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What is Geophysics? - read more about our geophysics, the equipment the society uses and how you can make use of it. Booking form - use this form to request use of our geophysics equipment and team. Read our reports from Geophysic at Foula in 2007 and the final report from 2008 by clicking here, and a summary of the 2007-8 Geophysics season in the Bath vicinity below. Summer is generally a quieter time for geophysics. nonetheless, there have been a number of developments. We finished on Normeads at the end of May. We did not complete the field, but by then the grass was so high it had swallowed our marker poles, and the weeds were even higher! It is also so far from civilisation that it was getting unsafe without 4x4 support. This is a pity, as the magnetometer in particular was disclosing a series of farmsteads, and previous fieldwalking in neighbouring Strawbridge suggested that there was a villa somewhere nearby. We then had rather more civilised conditions - in Blackmore and Langdon's nursery near Pensford, looking for a missing Quaker meeting house and burial ground. We also had a visit to gardens in Coombe Down to find traces of the Coombe Down Villa. During the course of May, we acquired a profiler kit to supplement our TR resistance meter. This adds a whole extra dimension to our work as it produces a vertical section up to 3 m deep through the ground. Early trials on Homefield produced spectacular results, showing a building lying below the early drainage system. The profiler has also been used on Blacklands to gain evidence for a second villa further down the field. In October, we will be taking the profiler The Heritage Lottery fund has also benefitted us. We have just ordered a Bartington dual gradiometer, and we should receive that at the end of October. We have also purchased a new resistance meter, Geoscan RM15. This has already been used to find its first two Roman villas on student projects! It is a real luxury now to have spare equipment, so that work does not January 2008 - Autumn 2007 Geophysics season update
 Magnetometer survey  Resistance survey October 2007 - Priston Villa Geophysical Survey We have now covered between 5 and 6 acres, but we are now having to halt for a while as the field is needed for grazing. We hope to re-start on Tuesday November 6th, and we hope to be able to show the full field geophysics in mid November. The pictures here show the magnetometer survey, about three quarters complete. Modern water pipes are now evident running across the field in two directions. It was during the laying of one of these that the Roman coffin was found. There is plenty of other detail showing, but it is difficult to make an interpretation of this until the picture is complete. Note that the resistance survey is also picking up most of the features shown by the magnetometer.  Magnetometer survey  Resistance survey National Archaeology Week 2007 As part of National Archaeology Week 2007, on Tuesday 17th, Wednesday 18th and Friday 20th July, anyone will be welcome to join in with the usual geophysics activities taking place at Upper Row Farm. Please call Jayne Lawes on 01761 431741 if you would like to participate. July 2007 Geophysics activity has been low for a couple of months. We were hoping to survey priston Villa in May, but the field did not become available in time before the team left for Shetland. We hope to gain access in October. We have now issued big area geophysics maps for the first time, covering all our work in the Blacklands area. The combined Resistance, magnetometer and contour map is attached. Individual resistance and magnetometer plots are available on request. These maps will be updated from time to time as we fill in more of the gaps  Combined Resistivity and Magnetometry Surveys of the area around Charlton Farm and Upper Row Farm, Hemington Wednesday 21st March 2007 - Yet another Roman Villa! Wednesday 21st March 2007 was the morning on which we completed our survey on Hillbrow Farm, the property of Gordon Hendy's brother Philip. Download of the results on Wednesday lunchtime showed that in the very last few grids out of well over 100, there was a large, elaborate Roman Villa, spread over an area in excess of 40 m by 40 m. It is in the far south east of the farm, about 400 m south east of our Blacklands Villa. Its elaborate floor plan suggests it is a later villa, possibly the successor to Blacklands. March 2007 The most significant event over the past few months has been the upgrade of the FM36 magnetometer to FM256 standard. Instead of being awkward and tempramental, it is now much, much better machine, with better controls, faster response and good stability. It has speeded up magnetometer surveys by about 50%. Thanks to all members and benfactors who contributed to it. We did have a problem when it first arrived back, in that it would not talk to our existing download software, but we have now written our own software to interface it with our analysis program. We also had a problem when the resistance meter hit an electric fence, and was out of action for 2 weeks while it was repaired. Our next most urgent need is to find a second device, so we have spares and are not grounded when accidental damage occurs. We were pleased to see in Current Archaeology December 2006 that BACAS had been highly commeded in the Pitt Rivers award, on acount of its 'miraculous' geophysics. Nice to be appreciated! We have contributed to 3 undergraduate projects, all in Wiltshire, and all 3 gave exciting results. One found a late Saxon/early mediaeval chapel, one found a dead ringer for our Blacklands site. The third was meant to find a DMV, but seems to have discovered a large Roman villa! In November, we did a survey of Laverton churchyard, and this gave us practice in the survey techniques we will need for our next trip to Foula, Shetland. We are just about to issue the report. With the completion of Horlers Field at Upper Row, we can now just about claim to have a kilometre of continuous geophysics! There is plenty more to do, and we are at present working our way round the southern and eastern periphery of Blacklands. This is quite difficult, as we have to leave fields incomplete when they are required for farming, and go back and finish them later. Our biggest problem though is the shrunken size of our team. We need more feet in fields! We operate Tuesdays, Wednesdays and Fridays, with occasional Sunday sessions. Do come and join us if you can! For more information or to volunteer, please contact John Oswin January 2007 Friday 29th December turned out to be an awful day to do geophysics, especially after all those dry days, but a few souls turned out to show how the spirit of extreme can beat our wayward weather. Some of us detailed off to tend the Time Team Roman Garden, while the rest of us went off to continue our survey of Horlers Field. This survey is proving to be very lively, with buildings and lots of field boundaries, so at least we had some exciting results to show for our wetting. Watch this space for more Geophysics open days through the Spring. September 2006 We have now completed and dispatched all three reports: Foula (Shetland); Hemington Open Weekend; Charlton Farm. During the training dig we continued the work on Hillbrow which Time Team started...and found another Roman farmstead just a hundred metres from Blacklands, and also a ditch which links the Blacklands site to the Homefield site. We are now planning the winter geophysics campaign, which we hope will cover areas around Hillbrow and around Hammer Lane. July 2006 Since returning from Foula (see below), we have been busy compiling the report, and we do have much to report. Apart from the prehistoric and mediaeval discoveries at Harrier, it looks like we have found a double stone ring, with its long axis aligned on the winter solstice. This is taking us into the realms of astroarchaeology. When Time Team did their filming at the Blacklands site, they brought their own Geophys team, but they were very impressed by our previous results. We did have the chance to show our mettle to Time Team on 7th July, when they came to film us doing a survey at Prior Park. This survey was very successful, and found the pond (now filled in) that they were looking for, and much else besides. Watch out for the Time Team Special on historic gardens! July 1st and 2nd was Hemington Village Open Weekend. This is the parish our Blacklands site is in, so we normally put on a small exhibition. This year, we also did a geophysics demonstratiion. The survey was meant to find a house in a now empty paddock. We did not find the house, but we found the ancient property boundaries. The exciting bit was on the following Wednesday, when we finished off by doing a small survey in the churchyard. There appears to be part of a Saxon church showing in the survey, protruding from under the chancel of the present church! Bath Archaeologists on the Cliff Edge Some of our archaeologists have recently visited the isle of Foula, in Shetland, where they had been asked to use their geophysics equipment to investigate the island's prehistoric and Viking past. The area they surveyed included the site of a prehistoric house on the northern foreshore before it is lost to the sea. Over the course of an eight day visit, they were able to add significantly to an understanding of the island's past.  The BACAS archaeologists surveying the site of a prehistoric house on the northern foreshore before it is lost to the sea. In the background, you can see Mainland Shetland  The geophysics team operating on the Harrier site. In the foreground you can see the magnetometer, with the resistance meter in the background. This was the main survey and detected signs of earlier activity over a large area of the site The team have now returned to their site at Blacklands near Frome, just in time to prepare for the Time Team dig. For more information on any of our geophysics events, or to volunteer, please contact John Oswin |
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