Rafi and Marc report on a slightly soggy but successful Open afternoon at the site!

Rafi...

Today has been the coldest and rainiest day of the four weeks, but possibly the funniest!

In the morning, my team went to the finds store for the final finds session in which we finished our "finds record sheet" with the help of Gill and many interesting books. We definitely have gained a lot of practice and we realized we can easily recognise most of the artefacts in our trays. After that, we carried on washing and marking some finds, while Gill explained what we were doing and what we had found.

In the afternoon all the team were on site for an exciting (and wet) open day. Despite the rain, many people gathered around (we were really pleased to see people from past weeks coming back for the open day). We showed them the site and how we worked (digging and troweling), we displayed the best artefacts (pottery, glass, etc.) found also in past years, and we did some washing of finds directly on site, to make people see how it worked. Despite the rain, it has been a success!  

Not the best weather, but we had visitors nonetheless!

Marc’s last blog entry (sad face)…

Well folks, this is my last entry for what has been an undoubtedly awesome 4 weeks. This morning was spent in the finds room applying the finishing touches to our individual finds trays, coding, bagging etc and we also had a surprise visit from a film crew who were spending the day creating a media presentation for the local council and our Uni and yours truly got my 5 minutes of fame discussing the importance of public engagement with archaeology (after my agent agreed remuneration terms obviously...). Apparently I managed not to embarrass myself or the Uni so that’s a first then :). This afternoon is the much publicised public open day and the weather forecast is not good to say the least but the show must go on and it appears that no matter how hard the wet stuff comes down, we will be hard at it knee deep in the brown stuff for the good of the cause...... I’m oddly looking forward to it...

Once again the weather forecasters get it spot on (funny how they always manage to accurately predict bad weather but when it comes to sunshine....?). It really is raining cats and dogs and we all doubt whether anyone will bother to turn up. We are however, prepared and the marquee is up with finds display tables and 'interactive' finds washing (ha ha!....glad I’m not volunteering for that one!) is ready to rock. Imagine our surprise when a steady stream of observers start to arrive and show genuine interest despite the deluge!  I for one, and im pretty sure this is a view shared by my fellow diggers, am quite humbled by the extent of interest and enthusiasm shown by the public and I personally took great pleasure in doing a few guided tours of our site and engaging our attentive (if not soggy) audience.   Hard to believe that in two days time, we will be laying down the terram and filling the whole site back up. I’m actually a little disappointed!........anyway.......I think that well-earned hot bath I’m running for myself is overflowing......!

Laters........Oh....and thanks loads for following us, it’s been hugely appreciated.  :) 

Ryan describes the site to a group of visitors 

Marc and Chris talking to another group of hardy visitors