Day 9 on the training dig and Megan comes face to face with a lion!

Megan…

The rain this morning made working in the uneven, old trench difficult, so half of Team C moved over in to this year's new trench where they had reached a 17th century context. Our day was centred around starting to work through the demolition layer, removing lots of bricks, slate tiling and mortar. In the section of the trench we were working in was a series of sandstone blocks which appear to be aligned into some kind of linear feature, so we left these in place for now. In terms of artefacts, our finds tray was almost overflowing by five o'clock, with a real mix of items including a small copper alloy token, some medieval window glass, multiple animal bones, and these fragments of 17th Century bellarmine vessel.

A bulging find's tray for Megan's team

Sherds from a 17th century Bellarmine vessel, a type of decorated stoneware

Four stones in a line = a wall?

 The most aesthetic object I found today has to be this glass object decorated with lion's faces. According to our finds expert, it would have been part of the stem from a fancy, relatively high status wine glass from the 17th century. Its hollow because it would have been produced by blowing the molten glass into a mould.



Lion faces decorate the stem of this wine glass. Cheers!



Elizabeth…

Day 2 of the third week and the rain almost beat us. Groups D and F went off with Julie for a small finds session and spent the morning carefully marking and sorting their finds, including marking on bone, metal and glass. This took a great deal of concentration and dexterity and proved very inkteresting! (pun intended). The other groups were hard at work despite the weather with Jamie finding a fantastic iron key. Other finds today include an intricate glass object along with many Medieval and Civil war finds. Tomorrow brings the start of a new stratigraphic layer!

Jamie finds the key to...?