Dani and Chris report on a rainy Thursday in week 3:

Danielle is ‘finding’ things useful (geddit?):

When we arrived it was raining and after a site check it was decided that all of us would go to do finds washing in the finds store. The morning consisted of finds washing with groups A, C and D continuing on with the excavation work after lunch. My group of Liam, James and Liz were all scheduled to have a finds session so after lunch we stayed put. However, this time we were working through our find sheets and separating the marked finds into different groups such as pottery, glass, and industrial material. These sessions have been useful to understand how finds are recorded and catalogued.

Chris finds his bottom!

RAIN!! And for only the second time in the last 3 weeks we are rained off and have to retreat to the finds room. This retreat is somewhat welcomed as it is also freezing, so much so that many of us are beginning to doubt it’s June at all. So for the morning all of the groups set about finds washing except for my group who get another finds recording lesson, this time covering small finds and how to correctly catalogue them. The morning wore on and by lunch time the sun is back…. The cold remains but we are half way there and, with this, work begins again in earnest.

Once again Marc and I return to our pit which now feels not far off 10ft deep - although in reality it's closer to 3 - and begin to remove the pool of water that has filled it. This however becomes the least laborious  job of the day as after the water is removed all that remains is a glue-like clay sludge which we spend the rest of the day trying to remove and clean back to reveal…. finally the bottom of our pit!!! It is the small victories that get us through the day.