THE recently formed Portland Museum Trust is keen to keep the material found at the Roman-British archaeological site on the Island.

At a meeting of the Association for Portland Archaeology, (APA), director Susann Palmer told members: “This is exciting news and hopefully, present negotiations with Dorset County Council will make this possible.”

She also announced that the project at the multi-period site on the playing fields of the Royal Manor Arts College has officially been successfully completed.

She thanked all the establishments and volunteers who had supported the work from the beginning in 2005.

The project was funded initially by the Local Heritage Initiative but was taken over by the Heritage Lottery Fund after about a year.

The project included 15 months of daily arduous excavation work by volunteers, starting from June 2005, followed by many months of regular processing, recording and studying the large quantity of finds dating from prehistoric times to the Roman and medieval periods.

Mrs Palmer said: “The finds produced many surprises, including very rare bones of the extinct great auk, which was quite unexpected as this flightless bird used to occupy only the rocky islands of the northern Atlantic ocean.

“Among the other archaeological pieces found were Roman fine and coarseware pottery, including shards of large storage jars, probably used for the importation of wine or olive oil and several pieces of fine red slipped pottery proved to be extremely rare in British collections and they came from a known potter in far eastern Gaul.

She added: “A tiny brooch of a duck is of exquisite workmanship and was probably also imported.

“A substantial number of burials were found on the site along with various intriguing features which could suggest that at least part of the site had cult or ritual associations.

Coloured and glazed ceramic ridge tiles from the large medieval building overlying earlier remains suggests that the site was occupied between the 12th to early 13th centuries by either a wealthy monastic group or a very wealthy landowner.

Mrs Palmer suggested the possibility that the wealthy landowner could even have been Henry III’s half-brother who is known to have bought Portland at about that time.

“Whatever the explanations behind the mysteries of this site are,” she continued, “it has clearly indicated that Portland was a place during the past, of far more importance than previously thought – possibly a wealthy trading settlement with also a very strong religious element.”

The full-scale report about the project is to be published next year as a monograph in the series of British Archaeological Reports.

Coinciding with the appearance of this report in the summer, APA plans to hold a retrospective exhibition about the project on the island.