EDO8155 - Hinton St Mary; excavation 2022 to 2023

OASIS: Excavations carried out at Hinton St Mary in 2022 and 2023 at the site where the famous 'chi-rho' mosaic was discovered in 1963. A British Museum research, education and conservation project to generate new evidence with which the historical and religious significance of the mosaic can be better explained to the public. It followed the successful completion of an archaeological evaluation in 2021 that highlighted how little is actually known about the mosaic, or Hinton St Mary in the Roman period. Project Results: The 2022 and 2023 excavation trenches generated important new insights regarding the Romano- British archaeological remains at Hinton St Mary. The excavations have confirmed that the original reconstruction of the plan of the buildings is incorrect and needs to be reconsidered. For 60 years it was believed that the mosaic decorated the floor of a room in the centre of a large ‘villa’ building, consisting of an imposing main range (the domestic quarters) oriented NW-SE, and two ‘wings’ enclosing a large courtyard downslope towards the River Stour. It is now clear, however, that the room with the famous mosaic was not in the centre of a long building and, instead, it lay at the end of an existing NE-SW oriented building and was not physically connected to the other known buildings in the scheduled area to the SW. The Chi-Rho mosaic room was connected to a boundary wall on its SE side that separated the Roman settlement within the SM at Hinton St Mary into two distinct parts: the earlier building and the mosaic-room extension to the N, and at least three buildings flanking an extensive yard to the SW. The Chi-Rho mosaic room extension seems to have been erected about 340-350 and continued in use until the early 5th c.