Bath curse tablets the Romans as "Aquae Sulis") were excavated between 1978 and 1983 by a team led by Barry Cunliffe and Peter Davenport. In 1979/1980, around 130 tablets were discovered in an excavation of the "Sacred Spring" under the King's Bath. The spring had been temporarily diverted to facilitate the excavation, revealing a huge array of Roman era items including the tablets. The tablets, some in a fragmentary state, were small and rectangular and initially were assumed to be made of lead, although subsequent metallurgical analysis revealed that they are, in fact, made of lead alloyed with tin, with occasional traces of
Insula (Roman city) forum around which the most important public buildings would be sited. Insula (Roman city) An insula (Latin for "island") is a city block in an ancient Roman city plan, i.e. one that is surrounded by four streets. The term was also used for apartment buildings that took up an entire city block. A standard Roman city plan was based on a grid of orthogonal streets and was probably founded on the ancient Greek model of Hippodamus and was used when new cities were established, e.g. in Roman coloniae. The main streets of each city would be the Decumanus Maximus (east–west-oriented)