Day 15 and 16 have been scorchers but we're still working hard…we host some visitors and the surface of the Roman road is reached...

Emily…

Today brought more sun and more finds, group E spent the morning doing our last finds session where we completed our interpretations of the contexts and bagged them up with small finds labels. We then began to select pieces to reference for our end of dig portfolio. After lunch we moved back to site to continue work on establishing the boundaries of the Roman road, where we found some more building material, pottery and animal bone.

A 'small find', a piece of stamped clay pipe stem.

Steph…


Day 16 of the dig was certainly the hottest so far! Steph and Victoria cleared back the sandstone covering more of the Roman road, with tough mattocking as the ground was baked hard. After some much needed ice lollies and shade more of the Roman road was revealed. Which consisted of sandstone rocks and pebbles. Finds from this context included Roman glass, Samian pottery, bone and lead. We were visited by some school children who showed a keen interest in the excavation and one even said that he wanted to be an archaeologist. Sunblock at the ready it looks like another hot day tomorrow!



A working shot as hard work brings us to the Roman road surface at last!

Ben…

Despite the sweltering conditions, we managed to get through a lot of material today! I spent most of my time excavating and drawing a small sandy pit, which contained a large amount of bones and nails. A residual piece of Roman pottery was also unearthed: quite different from our normal civil-war-era finds. As the temperatures climbed, the trench had some extra visitors: a group of primary school children. Matt showed off one of Trench 8's most complete finds: a piece of pig jaw, with tusk and teeth still attached. In the other trench, the team uncovered a 1734 copper coin (the year Rob Roy died).