CAER: Chester Amphitheatre Environs Research Project

Yes I plagiarised the title for this blog; thanks Mr Graves; but having come up with several terrible puns for a title; trowels and tribulations, anyone?; I gave up. It’s not a goodbye to excavating, just an end of digging up Grosvenor Park. I will of course miss the old trench, it’s become something of a home to me, particularly context (1071) which I’ve made my very own, to the point of considering whether or not I should decorate and move in full time. Almost four weeks ago all of this began and part way through the first week muscles and bones I’d completely forgotten about began to make themselves known to me, mainly by attempting to force themselves out of my body any old how. However, all of us have benefited through our experience; I myself am currently sporting an Olympian physique and I’ve just gotten off the phone to David Dickenson, who wanted some tanning advice. Some of that might not be true, but in terms of what we have all learned about the practicalities of field...

The morning mainly consisted of recording, with Lee and Iwan extending their original plan to encompass the entire section and practised the ancient art of balancing planning frames. Jack and Callum worked on finishing the job of recording the stratigraphic layers, depth and position of a possible medieval fireplace in the south west corner of the trench, then allowing us to continue on and excavate more of the section, hoping to find further features that may confirm and date the first as a medieval fireplace. Excavating this area however, was not finished today and will hopefully be completed before the ever more closely looming deadline on Friday.  Unfortunately for Jack, whilst he was performing his duty showing and explaining our finds to the open-day crowd, Callum hit a nice stash of pottery. This ended up being very productive as he filled a finds tray with Roman pottery in just under an hour, with some pretty cool finds like a large decorated rim and some...

With this being the last week we thought it would be a good idea to give a summary of what our time on site has taught us.  What the site has taught me is that an archaeologist needs patience in order to do the job properly. I noticed this when excavating a pit in the first week and continuing into the fourth only to find that it was actually the site of an uprooted tree!  The four weeks have also taught me that teamwork is a necessity as without each other's help we would have accomplished next to nothing.   Being on site has allowed us all to get some hands on experience with a real working site. This has allowed us to gain a knowledge that could only be gained by first-hand experience. The four weeks experience has been really enjoyable and has demonstrated what can be accomplished outside the classroom as well as giving an idea of what the future might hold.  Josh Today marks the beginning of the end. As I start the last week of our ...