A rare Roman mosaic has been discovered on a farm in Hampshire, England.
The mosaic is approximately seven by five feet and is filled with the likes of fruit, vegetables and flowers, and is in remarkably good condition, as reported by BBC News. Archaeologists excavating the site on Monday said they had never excavated anything quite like it before.
The site was built over by farmers’ fields in the 1300s. Late Roman sculptures and tiles can still be seen in the top-left-hand corner of the mosaic, but it is the “melons and pears and herbs and flowers in the lower part” that are extraordinary, said researcher Alan Berry, according to BBC News.
“I’m trying to be quite optimistic about the whole thing but I am slightly spoiled because I get quite excited every time there’s something new, new to understand. But this is not another inquiry, we’re not going to be driving around the square looking for someone to tell us something about a few stones or the shards of pottery.”
One area of interest for researchers is how the mosaics were made, considering that during the whole of Roman Britain, only six such similar mosaics have been found, according to the Manchester Evening News.
The mosaic had been left uncovered for decades, never being disturbed or tended to. Researchers suspect it might have been first laid out, but it was stitched together later on.
Experts will be trying to determine how the mosaic was put together. They said they “would love to find out what it was used for but that will become much easier the longer it stays exposed” as work on the top part of the mosaic goes forward.