Collection: Brading Roman Villa

Collection-level records:

• Collection history (Collection development policy)

  The founding collections came into being upon the discovery of a Roman Villa at Brading in 1879 by Captain John Thorpe and from its extensive excavation from 1880-1883 by F.G. Hilton Price and John E. Price. Visitors were encouraged to view the villa at an early period and in 1908 a cover building was erected to help preserve the site and its remains. No major interventions were undertaken again until the 1980s and 1990s, several of which were directed at helping preserve the site which had been affected by flooding. These interventions added to the collections. The most significant additions to the collections in modern times came in 2008, 2009, and 2010, when Professor Sir Barry Cunliffe undertook excavations over the 3 summer seasons, the results of which were published in a comprehensive monograph in 2013.

  A major collections documentation project was undertaken in 2006-7 which saw the entire collections computer catalogued, and a second project in 2008-9 saw the database enhanced and transferred to MODES for Windows, and thereafter to MODES Complete.

  Source: Collection development policy

  Date: 2018

  Licence: CC BY-NC

• Collection overview (Collection development policy)

  99% of the accessioned collections come directly from the Villa’s land, so their relevance to the Villa’s history is self-evident. As in most archaeological archives from a single site, a relatively small proportion of finds provide outstanding examples of a particular object type, and the Victorian collections have limited contextual data (a state of affairs that changed markedly in more recent excavations). As such, finds from the modern excavations have a greater “value” in terms of what they tell us about the site than the older collections, and are backed up by a wealth of additional contextual data in photographs, drawings, plans, sections etc.

  In modern times the museum has begun to acquire, on a small scale, Roman material from the Island reported through the Portable Antiquities Scheme in order to place the Roman Villa in a wider Island context. We have also acquired fine examples of Roman objects (originals and replicas) to make up for the fragmentary nature of most of the Villa artefacts. These are used in displays and in education programmes.

  Source: Collection development policy

  Date: 2018

  Licence: CC BY-NC