in 2010.
The latest revelation, dating back to third century AD, was discovered by the Norfolk Archaeological Historical Research Society and has recently been unveiled in an academic journal.
The structure shows two angled wings, meeting on a central structure, and is described by Professor Will Bowden, who has been working on the project from the University of Nottingham, as “an unusual and adventurous building on a very interesting site”.
The plan of the building was identified through aerial photographs, after weather conditions in 2007 revealed a number of unusual crop markings showing a building, without any obvious similarities to other Roman Britain plans.
Prof Bowden, who studied for his PHD at the UEA, said: “From the air, it looks like a spaceship, and I’m sure some people will suggest it to be some kind of alien landing site. It is very hard to make any parallels to anything else we’ve ever seen, we can usually make comparisons, but this one is very unusual.”
It is thought that the building, made of thin levels of clay and chalk, was used for a single event or festival, or as a temple.
Prof Bowden added: “The material we had to use to date the structure was scrappy bits of pottery. There are no obvious parallels for this remarkable structure in Roman Britain or, to my knowledge, elsewhere in the Roman Empire.”
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6 comments
That is the problem with professional archaeologists, their inherent arrogance always leads them to suggest inplausible suggestions, when they say something is " ritual, " or anything else outlandish, it just means that they have'nt got a clue what it is.
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G.D.Bartlett
Thursday, January 26, 2012
"..and I’m sure some people will suggest it to be some kind of alien landing site.". They came, they saw the locals and said, "What a load of rubbish", and then they left.
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kenneth jessett
Thursday, January 26, 2012
Obvious to me: - it is The Angel of the East, recently copied by Gatesehad for the North.
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Vogel
Thursday, January 26, 2012
"two angled wings, meeting on a central structure"? Not a spaceship but evidence, surely, that Boudicca favoured the 4-4-2 formation for Iceni FC.
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Red Steepler
Thursday, January 26, 2012
DaisyRoots, I'm sure cattle wouldn't see the castration as mundane! ;-)
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DJ_FRAMBOISE
Thursday, January 26, 2012
Why is it always a temple or ceremonial use and never something to do with castrating cattle or drying beans or making fertiliser? Francis Pryor is one of the few we see on TV who regularly points out the mundane possibilities, the rest seem to seek the most exotic solution.
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Daisy Roots
Thursday, January 26, 2012