A SIX weeks archaeological dig turned up a "textbook" Roman camp on the site of York's future Community Stadium.

The project drew to a close in mid June, after dozens of volunteers joined a team of professional archaeologists to uncover a Roman marching camp under the old Huntington stadium.

Project manager Ian Milsted said it exceeded all their expectations, and even after many years of other activity the site threw up perfect evidence of its ancient past.

Ian said: "We found the Roman marching camp we were looking for, and there was much more left of it than we were expecting.

"The ditches looked exactly like the descriptions in Roman military textbooks. The documents say 'this is how a Roman soldier should dig a defensive ditch' and that's what we found."

The ancient military earthworks even came complete with "ankle breaker" narrow slots in the bottom, he added.

Although analysis has yet to start, Ian said the team had found fragments of Roman pottery along with pieces that could turn out to be part of brooches, and a ring.

"We didn't find a huge number of things, but that's not surprising because this was a temporary marching camp and you wouldn't expect the Roman army on the move to have a lot of stuff."

The archaeologists can already see this was a more substantial and established, and better maintained base, than the nearby camp excavated 10 years ago under what is now the Vangarde site.

And working on a site which, like this, had already been affected by the construction of Huntington Stadium, mean archaeologists could uncover much more than on sites which are either protected and scheduled monuments, or hidden under the city.

He said: "We can't physically get to sites if they are under the Minster, or under the city we all live and work in."

"This is an important discovery for York. There are suggestions there could have been eight of these camps on the strays around York, and we have now found half of them."

The professional teams will now analyse their finds, and start talks about how the story uncovered under the stadium can be told.

Further building work cannot start on the site until the six-week judicial review period is over which should be in the next few weeks.