Roman burial site open to public

From BBC News.

A Roman settlement and burial ground found during excavations at a quarry in Gloucestershire opens to the public for the first time this weekend.

Archaeologists are giving guided tours of the site at the Hanson's gravel quarry in Horcott near Fairford.

Finds include a Roman graveyard where 100 decapitated bodies were unearthed in 2006.

The team also found evidence of Iron Age and Saxon villages on the same seven acre site.

Pretensions to grandeur

Ken Welsh, from Oxford Archaeology, who has been overseeing the investigation, said it was a challenging excavation.

"In addition to the Roman graveyard and farmstead, our work has revealed a multi-phase settlement area, with evidence of occupation from the early Iron Age, the Romano-British and the early to middle Saxon periods.

"The Saxon settlement, with as many as 40 sunken-featured buildings, overlies the early Iron Age settlement and disentangling the post-holes (approximately 3,500) has been a huge challenge made easier by our on site computer graphics and recording system.

Full story here.