Thursday 19th June 2014
Everyone was hoping that today would be the day that the graves inside the square feature in Trench 1 would reveal skeletons. The features within the potential square barrow have been dug for just over a day now, and everyone is hoping that they do indeed turn out to be graves. And fortunately one of the graves revealed part of a human skull. The other possible graves have all been removing their sections in order to get each feature down to the same level. Excavations have also started on the ditch of the barrow, and it is hoped that these sections will give us some material that we can use to give a date for the square feature. The animal skeleton in the bottom of the northern pit in Trench 1 has been carefully recorded using a grid plan, as well as the coordinates plotted using the Total Station.
Over in Trench 2 the finds team (Damian Evans and Kel Barrass) became very excited when a piece of slag was found. This piece of iron slag (found in context 2053) is important because on it was the lining of the furnace used to melt the iron ore. The furnace lining was found embedded onto the chalk bedrock, which is exciting because it shows that the furnace laid directly on the chalk and wasn’t raised.