At 21:36 03/02/2008, Trevor Dunkerley wrote:
>So, early excavation results in Calstock suggest a serious Roman
>presence. See:
>
>http://tinyurl.com/37ekn8
>
>http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/england/cornwall/7217173.stm
Trevor,
We have to be careful about attributing the first century Roman
military presence in the Tamar Valley to the exploitation of metal
deposits. The discovery resulted from our investigation of the
smelting sites associated with silver mining in the early fourteenth
century but we have no evidence, as yet, for any working of those
lead-silver deposits (at Bere Ferrers) in the Roman period. In
positioning our trial trench across the earthworks of the fort we
included a strong magnetic anomaly which suggested a smelting hearth.
We identified and excavated the hearth but there is no slag
associated with it. This suggests it was cleared away in the early
fourteenth century, as documented, but Samian ware turned up in what
could be the remains of the hearth, cast downslope during clearance.
We must wait for the results of radiocarbon dating and analyses of
the hearth material before we can come to any conclusions as to
whether it is medieval or Roman.
Peter
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Dr Peter Claughton,
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