Day 16: Open Day!

Today was open day, which means lots of preparation, boxes, and questions. The beginning of the day, at least for us, was filling out small finds numbers and artefact sheets whilst the others moved tables and chairs out to site.

In the afternoon the open day started at 1pm and as it was such a stark contrast from the practically winter weather we had the day before, people actually ventured outside. Percy (Jenny and Chiara’s cow skull) made an appearance as did Barry’s replica Mesolithic tool kit and fishing tools. On another table were the artefacts recovered from our excavation this year and previous years neatly arranged ranging from cisterns to musket balls.

The majority of people we received on open day were friendly and enthusiastic people who were genuinely interested and hardly anyone asked about hidden treasure and Roman coins. 

The students were split up into teams: digging, leading tours and answering questions about the artefacts on show, though everyone contributed to answering the public’s questions about the site. I was leading a tour with a lovely woman named Alison who was from originally from New Jersey who was very knowledgeable about archaeology and suggested that the area Sam and I are working on, which is filled with rubble, could be a wall collapse and could be related to another area of the site east of where we are digging.

The open day finished at 4pm and we packed up everything and took it back to the hut.  More importantly Dan and Nathan carried a table back and were insistent on saving the fudge! Caroline and Ellen both brought donuts, which were both very much appreciated on site today. Even though a lot of us said we were on a diet we still ate them because, hey, donuts! Being the classy lady that I am I dropped the filling down myself and generally made a mess but it was well worth it. 

Overall the day was really good. It was sunny and nice and warm, albeit windy, and there were lots of snacks going round which always boosts moral!

It’s surreal that we’re on the final week already, it’s going to be really strange that it will soon all be over and the year will be finished!

Maddy