Early Roman stone tesserae from Southwick villa, West Sussex

Numerous mosaic tesserae were discovered on the site of the Southwick villa in sporadic excavations extending from 1815 to 2011, but only 65 survive today, shared between the Marlipins Museum at Shoreham-by-Sea, the Barbican House Museum at Lewes, and the Manor Cottage Heritage Centre, Southwick. The tesserae were submitted for scientific analysis and divided into different materials for which provenances can be postulated. A soft chalk is likely to be local, whereas a hard chalk may have been brought from the Isle of Purbeck in Dorset. The dolomite used for grey tesserae certainly comes from the Isle of Purbeck, where dolomitic cementstones are present in the Upper Jurassic Kimmeridge Clay Formation. The Poole-Purbeck area seems to have supplied materials to a wide range of sites in Southern Britain during the early years of the Roman occupation. Some suggestions are made as to which rooms at Southwick were decorated with mosaics, using analogies with the palatial villa at Fishbourne 40 km to the west.