On The Disingenuity of Soil

William deals with a difficult feature:
Today was spent mired in mild vexation. After a pleasant morning spent focusing on speaking to the public (and discovering that whilst I was ill, Calum had uncovered an amber bead in a layer I was working on!), Calum and I began work on a feature that had only recently revealed itself in the south-west corner of the trench by holding onto its rainwater moisture rather longer than the soil around it. Unfortunately, it had the most awkward shape to it imaginable. Not only was the soil so dry and crumbly that cleaning back the soil layers resulted in the edges of the feature blending into the layer around it, but also its form was distorted by both a large clay inclusion and a cut filled in with a large amount of charcoal residue.

It eventually reached a point where Calum and I were unable to tell wether we were looking at a single long feature, or two separate pits that simply happened to lie close to each other. Simon and Dan eventually assured us that it was one feature, and that what we were excavating we had done quite neatly and accurately!
(I still suspect they said that just to stop us panicking...)

William puzzles out recording a complicated feature.