Onward and upward as they say! Tuesday saw great strides made, particularly in Trench seven. There was a lot of dirt moved by a lot of people, and some interesting little quandaries emerged, much to Julian’s consternation.
Trench six
The main find of the day off in Trench six, was the end of the ditch they had been excavating. That is .if you don’t count more Rock Crystal, which takes the tally well over 300 pieces so far. This of course makes Nick and Irene who are working on a project which has grown out of the finds made in the trench.
Trench seven
A busy, busy day in the trench. One of the tricky finds we’ve made is some stones. No overly interesting you might think, but there’s a number of stones lying in the ditch segments. They are relatively large, with some being over a metre in length. One interpretation is that they were all tipped or pushed into the ditch at some time in prehistory, but quite when is a tricky question to answer. Almost all of them are on the inner edge or southern of the ditch. As we continue to take out the fill of the ditch, we’re hoping things will become clearer.
Despite the urgency of the work, there was enough time for the staff to continue with teaching the students. Julian took some through the intricacies of drawing a section of a large post hole. Ann took time out from supervising almost the whole trench to run through photographing a feature for the official archive.
This involves getting the feature and surrounding area as clean as possible. Once this is done then you need a scale, in this case one 2m in length, a north arrow (pointing north!) and details of the site code, trench and feature number. Then, and only then can you take a photo with the digital SLR camera.
So, another busy day as we head towards our finishing date next week. There’s plenty to be done, and some reinforcements have been called in to make sure we get everything done on time. The pressure’s on . . .
Dorstone Digs! 