They had a farm, produced ceramics and metalwork, and had "a few denarii to rub together".

But other than a hunch that they were native Britons rather than ruling Romans, little is known about the community that lived at the site of Woodgate Nursery in Aylsham almost 2,000 years ago.

The site's owner Peter Purdy and scores of dedicated volunteers have been shedding light on their lives through the Aylsham Roman Project, which has almost completed the first week of its annual three-week archaeological dig.

Mr Purdy said this year's dig had already yielded more than 2,000 historical items.

He said: "We're finding mostly Roman stuff, but we have also found one very nice piece of Iron Age pot, from around 1,000BC, which shows people have been living at the site for thousands of years.

"We've also found a few Roman coins from around 350AD with metal detectors, and some Roman glass.

"This means that whoever lived here must have been fairly high status because it was so expensive.

"We've had no military finds at all, so we think it's Romanised Britons, who came from the indigenous population.

"We can't say it's a villa yet, but the finds are indicating the people who were living here were running the show, and the outlying areas were used as an industrial area - for pottery, growing crops.

"We've also found some fancy pottery, so they must have had a few denarii to rub together."

Denarii were the standard Roman silver coin.

Mr Purdy added: "We've found some beautiful finger prints on clay from a kiln.

"So you can put your fingerprints into theirs and it connects you with them. You are as close as you can get to the forgotten memories of these people. It's lovely, really."

Mr Purdy said the number of people taking part in each day's dig varied from around 30 to 80 and included many children.

After the items are found and preserved during the dig, the rest of the year is spent cleaning, cataloging and researching them.

"Everything we've found has to be labelled and preserved for future generations, so they know what came before," he said.

To find out more, visit aylshamromanproject.com or find the group on Facebook.