STUNNED archaeologists have uncovered a secret Roman villa that’s been dubbed “Port Talbot’s Pompeii”.
The remarkable find is the largest Roman villa ever found in Wales – and it looks to be well-preserved too.
Experts used clever ground radar tech to reveal a “huge structure” beneath their feet.
The villa has been hiding in Margam Country Park, Port Talbot, a historical deer park.
“This is an amazing discovery,” said project lead Dr Alex Langlands, Associate Professor and Co-Director at Swansea University’s Centre for Heritage Research and Training (CHART).
“We always thought that we’d find something dating to the Romano-British period, but we never dreamed it would be so clearly articulated and with so much potential in terms of what it can tell us about the elusive first millennium AD here in South Wales.
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“Margam is famous for its nationally significant monuments and for having evidence of Bronze Age, Iron Age, Medieval and Post-Medieval heritage.
“But we knew practically nothing about what was going on in the Romano-British period.
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“This is the missing piece of the puzzle.”
Researchers are staying tight-lipped on the exact spot within the 1,000 acre site for fear of rogue metal detectorists.
What remains of the building is thought to be less than a metre below the surface.
And because the land hasn’t been built on or disrupted, they expect it to be in pretty good shape all these years later.
The plan is to eventually excavate it but they’ll need to find funding to do that, so conserving the site is the immediate priority.
“It is too early to speculate about the date range of the building, its architectural features, who constructed it, and how it fell out of use,” Dr Langlands added.
“But from the geophysical survey alone we can start to build hypotheses about how important this site could be and what it can tell us about Margam’s long-term role in the social, cultural, and economic developments across the first millennium in Wales.”
Speaking to BBC News, he said the site has the potential to be “Port Talbot’s Pompeii”.
“A lot of archaeologists get wound up by connections made with Pompeii but I think it’s in part justified because of the levels of preservation here.”
The destruction of Pompeii – what happened in 79 AD?
- Pompeii was an ancient Roman city near modern Naples, in the Campania region of Italy.
- It was destroyed, along with the Roman town of Herculaneum and many villas in the surrounding area, and buried under volcanic ash in the eruption of Mount Vesuvius in 79 AD.
- The violent explosion killed the city’s inhabitants, with the site lost for around 1,500 years until its initial rediscovery in 1599 and broader rediscovery almost 150 years after that.
- The thermal energy released from Vesuvius was said to be a hundred thousand times that of the nuclear blasts at Hiroshima-Nagasaki.
- The remains beneath the city have been preserved for more than a millennium due to the lack of air and moisture in the ground.
- During excavations, plaster was injected into the voids in the ash layers that once held human bodies, allowing scientists to recreate their exact poses at the time of their deaths.
- Mount Vesuvius is arguably the most dangerous volcano on earth.
- It had been inactive for almost a century before roaring back into life and destroying Pompeii.
- Since then, it has exploded around three dozen more times – most recently in 1944 – and stands in close proximity to three million people.
- Although its current status is dormant, Vesuvius is an “extremely active” and unpredictable volcano, according to experts.
- To this day, scientists are finding cultural, architectural and human remains on the banks of Mount Vesuvius.
- Excavations at thermal baths in Pompeii’s ruins in February revealed the skeleton of a crouching child who perished in the 79 AD eruption.
Image credit: Getty
