LLANTWIT MAJOR
Glamorgan, Wales.
Roman villa at Caermead, 1 km NW of the village, discovered in 1887 and excavated in 1887-88, 1938-39, and
1948. The buildings were grouped around a courtyard
(ca. 30 x 36 m) and an outer yard (ca. 24 x 51 m)
which opened off it and extended N to form an L-shaped
enclosure. The dwelling house was of winged-corridor
plan (36 x 12 m) forming the N side of the courtyard,
with the W wing extended to form its W side. The
S side of the courtyard proper was bounded only by a
wall, and the E side was open to the outer yard. This
outer yard was bounded on the S by an aisled building
(30 x 15 m) and on the E by further ranges of buildings, while more small buildings again extended from
the rear of the E end of the dwelling house to form
its NW corner. Traces of earthworks were found enclosing the whole complex.
The excavations appeared to show that all the main
buildings were constructed about the middle of the 2d c.
and that the villa reached its greatest prosperity in the
3d c., after which the house and baths were abandoned
and occupation was restricted to the aisled building
until the end of the 4th c. It was, then, the occupants
of the aisled building who, becoming Christianized, used
the area of the abandoned buildings as a cemetery (the
graves in this cemetery were oriented and devoid of grave
goods and so presumably Christian). Reconsideration of
the pottery and the sections, however, has suggested that
the earlier chronology should be revised, and selective
excavation in 1971 has led to further re-evaluation. The
probable sequence now appears to be: a pre-Roman
homestead in a ditched enclosure; an early Roman timber
building (late 1st-early 2d c.); a stone building without
corridor (mid-late 2d c.); decline in the early 3d c.;
extensive building in the mid 3d c., with additions ca. 300
and the insertion of a mosaic ca. 350; gradual decline in
the late 4th c.; and burials much later, not associated
with any occupants of the villa.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
W. E. Winks,
Archaeologia Cambrensis 5 (1888) 413-17; V. E. Nash-Williams, ibid. 102
(1953) 89-163
MIP; revision: G. Webster in A.L.F. Rivet,
ed.,
The Roman Villa in Britain (1969) 238-43;
Britannia
3 (1972) 300;
RCAHM (Wales):
Glamorganshire
(forthcoming).
A.L.F. RIVET
