Palaeontology
What the Romans didn't do for Britons
By
T.K. RandallMarch 22, 2011 ·
7 comments
Image Credit: Radosław Botev
An ancient road uncovered in Shropshire has led archaeologists to believe that not all roads led to Rome.
For hundreds of years most of the long, ancient, straight-as-an-arrow roads in Britain were thought to have been built by the Romans, but a recent discovery in Shropshire has suggested that Iron Age Britons may have been far more capable of road construction than they'd been given credit for.
But in 2009, quarrying by Tarmac was due to destroy 400m of it, giving archaeologists a rare opportunity to expose a long section of road, some of it, crucially, very well preserved. At first, it still looked Roman, from its cambered, cobbled surface on a metre of hardcore and a clay base, to the ditches at the sides with a thin scatter of Roman rubbish.
Source:
Guardian Unlimited |
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