Day 3 – Sections and the Festival of Learning

Wednesday 11th June

Due to the start of the excavation of features today everyone turned up on site in a very optimistic mood, despite the 2 days worth of blisters and sunburn that most people have now. Miles Russell provided a 2 minute video explaining the site and our purpose of being here, as well as a bit of commentary from Harry Manley in order for us to send a small documentary to the BBC about the site and how it is progressing. Videos like these will be recorded and sent every 2 days. We also had a visit from members of the public from the Festival of Learning where they came to the site to learn how to use the magnetometer and the resistivity survey for geophysics. They surveyed the area where a new trench (Trench 3) will be placed.
In Trench 1 the ditch from the enclosure has started to be excavated, with baulks being left in place so that it is possible to see the stratigraphy of the feature. Inside the ditch a lot of snail shells have been found, as well as some  possible late Bronze Age pottery. One of the pits in the corner of the trench has also started to be excavated. The square feature in Trench 1 has not started to be dug yet because it remains to be an unknown feature.
All the feature in Trench 2 that are currently being dug also remain to be unknown. One of the features seems to be a very shallow ditch with at least 1 recut. In one section (Feature [2013], Context (2014)) of a feature a large amount of flint and bone was found. The bone was originally thought to be animal, but once a mandible was found, it was discovered that the bone was actually human. This was very surprising as the supervisors were not expecting to find human remains in this part of the site.
Site Logistics Team: Virginia Barnard-Brown, Becca Bowran