Roman The Roman period in Britain lasted from around AD 43 – AD 410. In Britain, Roman influence extended as far north as the Antonine Wall in lowland Scotland and even to military bases on the River Tay in north-east Scotland. Roman troops were present in South Yorkshire from soon after the start of Roman rule, with the fort at Templeborough in Rotherham constructed around AD 54 and the city of York founded around AD 71. The Barnsley area seems to have been occupied by Romans from the 1st to the 5th centuries AD. Aerial photographs have revealed a range of possible Roman sites in the area, although few of these have been excavated. The presence of enclosures and field systems is suggested by cropmarks (which are created when below-ground archaeological remains affect the growth of crops) at places such as Wharncliffe, Wombwell and Wortley. Most of the evidence points towards small domestic farmsteads, rather than occupation by the Roman military.
as a large assemblage of locally produced Roman pottery sherds. This includes a broken but complete bowl from one of the graves in the cemetery. The excavators also found an intact high-quality iron snaffle bit for a horse, which would have been used for horse-riding rather than agricultural work. This item had been deliberately placed in the terminal of the ditch and may have been buried as a votive or ritual deposit. Quernstones (large, round stone slabs for grinding grain) have been discovered at places such as Darfield, and these also show the domestic nature of occupation in the region.
Other finds of the Roman era include a bronze bracelet from Billingley, which was found during open cast coal mining in 1950. This is thought to date to the 2nd or 3rd century AD. It has been decorated with tiny indented dots, with what appear to be stylised snakes’ heads at both ends. A single bronze coin found in a garden in Gawber dates from AD 70 – 71. This is a billon tetradrachm coin of the Emperor A Roman farmstead was Vespasian, made at a mint at excavated at Billingley Drive in Alexandria in Egypt. The reverse of Thurnscoe in the early 2000s. the coin depicts a personification The settlement was occupied of the city of Alexandria, wearing between the mid-2nd and midthe elephant skin cap of the city’s 4th centuries AD, and excavated founder Alexander the Great. Some features included a corn-drying of the most well-known Roman finds oven, a field system and a small from Barnsley are three coin hoards cemetery. Many domestic items discovered in Darfield between 1947 recovered during this excavation are and 1950, and these are discussed in the archaeology collections, such in the following section.
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