Silchester

Silchester is the modern name for the location of Calleva[?] Atrebatum[?], the Roman town of the Celtic tribe named the Atrebates. Located on the border between the English counties of Hampshire and Berkshire, this site covers about 230 acres within a polygonal earthwork that is still visible. The city was abandoned sometime at the end of Roman Britain, for unknown reasons.

Silchester was completely excavated between the years 1890 and 1909, and while this excavation provided valuable information about civic life and daily life in the first centuries of the Common Era, as well as a complete map of a Romano-British town, it destroyed an unknown amount of evidence that could be analysed in more careful detail not only with current technology and practices, but with the tools and knowledge of future generations. As archeological study is a destructive process, the excavation of Silchester is frequently mentioned as an example of why complete excavation should not be performed.

Silchester neighbours the less picturesque town, called Tadley, Hampshire.