Tidying up the loose ends..

Jenine's story of the *almost* last day...
The end of the excavation is approaching. So, today it was less severe excavation and more trowelling and recording. To begin the day we started by recording the location of the site so that the group next year will know where to excavate. To do this a surveying instrument called a total station, which looked similar to a dumpy level as it has a tripod to hold the device, was used. The total station electronically records and measures the northings, eastings and heights of allocated points around the corners of the trench and the park by using a laser that is transmitted from the total station.
Later, trowelling continued to reveal more of the archaeology so that more detailed planning could take place.
The afternoon was spent in the finds room, which consisted of marking the finds using the foundation pens and bagging them. Double checking what exactly you have found is very important as some materials can look very similar - mortar and plaster, for example. Metal is treated differently from the other material in the bagging process as holes need to be pierced for the air to circulate so the decomposition rate isn’t increased.