CAER: Chester Amphitheatre Environs Research Project

After a rigorous, laborious, mainly wet but sometimes sweltering hot, banter-filled season, the 2014 season of the CAER Project has now come to a close. But coverage doesn't end here - stay tuned for a summary of what we found, and what we plan to do next! One last trowel-party to get the trench photo-ready Don't sweat the technique One wall of the possibly medieval structure, showing there's still plenty more to unearth next year... And now with the last word from Team 2014: Laura After a tiring and challenging day, the four weeks of digging is now over *sobs*. Today wrapped up what has been an incredible experience for all of us. In the morning, we started out by cleaning up our beloved site and making it suitable for photographic recording, which in itself was very exciting to do. We took site photos with SLR cameras and ensured the pictures were of the best quality! After lunch, we were approached by a great amount of very interested public, who had m...

The end of dig recording is in full swing, but still the digging continues, if only for one more day! Callum The main work of the day was drawing sections of the ditch that we're excavating and filling out context sheets, which contain descriptions of an archaeological feature which will combine with several other context sheets to give an overall account of the site. For us this meant measuring the features found in the pit and putting these onto a grid map. With the use of a measuring tape we then measured the distance to the edges of the trenches to get their coordinates. At the end of the day we used the dumpy level to record the different heights of the trench to get a relief plot of the different parts of the site. This can often be dull work, but needed to be done: as they say, no pain no gain! Brad Today for the first half of the day was the final session on the finds which was the bagging up of the marked finds and the recording of the more decorated finds such as the ...

The remains of the medieval and early modern past are revealing themselves quickly now that we've only got a few days to go! The name of the game now is to step back and record what we've revealed before putting the site to bed until next year, but not before a few more fantastic finds by Team 2014! Jessica Only TWO DAYS left of this year's dig and the rain is still relentless (that fine rain that soaks you right through). Luckily this morning my group were finds washing and labelling, sheltered from the grim weather with some lovely finds! My favourite was a post-medieval heart-shaped lead mount. Excavation this afternoon was still rainy but enjoyable with a few finds like a large chunk of medieval Ewloe-type ware cistern (see above), proving Cestrians have always loved a pint - well done Dave! Hopefully the last couple of days will turf up some equally great finds as a nice farewell. Beth My morning on Day 16 of the dig was spent in the finds lab allocating small ...

Our first reports of the Open Day have come in - we were feeling the love! Dan engages the public during today's Open Day Some of the decorated medieval tile on show today Adam The open day finally arrived.....and I am happy to say that it was a great success!  There was such a large turn out with all manner of people showing up to sate their interest in archaeology. All the diggers got stuck in to our work stations from the mini dig, where kids could hunt for finds, to our finds tables where we displayed the more interesting artefacts from the site; these ran alongside the site tours where we shared our knowledge of the site with the public. What I took away from today is that archaeology is not a dead subject and that there still is a lot of love for it out there. Adam takes our intrepid visitors on a Mini-Dig Laura and Beth show off our Roman finds from previous years Dave Well, today was pretty successful by all accounts! At the start ...