Day 5: Excavation and a taste of finds processing - by Becky and Eleanor.

Today was day five of the excavations here at Grosvenor park. In Trench IV there has been some interesting developments, with most of the soil from last years excavations being cleaned up, we were able to start uncovering some of the new archaeology yet to be investigated. In the front left corner of the trench, large, thought to be Roman stones have been removed, this is to see whether earlier contexts are beneath them, on removal all sides of the stones were cleaned and examined in case of an inscription. 

 

Elsewhere in trench IV more work has been undertaken just to the side of the Roman road and exciting amounts of Samian pottery have been found including a lovely lid of a pot. These finds along with obvious collections of stones suggests an area of civilian occupation near the road, we cannot wait to keep exploring this area tomorrow!

In trench VIII, more cleaning up, trowelling and mattocking went underway to better understand the post medieval and civil war archaeology and the associated features there.

This afternoon was spent in our first finds workshop where we learnt about the basics of processing finds. We washed a variety of finds including pottery, glass and bone. It was interesting to learn what happens to things that we find once they have been taken out of the ground and the process of recording and preserving them. Our afternoon entertainment was provided by someone doing tai chi in the park, they looked a lot more relaxed than us archaeologists!

Becky and Eleanor