We're back for our 12th season. Keep up to date with all the discoveries, brought to you by our daily bloggers.

Walls not ditches?


Rachel writes -

Today was a day of excavation for group A. Aaron and I worked on taking the baulk out to reveal the clay in trench VI, which took all day! This morning the sun was shining on us, but this afternoon returned to normal and the rain came. Sadly this meant that I found out that my 'waterproof' coat was not quite as waterproof as I had anticipated! Regardless of the rain, we still managed to have fun. I have really enjoyed the past four weeks, it has given me a great insight into fieldwork and I feel like I have learned a lot.

Jonathan writes -


The day started of with some cleaning of what we thought was a section of the robbed out boundary wall. As the day continued, this feature started to mutate into what we now think could be part of a robbed out wall of a structure. This coupled with the feature that was found in group A's area could indicate some form of building. So what started off in the morning as a simple clean back ended the day for group A in the same place that we had started, on our umteenth clean back. The day closed out with group B digging down to what we think is probably the natural layer for the site, although bits of pottery were found so who knows exactly. The mystery of the site deepens and with two days left we need to pick up the pace if we're to understand the site - as well as to stop next year's lot getting the interesting stuff.

Meggen updates -

Another day and another problem to solve. Our parallel 'ditches' now look more like robbed out walls - with possibly even a wall connecting them (which would probably mean a building!). We won't know more until we can plan and then dig a little deeper tomorrow. We also seem to have found another feature in relation to one of the wall/ditches. We need to explore the stratigraphic relationship and we aren't really sure what this is. We've only caught a small bit of it in the excavated area. The other puzzle today was that we started to dig a sondage into what we were betting was natural clay - only to find artefacts in it (including some Roman grey ware). So it isn't natural, but possibly redeposited natural as more clay that seems pretty clean (no finds) is underneath it. Well, so far. The way things are going we'll dig deeper and find the site is even more complicated! A good day though - despite the rain. For the students - digging, planning and some practice using the survey equipment (a total station). For me - standing around pointing and then making piles of spoil for students to clean up! The privilege of experience....

Comments