Today sees the end of the third week and the pressure is now on to try and get as much excavated before the last week comes to an end. Over the past two weeks, the overall interpretation of the site has changed a great deal with now three phases of rebuilding of the Roman villa and the late Neolithic to early Bronze Age burial which has added 2000 years to the date of the site. The latter is thought may relate to a Bronze Age barrow cemetery on the ridge just north of the site yet, although it is very interesting, it is not very useful for our main research project which is focusing on the transition between the Iron Age and Roman periods. Hopefully this time next week, our interpretation will have evolved more.
North of the site in Area H, a ‘corn dryer’ constructed within the backfill of the banjo enclosure ditch is being excavated by second year students Tom Bye, studying BSc Archaeology, and Amy Green who is studying Archaeological, Anthropological and Forensic Sciences. This has been an ongoing project since last year and has so far uncovered some Samian ware pottery, burnt flint and hearth stones made into bricks. It lies adjacent to a Roman ditch which fits into the interpretation that a corn dryer would have been placed by the edge of the field in order to prevent fire risks however no corn or grain have yet been uncovered meaning the remains could be a malting oven used in the brewery process. We are hoping that further excavation in the following week will enlighten us more as to what this feature was once used for.
The ‘corn dryer’ excavated in Area H by Tom and Amy
Postulated plan of a corn dryer
An ongoing process on the site is that of filling out certain paperwork to record our excavations. Feature sheets are filled out per feature that is excavated, as are context sheets for every context (layer) of soil that is excavated. It is vital that any features are recorded in such detail as excavating is the only time we will ever be able to recover the information. Once the dig has finished, the site will be covered over again meaning we will be unable to come back to them at a later stage; thus context and feature forms hold all the information that the archaeologist experienced when excavating. The site administration, including the context and feature forms, is being supervised by Rachel Stacey who has just completed a Master’s degree in Recovery and Identification of Human Remains at Bournemouth University.
Rachel checking context forms