Roman settlements, Iron Age burial grounds - what next?

Sunday 11 August 2019

A team of archaeologists are returning to Alderney to continue excavations on Longis Common, where an extensive Roman settlement and Iron Age burial ground have been discovered in recent years.

Excavations are being directed by Dr Jason Monaghan and Dr Phil de Jersey of Guernsey Museum, with a team of volunteers from the islands and from the UK.

They are receiving help from the States of Alderney and the Alderney Society, sponsorship from Alderney Electricity and have been granted permission by landowners and tenants for work to proceed.

Pictured: An unexpected find last summer was the skeleton of a baby, which was buried on top of the Nunnery gatehouse. 

This year the project has three principal objectives:

• One team will aim to find more about the building with the stone pavement discovered in the Paddock in 2018. This trench should also provide more dating evidence for the building. In 2017, a substantial burial ground was discovered along Les Mielles dating to the late Iron Age (1st-2nd century BC). Roman finds from the buildings have ranged from the 2nd to 4th century AD.
• A second team will investigate the walls that run beside the golf course, aiming to discover the extent and general layout of the buildings. This should provide pointers towards the nature of settlement, as it is not known if it was civilian or military.
• A third trench out on the Common will follow up anomalies picked up by resistivity survey which suggest there is a large feature there. The site team will be based at the Nunnery, where a small amount of work will also take place to check findings from previous excavations.

All finds will be lodged in Alderney after the excavation, which starts today and is scheduled to take place until Friday 30 August.

Regular updates will be posted on the ‘Dig Alderney’ page on Facebook. 

Pictured top: One of the guided tours of last year's dig at Longis (Photo Credit: David Nash).