Open Day and the wonders of the past

The morning mainly consisted of recording, with Lee and Iwan extending their original plan to encompass the entire section and practised the ancient art of balancing planning frames.

Jack and Callum worked on finishing the job of recording the stratigraphic layers, depth and position of a possible medieval fireplace in the south west corner of the trench, then allowing us to continue on and excavate more of the section, hoping to find further features that may confirm and date the first as a medieval fireplace. Excavating this area however, was not finished today and will hopefully be completed before the ever more closely looming deadline on Friday. 

Unfortunately for Jack, whilst he was performing his duty showing and explaining our finds to the open-day crowd, Callum hit a nice stash of pottery. This ended up being very productive as he filled a finds tray with Roman pottery in just under an hour, with some pretty cool finds like a large decorated rim and some large sherds of black burnished pottery. All in all it was a pretty productive end to the day and hopefully the finds will keep flowing tomorrow and Friday.

Most teams were setting up for the open afternoon as well as carrying on excavations in their areas of the trench, Matt and Beth had some well-preserved organic material from what is believed to have been a cess pit.

Aaron and Hannah continued to deepen the exploratory section within the medieval building; the majority of the section is now in a homogenous Roman layer with mixed grade pottery (fine wares, Samian and black burnished) and animal remains. 

The afternoon revealed a medieval pit at the northern end of the section with glazed medieval pottery mixed with masonry waste.

This afternoon, 2-4, it was our site open day. Everyone did their bit to engage with the public and enthuse people of all ages. The CAER team had finds on show at our interactive display area and students on the sites edge to give tours. Our most enthused visitors were often children, fascinated by finds from the ages - 

“that must be really really old pottery, if its older than my grandparents”, 

“it’s nice to think of my pets paw prints lasting for hundreds of years” 

 “I’d never thought of people combing their hair just like we do!”.

It’s nice to think we could be inspiring the next generation…

N.B. Thanks to Caroline, Amy, Howard and Morn who came to support us, be nosey and cheer us on. Special thanks to Caroline and Amy who in addition brought sweet treats to energise the workforce J

Team E