Wednesday 18th June 2014

Today we were issued with a heat weather warning, so we had to make sure that everyone had plenty of water and break out of the sun.

Trench 2 has shown the late Roman housing platforms coming along nicely. The Roman working hollow that overlies the Iron Age ditch is still revealing a lot of animal bone, including cow, sheep and pig, plus a lot of pottery that is amongst the mass of burnt flint. It is good that we have been able to identify the Iron Age ditch because it seems to be the only Iron Age feature on site this year – everything else is either Bronze Age or Roman in date. This is unusual, considering that the area was heavily populated during the Iron Age period, hence the name ‘Durotriges Project’.

The masters students are still preparing Trenches 4, 5 and 6 ready for excavation. These trenches are very small in comparison to Trenches 1 and 2. The masters students hope that these trenches will reveal another part of a separate enclosure ditch.

A small pit within the square enclosure in Trench 1 has been excavated and revealed a very large amount of charcoal. It isn’t clear what the purpose of this feature is, as there are no burnt rocks coming out of it, it merely appears to be full of charcoal. After being excavated it is only c. 30cm deep. All over Trench 1 the plan and section drawings are in progress. These are very important because it is vital to record the stratigraphy of a feature as it could help us to interpret what the feature was used for. The end section of the enclosure has been fully excavated by Niomi Edwards and Demi Wiskerke and it revealed that we got part of a ditch just before it turns off in a different direction. The pit in the northern corner of Trench 1, dug by Lewis Busby, has revealed the partially disarticulated skeleton of an animal, as well as some bones from a second animal. Neolithic pottery was found on the top of one of the ditch sections, which indicates that the site is a lot earlier than the site directors had originally anticipated.