Monday 10th June 2013

Day 9- The absence of evidence is not the evidence of absence

When the weather takes a turn for the worse and there aren’t a lot of finds coming up, it is vital to remember the purpose of the excavation and how much more interesting features are just waiting to emerge! For this reason, site director Miles Russell undertakes a site overview every week, to demonstrate what is occurring elsewhere on site and even if the most spectacular finds are not coming up, how it is important to finish excavation of a feature.  Miles Russell states that the excavation is extremely important and how it is important to consider the lives of not just the rich and wealthy.

Roman pottery is generally known as being well made and it is not often that production techniques are discovered. However a misshapen Roman pot was recovered by student Shannon Neil, which looked like the handle had been pressed into the body rather than correctly made.  This mistakenly made pottery is pictured below.

Misshapen Roman pottery recovered by student Shannon Neil, courtesy of Bournemouth University.

The star find of today was recovered by student Abigail Golding within one a section of an Iron Age pit. It is a fragment of pottery with intensive decoration with part of a face visible. The ear, nose and possible face paint is visible and also some of a possible headdress, as pictured below.

Pottery fragment showing a proportion of a face, recovered by student Abigail Golding, courtesy of Bournemouth University,

Three years ago, within the same feature but in a different section a carved handle was recovered. The handle was carved from bone and had a similar decoration design to the pottery fragment recovered today. Both are definitely not British made and the style indicates a Mediterranean or North African origin.