CAER: Chester Amphitheatre Environs Research Project

Michael C reports - Four weeks - it seems like a long time, but the past four weeks have flown by. They say time goes fast when your having fun. Over the past four weeks we've had a chance to have an insight into the excavation process and develop our techniques and have a lot of laughs whilst doing it. Today we started with a bit of light mattocking and troweling whilst enjoying the sun. The afternoon consisted of assigning small finds numbers to special artefacts and learning how to conserve these artefacts and a bit of finds washing mixed in with a bit of banter.

Rachel writes - Today was a day of excavation for group A. Aaron and I worked on taking the baulk out to reveal the clay in trench VI, which took all day! This morning the sun was shining on us, but this afternoon returned to normal and the rain came. Sadly this meant that I found out that my 'waterproof' coat was not quite as waterproof as I had anticipated! Regardless of the rain, we still managed to have fun. I have really enjoyed the past four weeks, it has given me a great insight into fieldwork and I feel like I have learned a lot. Jonathan writes - The day started of with some cleaning of what we thought was a section of the robbed out boundary wall. As the day continued, this feature started to mutate into what we now think could be part of a robbed out wall of a structure. This coupled with the feature that was found in group A's area could indicate some form of building. So what started off in the morning as a simple clean back ended the day for group A in the sam...

Meggen updates - Today was a recording day on site - cleaning up, photographs and planning. This is all in preparation for doing some serious digging over the final three days. There are the two parallel 'ditch' features to figure out and a series of clay layers that don't appear to be the natural subsoil. Some of these areas have a very distinctive 'cobbly' surface, which might mean they were either dug into or perhaps trampled surfaces. After being quite happy thinking we had our boundary ditch, we are now not so sure ... only more investigtion will tell us the answer. And like the classic TV programme that shall remain nameless....we've only 3 days to do it! Dean writes - The end of the dig is in sight, evidenced by the fact our group started rather sluggishly today after having a sunny Monday off. We did manage to clean up the site for photographs, however, before a post-break planning session. After demolishing a foot-long Subway at lunch, we were bac...