Monday 23rd June 2014
Trench 1 has become a hub of activity today. The graves have finally started to show the rest of the skeletons! The majority of the skills appear to be crushed, but this was only natural from the position of the burials. If a head is facing directly upwards rather than on its side then the sheer weight of the chalk and soil pressing down would crush the skull once all the organic matter has decomposed. In one of the graves a layer of planks had to be placed balancing over the skeletons to allow the students to excavate it because the grave ended up being too deep to dig without being able to get in the grave. Upright leg bones have been found in the smallest grave, which suggests that it might be crouched, which is odd if these burials are Christian. However the idea of the burials being Christian was rejected after the bodies were found in the east-west orientation, but the heads were at the east end, rather then the Christian way of putting the heads at the west end. It was starting to get very difficult to expose the bones of the skeleton by the end of the day because the soil was very loose, which meant that if the soil moved, then so did the bones.
A very exciting find from the graves was was appeared to be a coffin nail, and on a closer look, we were able to see mineralised wood on the nail. The mineralised wood is from there the metal has slightly dissolved in a solution and been absorbed into the wood, so then once spathe wood itself has rotted away, there is an impression of the timber on the nails. Unfortunately because the organic matter no longer survives we can’t radiocarbon date it, however it does give us evidence that the bodies were buried in coffins. A lovely shale spindle whorl was found in one of the graves, which suggests that the person buried is a female. The pit in the northern corner of Trench 1 has found a large layer of charcoal almost directly under the skeleton of the roe deer. Some animal bone has been found in the ditch of the square feature, although it isn’t a substantial amount.
Over in the ditch section in Trench 2, student Jessica Greenhalgh is starting to reveal more of the sheep skeleton in the ditch section. The skeleton is now fully articulated, and it is impressive to see it completely exposed. However, part of it does lie in the unexcavated section next to it, so that sections ill eventually have to be taken out so that we can see the skeleton in its entirety.