My ‘great site’ this month is one close to many people’s hearts. When I think of the locations that embody the best of Current Archaeology as a magazine and British archaeology as a community, I consistently alight on Fishbourne Roman Palace in West Sussex. This site has it all – great coverage in the magazine, enthusiastic public engagement, stunning finds, and charismatic custodians.
Cunliffe Commences
Although evidence for Roman activity in the area had been known since the early 19th century, the story of Fishbourne formally commences in 1960, when workers for the Portsmouth Water Company discovered the foundations of a building north of the main road when digging a trench for a water main. The first excavations were initiated by the Sussex Archaeological Society, directed by the then little known (and prodigiously young – aged only 21) archaeologist Barry Cunliffe between 1961 and 1968. Current Archaeology entered the stage at this point, when CA 6 (January 1968) reported on work up to this date. By this time, the general layout and main phasing of the building had been established, the famous mosaics carefully uncovered, and the site’s socio-economic context – especially its possible links to the ‘client king’ Cogidubnus – considered: see CA 324 (March 2017) for a more modern take on the latter.
CA 6’s 1968 column is a beautiful piece of archaeological writing and a reminder of just how skilled the team who undertook this excavation was. The value of their work and the significance of the site were shown again in CA 9 (July 1968), which reported on the new museum that was swiftly built there, attracting more than 100,000 visitors in the first eight weeks of opening – heady numbers by any standard. Jumping ahead in terms of the chronology of the site’s coverage, CA 100 (June 1986) discusses some of this wider context in a fascinating interview with Barry Cunliffe: at its peak, 120 volunteers a day were working there in eight-week cycles, which is huge by modern-day standards, but which was not even the biggest project under way at that time – the teams then working at Winchester and South Cadbury were even larger.
Tea with the junta