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Here are some general interest images. For images of the project as we get underway see the links above - keep tuning in to see how we are getting on! Some images have been uploaded by Pete Elvidge onto this link area: And here are some scenes from Hambleden and artefacts from the Yewden villa site:
The Hambleden Valley - a beautiful part of Buckinghamshire with a lush meadow, chalk hills with farmland and woodland on the upper slopes.
The Hambleden Valley as seen from Satellite - Google Earth Image 2008
By tilting the satellite image the gentle valley can be seen. The River Thames is bottom left and the Marlow-Henley road is in yellow.
The first named resident of Hambleden. Siitomina has scratched her name on this pot. Literacy in this era is not common, so she was educated. Siitomina is a local Romano-British name.
A storage bowl - well made, but plain and functional.
A stylus - a great many styli were found at Yewden Villa during the excavation in the early 1900s. They either made them there or there was a great deal of writing being accomplished!
Samian ware was high status and usually table wares. This is a samian ware mortaria (a bowl for grinding and hence a kitchen item). It seems terribly extravagant to use such an expensive ware for a kitchen mortar!
The quartz grains can be seen embedded into the Samian fabric (above)
Another kitchen item - a quern stone. The local puddingstone (a type of sarsen) has been used and is so attractive.
A decorative piece of worked bone. Cocks (the excavtor of Yewden villa in 1912) thought this was a gaming piece, but it is much more likely to be a decorative fitting, maybe for a belt.
This mother goddess was found at Yewden as well. Here she can be seen to be breast-feeding her child. She is a very popular figure with the Romans as well as many cultures and periods elsewhere. Probably a mother earth figure, in some parts of the world she was worshipped, others she was a lucky figure.
This is a 1st century bronze brooch
A bronze nail cleaner. The Romano-British had a vast range of toiletry items.
A selection of window glass from the 1st House or Pit 1 which is next to this building
Many vessels were made in this beautiful blue glass. Blue-green and yellow-green are also common colours of vessels
There is not as much glass in the excavated finds as you might expect. This object tells why - it is glass cullet (semi-molten) and shows that the Romano-British recycled their glass in much the same way as we do today!
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