Wednesday 15th May 2013: Rhianna, Dan, Andrew and Hayley report on Day 7

Rhianna finds bones and bricks:

The day started with a downpour of rain making it impossible to continue with our work. This meant we could go home for a couple of hours, which was good for me as I was already soaked through from walking there. Finally the rain stopped and we returned to a waterlogged site, so we had to work as a team to remove all the water. This was done in a conveyer line system where we were passing buckets to each other and by using planks to reach them like some sort of P.E. game. Although I wasn’t very good at this task as I spilt most of the water on other people and on the ground...

The last part of the day we continued on with our previous work where I found even more bones and a lot of brick work. We are going to connect this with the area next to us to see if we have a wall or not. Also it was my groups turn to talk to the public and we talked to a nice group of people who were interested in what we had uncovered, what we found and what time period it could be dated back too.

We hear from the elusive Dan for the first time:

In the morning the weather was obstructive to the continuation of safe work on site so we were granted the permission to leave until 11. After lunch my group took part in the finds lecture and over the afternoon we learnt how to care for some of the common materials excavated from the site such as bone, pottery/ceramics , metal, glass and stone. this information was very useful as we were left to our own devices to wash all the finds that had already been bagged up.  I really enjoyed this afternoon as I found washing finds to be very therapeutic in a relaxed environment chatting amongst our group with our music on.   

Andrew soldiers on:

Today was a day of two halves. The first was wet and muddy with buckets full of water being chucked onto the grass offsite. The site was flooded and work didn't begin until 11am because of the horrendous rain that had been pouring down on Chester since this morning. Nevertheless, we soldiered on and cleared the water off about half of the site before we broke for lunch.

The afternoon saw group D washing finds with toothbrushes and letting them dry on two year old newspapers. It was a great deal of fun and it was very interesting to see all the once muddy and obtuse finds become something we were better at identifying. We listened to music, washed finds, had a laugh and learnt a lot about the post-excavation finds process.

Hayley is thankful for a dry afternoon:

Today started with rain. Not just any rain, the kind of rain that floods trenches, makes a thousand puddles and turns the entire site in to a colossal sized slip and slide. So with crumbling trench edges and the hazard of going face down in slurry we began to bail out the more waterlogged features and sponge off the puddles. Thank god it wouldn't rain anymore today. After lunch and a quick jaunt to the local boozer to lift the spirits the sun began creeping out and we were able to return to the business at hand - troweling! We were working on a deposit, the cut of which we planned and levelled yesterday. Not very many finds from this deposit, a couple of bits of bone and pot: I got to sift through the dirt looking for all the small bits in the clumps of earth that had been mattock-ed out. Quite looking forward to doing finds washing on Friday, should be interesting especially if we are able to wash and sort the materials that we have personally excavated. Loads of people interested in what was going on at the dig site too- despite the weather. Hoping for a dryer day tomorrow :)