CAER: Chester Amphitheatre Environs Research Project

Day 19. The final day.  Many interesting events happened on site: Kim yelling at Cam in a moment when she was too hungry, Maddy falling over her ankle, Sam being offended because Harry didn't want to admit his majestic beauty... Chocolate cake (I love you, Kim!), bottles of wine for Dan, Simon, Julie and Gill and a well deserved thank you card. Today was our last chance to unearth all the wonders hidden  in the amazing trench IV. After days and days, weeks and weeks, Jenny, Dan, Nathan and I (with the precious help of Mavis of course! ) reach the bottom of the medieval ditch, finding great quantities of bones and pottery! By the end of the day we managed to take pictures of the entire ditch, which was meticulously clean. Sadly, after the pictures were taken we had to cover all the trench and put the site to bed,  ready for new discoveries next year. What a super sad moment! It's not going to be the same life from Monday... Going to the library instead of being in...

Early thoughts of final days, title of a wonderful song and perfect title for today's blog. Day 18 has just come to   an end and  it is unbelievable to think that tomorrow is our last on site. Sad me. I don t even know where the past three weeks have gone..! Probably I was too  busy in finding bones, pieces of pottery, Mr Percy the cow skull (or I should say dragon skull... We are still not too sure about it!) and complaining about the miserable and freezing cold weather. Although ,  I must say that finally today the weather has been clement with us busy archaeologists and we had a lovely warm sun and for once in my life I was just fine. Today we finally reached the bottom of the medieval deposit in which Jenny and I have been working for the past 3 weeks, with the precious help of Dan and Mavis the mattock.  Six trays  have  been  filled with animal bones and medieval pottery and next to the medieval ditch we also found what it could be in...

Today, Chiara, Dan and I gave ourselves a challenge of excavating the remaining fill of the medi eval ditch at the southern end, and we succeeded  with the help of Mavis (a mattock) ! However, the southern end of the ditch has now become a mystery. At the end of yesterday we h ad recovered a large number of R oman pottery and building material s,  which was unusual  considering that we are excavating a ditch that dates the medieval period. This  has led us to believe that there may be a Roman feature that the ditch has cut through!  It is  very exciting! Some amazing finds have been excavated out the ditch fill from numerous  animal remains to  pottery sherds and metal objects (mostly thought to be nails).  The most exciting find so far for me has been several large pieces of  Cistercian ware that  were excavated yesterday and today. The vessel is broken, however it is thought that is may have been a ‘portable brewery’....

Plan of the main features and overall phasing of the site Looking northwards along the ditches Planning the stones beneath the clay in the western part of the trench Clearing out the last bits of ditch fill in the northern end of the trench Medieval floor tile  part of a 'portable brewery'! Base of a Samian vessel from the ditch fill (presumably residual) Starting to take out one of the remaining baulks through the ditches The art of levelling a planning frame

Today, on the 3 rd of June 2015, Dan lost croissant to a squirrel. It would’ve been a dark day for archaeology if it weren’t for the amazing finds found on site by our archaeologists. A large medieval bone needle found by our well versed archaeologist Ross. A huge medieval animal mandible possibly from an adolescent cow or pig found by our archaeologist Jenny. And some excellent clearing carried out by two incredibly dedicated archaeologists Kim and Kate. All and all, beside the thievery of a croissant by an archaeology hating squirrel, today we made so much progress in excavating and understanding this site. Harry

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 eve...

Day 15, and the beginning of our final week!  It's a weird feeling. A feeling of sadness that after this week the excavation will finish. It has been a gruelling three weeks but has served only to strengthen friendships and muscles! Today team D had our final finds session which consisted of us learning about the importance of record cards (for institutions who are not yet digitised) and recording small finds. This helps aid future data retrieval. Although, an artefact does not necessarily have to be small in order to be classified as a 'small find'.  The purpose of a small find record is to record special and unique artefacts separately from other excavated material, which is recorded and treated differently during post-excavation analysis. An example of a small find would be a coin, which provides valuable dating evidence of a context. Well this is my final post, so enjoy fellow archaeologists. Kim

I  cant  believe we are now into the last week! What a great three weeks  its  been and I don’t think  Im  quite ready for it to end.      The day began  with me and my group doing our work on our finds trays . We had to fill out a lot of sheets and  cards which  completely confused me at first. However, after talking them through with the group and Julie they slowly began to make sense. I think…. I love dealing with the finds, all nice and clean the finds look great sat in their own bags with their little cards giving brief information about each artefact. The little work room in which we work is now filled with trays of finds. Animal bone and pottery now are everywhere within that little work room and I do feel a sense of joy as I kind of know what they are and knowing that we excavated them is an even better feeling.       After a freezing morning of dealing with our finds we then went outside to di...