Alan H's photos

Part of the Basilica of the Principia of the Roman fortress, in the undercroft of York Minster.

Large stone slab which was the base for one of the basilica columns. Part of the Basilica of the Principia of the Roman fortress, in the undercroft of York Minster.

Part of the Basilica of the Principia of the Roman fortress, in the undercroft of York Minster.

Chesters Museum building, Northumberland.

Date: Made AD 90–91 but used for much longer Material: Copper alloy Place found: Carvoran Fort, a few yards north of the north-west corner of Chesters Fort. This modius (grain measure) is an extremely rare find – grain measures are depicted on coins but almost none survive as objects. The inscription on the outside dates it to the reign of the emperor Domitian and says it holds 17½ sextarii. It can in fact hold 20.8 sextarii, however, so if it was used to measure tax paid in grain, the tax payers were being swindled! Domitian’s name has been scratched out, a practice linked with the phenomenon of damnatio memoriae – where the memory of someone was damned, and wiped from all official records.

Chesters Museum, Northumberland.

Date: 2nd to 3rd century AD Material: Ceramic Findspot: Coventina’s Well These incense burners are made from rough clay normally used for tiles. They are highly decorated and inscribed with dedications but have a home-made feel to them in their design and finish. The lettering is uneven, and almost crude on one example, with the name of Coventina spelt differently on each one (which happens on some of the stone altars too). These would have been a less expensive offering to Coventina than a stone altar, so allowing devotees with less income to participate in her worship. When the thuribles (incense burners) were discovered, how to decipher the inscriptions became the subject of much discussion. John Clayton, who found them, conducted a public debate via the letters section of the Newcastle papers with a Liverpool antiquarian, which became rather heated.

These spiky pieces of iron were thrown down to stop cavalry charges. They would severely injure horses' hooves! Chesters Museum, Northumberland.

Chesters Museum, Northumberland.

Date: 2nd to 3rd century AD Material: Sandstone Site: Chesters Fort Here Juno Regina, one of the Capitoline Triad – the three deities who shared a temple on the Capitoline Hill in Rome – is standing on a heifer (a female cow). She is dressed in a long-sleeved tunic, mantle and apron, with a toothed necklace around her neck. The standard of craftsmanship is unusually high for work carved in the province of Britannia, and there have been suggestions that the statue was the work of an eastern sculptor based on Hadrian’s Wall. This statue is thought to be the companion to a statue of Jupiter Dolichenus standing on a bull, trampling a serpent, of which only the serpent and the hooves of the bull remain.

Chesters Museum, Northumberland.

Part of the collection of inscriptions. Chesters Museum, Northumberland.

Fresco on left hand wall in the sacellum (small roofless shrine).

Fresco on right hand wall in the sacellum (small roofless shrine).

Outdoor eating area or nymphaeum.

Structure attached to the College of the Augustales, Herculaneum. Outside the main entrance to the College of the Augustales on Decimanus Maximus is an aedicula (small shrine) with marble columns, variously identified as a triclinium connected to the Seat of the Augustales, or as the building for the Guardian Spirits of Herculaneum, mentioned in an inscription which commemorates the reconstruction by Emperor Vespasian following an earthquake reasonably placed in the middle of the 70s of the 1st century AD.

IMG 8598a

Looking at the bones of the occupant, the objects placed with him and coffin itself a picture of the person himself has slowly been created. Studying the bones it is possible to tell that they belonged to a man who died at about 40 years of age. Evidence from his teeth have shown that he grew up in this area and the stone coffin tells us that in life he wanted to be seen as a wealthy man. IMG 8596a