Site
Antiochia Ad Cragum
Unit
Cauldarium
Tools
Mattocks, Pickaxes, Buckets, Trowels, Wheelbarrows, Shovels, Brushes
Findings
Partial inscription, Pottery Shards, Glass Shards, Glassware, Tesserae, Hypocaust supports, Mortar, Burn layer ash, clay & marble tiles
Assessment
While most of these finds are hardly out of the ordinary, the amount of pottery shards we found supporting the idea that this area was inhabited over a long, long time, there have been some specific finds that’ve suggested potential features on this site. Specifically, the amount of glass shards and the location we found them in, on the southern wall and near the ‘entrance’, suggests that there were window panes around these areas. We’ve also likely uncovered the area where they burned fuel for the hypocaust, as we’ve found a significant amount of ash in the areas we’ve dug up this season. Strangely, most of the mosaic we’ve found has been concentrated in one side, and while it is present on the opposite side, the lack of it combined with the uniform presence of hypocausts over the entire unit implies that there might’ve been a different material for the bath floor on that side, perhaps marble based on the amount of it we’ve found.
Questions
The findings we’ve uncovered during this season have only raised more questions instead of resolving them, chief amongst them would have to be the layout of the Cauldarium. There are two things that stand out in this regard; the design of the hypocausts, and the thickness of the mosaic tesserae. For the former, I will admit I do not know what a ‘usual’ hypocaust would look like, but the experts who worked on our unit have all said that the way it was laid out over the room is unusual, especially for a Cauldarium, with the set up leaving a lot of space that would not be easily accessible for a stoker. As for the latter, the individual Tesserae were extremely thick, to the point that it’d take literal days to warm them up sufficiently, making it not exactly optimal for a bath. Were these tiles in place so there’d be a part of the pool that’d be relatively cool? Did they just not care and kept the fire burning for multiple days? It’s unclear, and I think to get a more clear picture we would have to dig deeper into the hypocaust. One thing that should also be prioritized for the next season is finding which of the walls are actual walls, and which ones are just debris from the ceiling. We’ve had to tear down two features which we originally thought were walls, and finalizing what the actual layout of this bath was would go a long way in making some of the findings make more sense. For example, when we tore down the southern ‘wall’, it debunked a theory that there was some weird, small room on that side that was cut off from most use.
