Day 6
Tuesday 31st August

“I’m terrified we’ve got too much, and scared we have not got enough” Jezz (Who’d be an archaeologist?)

The Site

A clear, warm and sunny day with 25 people working on site. Conditions today were easier, as yesterday’s strong wind had blurred and obliterated colours and patterns in the soil. However it is still really too dry, and the professionals would have preferred a good soaking during the night. Volunteers put in hours of slow, patient work, enlivened by the thrill of ‘finds’.

Jezz has set us to sieving a diagonal line of the squares, while the rest are being trowelled. New squares are set up with reference to the S1 site fixed by John Duffy last week. Finds and soil variations will be plotted onto a chart and eventually transferred to the geophysical map.

Plans

Jezz Meredith spoke about the project at lunchtime. He would like to finish lifting the top layer this week and then look in detail at the features such as ditches and post holes next week. He showed a contour plan of the site showing how it stood above the surrounding country. He then talked about today’s finds, explaining what they were and where they may have come from.


Finds

This is a piece of quern; these were plates of lava, imported from Germany or the Low Countries, and used for grinding corn.

An exciting find – a bit of slag. This would have been a by-product of metal working, probably iron but possibly bronze or even glass. Another larger piece was found by Alison later, in the same area.

A lovely piece of the rim of a storage jar.

It was also exciting to find a dark area which Duncan Allan felt was a ‘feature’. This would be dealt with separately, by drawing a line across it and then excavating only on one side; the other would remain intact to show the stratification.