We divided the room into grid squares and began to work through these one by one, starting from the door on the east side. First, we hand-pick the large pieces of debris. This includes the plasterwork, timber and metal which covered the top of the rubble. Then we trowel through the remaining charcoal, ash and rubble deposit, looking for any surviving material.
We’re finding lots of large fragments of the decorated plaster ceiling, much of it retaining significant detail. We’ve been particularly excited to find parts of the figures of Greek Gods and Goddesses which covered the ceiling, as well as large fragments of the frieze.