Largest Roman amphitheater discovered in England

A  legendary Roman amphitheater has been unearthed in England.  Situated just outside of Aldborough village in Yorkshire England, the largest Roman amphitheater of Britain's antiquity has been discovered. 

ALDBOROUGH, YORKSHIRE (Catholic Online) - Surveying land that is today used for grazing animals, researchers from Cambridge University discovered the buried ruins using geomagnetic sensors. Their find consisted of rows of seats buried under the earth of a hilltop. Minor excavations have confirmed the find. 

Locals told the story that an ancient amphitheater once dominated the space, but the stories had long been dismissed as legends from long ago. Few took the claims seriously. However, the area around Yorkshire was well settled by Romans and many ruins have been discovered in and around the village.  Some of the ruins contained artwork, which is a sign of cultured, and often monied inhabitants, and where they are found, previous finds suggest theaters and other entertainment venues are close.

The promise of finding something new attracted researchers to the area. Working diligently, researchers divided the ground into a square mile grid and carefully walked over the entire space, using hand-held scanners and ground penetrating radar. The scientists believe the theater was just part of a well-developed entertainment complex which also included a sports arena.
 
The finds add veracity to the belief that the northern Roman provinces were more heavily settled and more "civilized" than classical historians may have thought. A lengthy wall also suggests the town was situated on the frontier, to the north of which lived the many barbarians that later attacked and overran the Roman colonies as the Empire declined. 

Researchers are now waiting for funding and permission to excavate the site and to complete a full survey of the area. They hope to find yet more proof that the site was once a bustling Roman enclave rather than a lonely outpost on the barbarian frontier.

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