the Trust’s own ‘3-d’ reconstructions of Roman Colchester

On Friday (22nd November), an item was posted on the Daily Mail web-site titled ‘From a bustling port to a 160-mile “motorway”: Amazing digital reconstructions bring forgotten Roman Britain to life’. This is about the computer-generated images which have been produced by Dr Michael Scott of the University of Warwick, for use in a new series ‘Raiders of the lost past’ on the history TV channel Yesterday. One of the images shows the Roman town of Calleva Atrebatum in Hampshire.

However, archaeologists have been producing ‘3-d’ images for years – the Trust published a series of detailed three-dimensional (but 2-d) reconstructions of the Roman town of Colchester in our book City of Victory – the story of Colchester, Britain’s first Roman town, in 1997. The Trust commissioned artist Peter Froste to paint the reconstructions and they were produced in collaboration with Trust director Philip Crummy. The paintings were based on actual archaeological evidence, which the Trust had amassed during large-scale excavations in the town centre in the 1970s and 1980s. But the Trust welcomes new technology and we are working on some 3-d imaging of our own, of Colchester’s Roman circus, for our interpretation centre!

Colchester town centre is one of the most important archaeological sites in Britain and it had a remarkable history as a significant Roman town. The archaeological evidence which we record here is also remarkable, for sheer quantity and detail, as well as its importance – so there is a lot of evidence to work with!

The Trust’s reconstruction paintings were based on the archaeological evidence and the details were built up from site plans, sections and photo.s, and research. The paintings form a series, consisting of five large views of the whole Roman town, of phases dating from AD 48 (when it was a fortress) through to circa AD 400, with a view of the post-Roman town in circa AD 1150. There are also smaller paintings of three different sites around the town, representing dated phases of the town’s development. For example, you can follow the development of the Balkerne Lane site in the Roman period in the large paintings and in the more detailed, smaller paintings, with the defensive ditch and palisade fence of the fortress in AD 48, through the phase of the completed town wall and the town’s west gate of circa AD 80-100, the two temples outside the west gate in circa AD 275, and the blocked road to the west gate in circa AD 400. Part of the west gate or Balkerne Gate is still standing, of course: it stands next the Hole-in-the-Wall pub. and overlooks the modern roadway Balkerne Lane, opposite the St Mary’s multi-storey car-park.

The reconstruction paintings are published in our book City of Victory. They are also on display in the interpretation centre in the Trust’s building Roman Circus House. The circus site and centre are open to visitors on every weekday, 10.30am-4.30pm. Entry is free. Copies of the reconstruction paintings will also be incorporated in the new displays at Colchester Castle Museum when it re-opens in 2014. The Trust is hoping to make copies of the reconstruction paintings available for purchase in 2014.

Read the item at www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-2511338/Roman-Britain-brought-life-amazing-digital-reconstructions.html

The images show:
a site plan of the Trust’s Balkerne Lane archaeological site in 1973-6 (see our Colchester Archaeological Report 3: excavations at Lion Walk, Balkerne Lane and Middleborough, Colchester, Essex), showing the site’s Period 1, circa AD 44-50/?55;
a plan of part of the site, showing wheel-ruts and voids left by the decayed wattles of buildings on the south side of the Roman road, also in Period 1;
a photo. of part of the site, showing the remains of the Romano-Celtic temple with the Hole-in-the-Wall pub. to the left;
a photo. of part of the remains of a Roman building;
two of the reconstruction paintings, ie the whole of Colchester in circa AD 250, and then the Balkerne Lane site in circa AD 275, showing the west gate or Balkerne Gate, the town wall, and the Roman road to London.

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