With a total of around 80 people on site during the first day of the Durotriges Project 2014, it was sure to be a productive day. The weather provided a good working condition, although by the end of the day there were more than a few people with sunburn! Today was the first time the students had seen the site, as well as some of the site supervisors. This is due to the site being in a new location compared to the previous 5 years, where the excavations all took place in the field next to our current location. The main aim of todays work was to straighten the edges of trenches 1 and 2, and to start the cleaning of the site in order to remove any loose stones and top soil. This meant that the features would be more clearly defined and it would give the site directors a good idea of where would be the best places to focus the excavation.
The first year students who were new to the site found the first day to be physically challenging, and there were already a few blisters forming at the end of the day! The atmosphere however, remained to be generally positive with everyone excited to finish troweling back the site and to get stuck into digging the features. The most prominent features so far are a square feature (thought to be Iron Age or early Roman in date) in trench 1 with the ditch of the enclosure running through the trench. There also appear to be a few pits near the ditch. Trench 2 has revealed more pits, as well as a few unknown linear features.
Troweling back the surface of the trenches will continue into tomorrow so that all features can be clearly seen, and the students will be designated to dig the features by their trench supervisor.
About the project
Run by the Faculty of Science & Technology, the Big Dig is our annual summer field school.
Booking for 2016 is now open - click here to join
Dates: 13 June - 8 July