CAER: Chester Amphitheatre Environs Research Project

Da nielle  finds evidence for French cuisine?  Today I was working on an area near the wall of the building, I was gradually taking down the soil and found a large amount of snail shells and evidence of charcoal. Dan was not sure if it might be a feature or if it was a waste pit like Frances and Christian have been working on next to me. I will be continuing on with this area on Tuesday until I have come to the bottom of the charcoal. Liam avoids spoilers and gets spoils: Today, for me, was generally made up of the same activity. Excavating mine and Liz's trench never seemed to end, mortar and brick becoming the new bane of our lives. Luckily the site was calm and allowed everyone to have a friendly chat while working. Whilst avoiding spoilers for the ‘Song of Ice and Fire’, I managed to find some more carved stone, bone, lead, pottery and a shaped piece of quartz possibly from a Roman ring (cool! – Ed.). I plan to enjoy the three day weekend and ...

D anielle 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 wa...

Hayley spends the day trowelling for finds: Today we focused on excavating a medieval deposit next to the Roman road, this was a slow process of trowelling down and back, rather tedious but the only way we could collect the smaller finds. For instance, today we excavated the jaw bone of a pig with all the teeth still in situ as it were. We also spoke to some interesting people today, one guy was telling us about a construction site where they found a Roman well, he said they excavated a lot of brooches, the best I've achieved so far is a bead ;) The weather stayed fine today and the rain from the day before made the soil much more pliable. Rhianna explains the Roman Road to the public It’s Wednesday, Week 3, and my group continued to remove another layer from our section and finally completed it today. During this we found more pottery and bones, including a handle. We then proceeded to trowel the area to see what was underneath the loose soi...

For Marc, Tuesday brings bones, bones and more bones… Weather forecasters eh!.....today’s forecast, warm and hazy sun, the reality, cold drizzle ALL day! Never mind, it didn’t stop me and my little team of Chris and Lauren making impressive headway with our digging. 3 foot down and the outlined features of what could be a culvert running to a pit are beginning to show through nicely. Our trowelling also brought up another lot of goodies, well, mostly animal bone, with a little Cistercian ware thrown in, but mainly bone. Hmmm....bones. If there’s one thing the last few days of digging have revealed in plenty its these, so much so that we are all getting a little sick of the sight of them.  Good job we haven’t got a lecture this afternoon on them........ The afternoon sees us out of the rain and our damp hole and into Albion Street for a lecture on............bones!!!! A visiting lecturer from Liverpool John Moores University imparts his considerable expertise on t...