The end of the second week (and so half way through this season’s work) has come very quickly and good progress has been made on the site as a whole. This morning Miles Russell, the excavation director, started the day with a site briefing and discussed the progress and ongoing interpretations of the site. In Area H outside the ‘banjo’ enclosure, there are some large pits that showed up on the geophysics and when excavating it has been noted that there are tip lines in the stratigraphy; this suggests these pits were used as rubbish tips. Despite many features being excavated, there is still a gap in our archaeological record of around the 2nd-3rd century AD as not many datable artefacts for this period have been found. The plan for next week is to dig further sections through the ‘banjo’ enclosure ditch in the hope that some datable artefacts have been deposited in the bottom when it was first constructed.

Also in Area F, there have now been two burials, one of a 3-5 year old (the only one of this age from the site so far) and an adult that was most likely to be male. It is difficult to say whether they are Iron Age or Roman until radio carbon dating has been done on the bones. However, the adult burial is more likely to be Iron Age with a Roman ditch cutting through the grave cut.

Near to the adult inhumation is some building rubble which seems to have been tipped there as there are pieces of Roman roof tile and animal bones in between the mortar and flints. Today this was being surveyed by field school participants Michael Davis and Richard Higham who are both on their first excavation.

Michael and Richard planning the building rubble

Elsewhere today in Area H, a very decorative glass bead was found. It was recovered from the very large pit being excavated by Jack Martin-Jones and myself that was mentioned in yesterday’s blog. Overall, good progress has been made despite the unreliable weather conditions and hopefully next week we will have moved on considerably with the interpretation of the site as a whole.

The glass bead found in Area H