Day 13
Wednesday September 8th 2004

Another beautiful, clear September morning with no rain for our archaeologists. During the day we had thirty people working, and several groups of visitors.

Work continued on the features: Jane and Mike have found a new post hole; Anna is working on a pit with a possible earlier pit lying in a different orientation beneath it; Roy is excavating a smaller, later trench which cuts across the large outer ditch; Alison is looking for ‘the corner’; Richard and Pippa are revealing a new post hole which may be part of a line fringing the site.

Duncan worked to find some dating evidence in the inner trench; very little turned up, but we did find a few bits of brick, a piece of Samian and a beautiful sherd of black burnished pottery from the 2nd or 3rd century.
Jezz is also actively looking for finds right by the post holes, as it will be helpful in dating a possible building. By trying to date the soil above the holes he hopes to work out if any are Saxon.

Visitors

Claud and Jill Forestier-Walker visited the site which Claud had known as sailor, naturalist, geologist and water engineer since boyhood. He described walking from Barber’s Point to the shore near Yarn Hill when he was about sixteen. The water was never above his knees and he walked on what seemed a deliberate stone path. He said the stones were not local to Suffolk. (Jude Plouviez does not believe that large scale engineering of causeways would have been carried out just to cross rivers.)

Sarah Chambers from the East Anglian Daily Times, and her photographer were also here at lunchtime.

Speculation

Jude now feels that this is a site which has been occupied in various eras, including Roman and probably middle Saxon. It is a site which would have appealed to the Saxons, being on an island and near the monastic settlement at Iken. The area being excavated could be the corner of the living enclosure, with more central areas lying where the shore is now due to erosion.

Beratrice has brought in some lovely sketches of the site.