We're back for our 12th season. Keep up to date with all the discoveries, brought to you by our daily bloggers.

Soil samples and finds work

Emma works on finds and takes an environmental sample:

For a third day in a row the sun was shining. Good for some. For pale skinned people like me it always ends in sunburn! As the temperatures soar, temptation for ice cream and unhealthy drinks rises, which is torture for me as I’m on a strict diet. Although it is nice not to work in the pouring rain for once.


This morning group D managed to escape the sun’s burning rays as we had a finds session. In today’s finds session we were given the task of marking the artefacts that we washed last week with the site code and context number. Not as easy as it sounds as we had to use old-fashioned fountain pens. Ones where the ink was applied by dipping the pen into a bottle of ink. Needless to say that I was the worst at this as I kept making ink blots on the artefacts (Tom & Katie how can you guys write so small with those pens!?!) Fortunately for me (and the archaeology team), after tea break I went back to washing unsorted finds.

By the afternoon we were back outside in the trench. Although the usual digging was involved, the soil from the context was put into buckets for environmental analysis. This is an important process as it finds the smaller artefacts and organic material like seeds and charchoal that is hard to spot and it can tell us the nature of the soil in the context. As a result, archaeologists can have a more detailed knowledge about the site.

Before I sign off I would like to thank Meggen for giving the group home-made cookies and doughnuts over the past 2 weeks. :)
Emma adds glamour to the trench whilst taking samples.


Comments