Aquatic mosaic found at Wroxeter Roman City

A team of archaeologists and volunteers excavating Wroxeter Roman City near Shrewsbury in Shropshire have unearthed a beautifully preserved mosaic floor of fish and dolphins at swim.

Established as a civilian settlement of a legionary fort around 90 A.D., Viroconium Cornoviorum grew into one of the largest cities in Roman Britain. At its peak, it had more than 200 houses, a public bath, a forum, basilica (in the sense of a government building/city hall and courthouse, not church). Only parts of the bathhouse and of the town’s defensive wall (the largest surviving section of Roman wall in Britain) are visible above ground today while the rest of the site remains unexplored. It hasn’t been overbuilt, thankfully, which gives archaeologists the opportunity to excavate previously unexplored areas unencumbered by modern construction.

Earlier this year, the archaeological team excavated one of the previously unexplored areas. Geophysical surveys had detected the presence of a large building, which archaeologists hypothesized might be the city’s main civic temple, and the team dug several trenches hoping to uncover its remains. They found a large monumental building — 165 feet long and 26 feet wide — with thick buttresses supporting its back wall. They also found a small square shrine or mausoleum with painted plaster walls on the exterior.

A third structure unearthed in the survey is a townhouse. It was in one of its rooms that the mosaic was discovered. It dates to the early 2nd century, shortly after the founding of the city, so it is about 2,000 years old. It survives in such good condition because the building was remodeled in the 3rd or 4th century and the room was filled with rubble to raise the level of the floor to match current street level.

“Our excavations were in hope of discovering the walls of [the civic temple] building, but we never suspected we would find a beautiful and intact mosaic, which had lain hidden for thousands of years,” said Win Scutt, from English Heritage.

“It’s always an astonishing moment when you uncover a fragment of beauty hiding just below the ground,” he added.

The team also found coins and pottery and a painted plaster wall on one side of the mosaic, which experts said would help date the phases of the city, and the activities that took place there.

The mosaic and other remains have been reburied for the protection, but the mosaic floor and frescoed walls have been scanned and a 3D model created for people to explore virtually.

* This article was originally published here