Prior to the building of the new Bath Spa, in the centre of the World
Heritage City of Bath, excavations were carried out to record the
archaeological remains threatened by its construction. Evidence was
recovered of the presence and perhaps the rituals of mesolithic
hunter-gatherers, hitherto unknown official Roman buildings of the first
and second centuries and some indication of activity in the late Saxon
and medieval periods. An important part of the dig was a programme of
geoarchaeological research to study the microstructure of the soils
excavated with a view to understanding the activities that led to their
formation.