The Ham, the Gherkin and the Mac.

Thursdays are always the hardest, the day before the last day before the weekend. You want rest, but you can’t rest, not yet.

The dig has slowed down a bit since last week, we’re doing a lot less heavy lifting and a lot more trowelling – at least we look like real archaeologists now (but we gotta cut down on the burgers, sadly).

Today Simon had us move around the trench, digging different places to get a feel for the site. Group C got split, so Nick and I worked on the assumed fill of the wall to the chapel. It was really rocky and full of rubble, the aim was to get it all out (it took longer than we expected it to). But Nick likes to be a macho man and took over the mattock straight away and began attacking the ground. Fun to watch, but there was a lot of rock hard, baked soil just being thrown into anyone’s face if they got closer than 2 metres. 

A lot of bone appeared around the ditches from the Johnathon and Yash (the other part of Group C), but not much else was found. Nothing pretty enough for me to talk about anyway! 

Unfortunately we did have to end the day early today since the rain wanted to either 1. Drown us or 2. Make us slip with mattocks in our hands. We couldn’t quite decide which one it was, but it as a fun day, lots of interesting stories told about foods and rain coats. 

It’s coming to the end of the second week and so far it’s been so much fun, so much banter with our supervisors. The public have been amazing, they’re always so interested in everything we say and it’s nice to hear that we’re doing a good job.

 It’s quite surreal seeing how far we’ve come from first year, not knowing how to do anything on a site, it’s really something that I feel I can be proud of. Being onsite with everyone has been really enjoyable and we’re definitely getting close and closer by the day. 

Not going to forget that Caroline is an amazing human being who provides us with snacks, and I will always be forever grateful for those doughnuts. ALWAYS.

“We just had lots of laughs and banter in the rain, keeping each other happy while we crawled around in the mud.” – Shaun Parry 

- Amiko