Roman Material

Only Roman material is present in this sample. There are three examples of tegula, and where the flange survives it is very large (78mm high). This is a noted trend in York material, and it is larger than the average tegula in Britain. It has been suggested that this size of material is the product of the legions, and smaller flanges (which do occur in York) are from civilian factories or are later in date. The pottery dates from context ZE9 are 1st century, which supports an early date for such large flanges.

Another possibly early product is the fragment of wall tile or half box flue from context ZE9. The fragment has diamond-shaped scoring on the sanded side, and is smooth on the other. The fragment also appears to be sooted, including along a broken edge. This example also has a looped signature on the smooth side. A wall tile would be flat, and may have had small cut outs along the edges to facilitate the fitting of holdfasts and associated spacer bobbins. A half box flue would have looked like a tegula, but would have cutouts in the centre part of the flange to help the flow of air circulate along the wall. The flange would be quite square, and fairly high. These types of cavity wall heating tend to be associated with earlier Roman phases.

Context ZE9 has several examples of Roman brick, defined by the thickness of the fragment. The sizes cannot be gauged from such small fragments. These could be used in walls, floors and hypocausts.

There is a worked limestone block from ZE11. It is worked on at least three faces, and would benefit from being examined by a geologist

Context Form Date

ZE7 Tegula ?Early Roman

ZE9 Tegula, Wall tile/Half Box ?Early Roman

flue, brick

ZE11 Limestone block ?Roman

S Garside-Neville

July 1995