Dani talks us through day 3

The site is starting to look more like an excavation site with a large area having had the terram lifted off yesterday with Frances, Christian and Rafie trowelling the surface to prepare it for excavation. My group consisting of Liam, Liz, James and I, started to clear a feature dug last year which was where a wall would have been along with its buttresses. The ditch was really deep and we swapped roles so that we were not in each other's way. James, Liam and I each used the mattock, spade and shovel to try and get up all of the soil and each of us alternated taking the wheelbarrow to the spoil heap. The ground had a lot of large stones making it difficult to shovel them into the wheel barrow as they were heavy and my body is still sore from the previous two days introduction into the work so I found it a hard day.

Liz went off to clear the remaining thin layer across the terram with her trowel so that it was possible to lift it off later in the day to reveal the archaeology underneath. We all worked well as a team and we had soon cleared the ditch and the surrounding area with a piece of terram that I had worked on after the ditch being emptied of soil. In the afternoon the rain had got worse which forced us all inside where Simon talked us through how to fill out a context sheet correctly. After continuous heavy rain the site was too wet to clear away the soil, thus meaning we had to end the day over an hour earlier than normal. Before we all left we went to the site and took off the majority of the remaining terram that was not still fixed in place by soil, so the site is starting to look more like an archaeological site. Tomorrow I think we will be trowelling back the layers in order for us to start excavation.

Dani removing the remainder of last years backfill from the terram membrane protecting the site