Friday 20th June 2014
Day 10 started with some animal bone being found by Darwin Culley in the ditch of the square feature in Trench 1. The second half of the graves had mostly been taken out by now, and so the people digging were allowed to continue at a steady pace until they found bones. In addition to this the animal bones from the northern pit in Trench 1 were finally removed for further analysis. Zooarchaeologist Mark Maltby has informed us that the bones were in fact from a roe deer.
The ditch section in Trench 2 where the skull was found has just revealed some sheep bones at the bottom of the section. Student Ebony-Storm Stanberry has been able to uncover the whole skeleton, and it appears to be fully articulated. Zooarchaeologist Ellie Hambleton has been able to tell us that it was a juvenile female sheep. Sections drawings and plan drawings remain to be the main focus in Trench 2 as a lot of the sections and features have not been drawn. It is important to record all of these in order for the directors to make the best interpretation of the whole site that they can.
The skull from the ditch section has been brought back to the site in order to be processed and for the students to see what it looks like once it has been partially clean. Unfortunately once the soil was being removed from around the skull, the skull started to fall apart. At the very end of the day, student Amber Williams discovered a very large piece of antler in the bottom of a small ditch section (a ditch different to the one with the human skull in). This was a rather unusual find because the sheer size of the antler was odd, plus it lay directly on top of a fairly large piece of pottery. However, the rest of the deer was not found, so it appears that only half the antler was placed in the ditch.