Day 8
Thursday September 1st 2004

“We’re only human, but don’t spit on metal and rub it!” Kelly Powell
A wonderful blue September day again, and a team of at least 22 on site, working at excavating, washing and using the auger.

The Second Transect

Working under the instructions of Mike Godwin, Richard Marson, Hugh Parish and Bernard Pinnock worked their way along the second transect, boring much shallower holes than yesterday as they reached sand at only 1 metre. As sand is laid down in fast moving water and clay in quiet water, Mike sees a pattern which indicates a small channel running round the back of the site and connecting with the main channel. The site itself is standing on a mound of Pleistocene sand (bright orange and not deposited by the river), and is an old feature of the landscape.

Washing the Finds

Today Kelly Powell, Finds Supervisor with SCCAS, was with us and organised the washing of all our finds. The rules are: no metal objects to be put in water (or spat on and rubbed); watch out for decoration; scrub, rinse and then check that the find is recorded with the site code and context number. Later they will be sent to Bury where they will be weighed and measured, and then sent to specialists who write reports on them. She worked with various people during the course of the day, and many bread trays of finds now look neat and ready to be thought about.

Finds

Two very exciting finds today: the one which caused the most excitement was the ‘Gold Coin’ found by John Jamieson. This turned out in fact to be a very pretty lead weight. The second is the carefully excavated post, which ……… has been working on for two days. Even Jezz thought it worthwhile to get out the camera for this!

The Web Site

Chris Johnson has been working to put this diary onto the Local Heritage Website and now has both words and photos in place. The web address is www.lhi.org.uk and then you will find our site under ‘Suffolk’. Apparently we have one of the most complete and up to the minute websites there!

Visitors

Lady Cave, Mrs Molly Hadlow and Marjorie Byron Moore came to see how the dig was progressing. Mrs Jamieson also came up this morning, and made some sketches of the site, which we will try to include. In the afternoon Rosie Johnson’s mother, Betty Raper also walked up from the car park to inspect us, and later on ……came from Garrett House. Audrey Boyle, PR Manager for the Suffolk Wildlife Trust paid a visit, and will come back next week to take photos.