Time Team Investigations

[daginge]

When I watch Time Team and they dig away at tons of soil to uncover Roman Pavements etc. where has the soil actually come from, if that was the road, courtyard etc. in historical days?

[Buenchico]

Discussed here:
http://www.thenakedscientists.com/forum/index.php?topic=17269.0

[jno]

come down with the rain or blown in by the wind; if it's in a town then probably other buildings that have been built over it then crumbled away.

[Peter Pedant]

Good link from BC as ever

BUT - or even AND - the rate of accretion is not constant
In almost every excavation the Roman Stratum will be as big as the others above taken together. In Egypt it was commonly 1 m thick. - and as economic activity decreased virtually everything is recycled and reused.

The Roman economy was probably as affluent and as throw-away as ours now ....

[Zacs-Master]

Bit they didn't have plastic.

[Zacs-Master]

But

[Peter Pedant]

um yeah OK
and they didnt have satellites in geosynchronous orbit or poison gas .......

[VHG]

Maybe the Romans buried it on purpose to give Time Team something to dig up hundreds of years later :-)

[Mosaic]

Pottery was Roman 'plastic' hence tons of Roman potsherds are found in the Roman strata.
These were reused even back then - as post-it notes, as hardcore in concrete and as bog paper. And you thought the old hard n shiny was a bit rough!

[Peter Pedant]

other roman bog paper -

sponge on a stick -

I thought we would get to the bottom of the strata at some time

[Mosaic]

Sponge on a stick, hmmm.......while there are some allusions to the use of this technique, I think a couple of pints need to be born in mind.
Sponges were luxury items, imported from the Persian Gulf. While I'm sure some toffs would be using them instead of Andrex, I'm unconvinced it was a majority pastime.
Where sponge fragments have been found in latrine strata, forensic analysis needs to be done on their content......I really wonder whether these are not tampons rather than bumwipes, considering their innate qualities and implied cost.
In the better class of communal latrine, the majority of the solids would surely have been removed with the tried and tested potsherd / hay / handful of grass, with a final poish being provided by a sponge on a stick.
To resolve these issues is why time travel MUST be invented.