CAER: Chester Amphitheatre Environs Research Project

This afternoon team B did some recording of the Roman road and gully, whilst other members of the team did some level recording and filling out of context sheets. We are well underway to mapping out the road. The remainder of the road gully was removed, finding more in the second half of the ditch than the first, including metalworking and Roman pottery. Elsewhere in the trenches, people continued to excavate the unknown depths of a medieval (?) ditch. At the very end of the day, other members were uncovering a possible stone well cap. Overall Team B would like to say we have thoroughly enjoyed our time together over the last few weeks, with 21 ice creams consumed, 3 major sunburns, 4 animal invasions, an unknown number of buckets carried, and thousands of memories made. We’ve had a brilliant time! Team Bee and their tribute to the trench burrowing bees

The cannon backfire, before being excavated This was a productive morning in both trenches as headway was made digging into the ditch at the back of trench IV and much more excitingly the early modern feature in trench VIII was finally determined to be a cannon backfire because of the residue found on the end facing the Chester walls. Wasn’t long though until work began to remove it and excavate the context underneath Trench IV, after the cannon backfire had been excavated Find of the morning, a bone dice on top of a sandstone brick near the cannon backfire. This joins a matching set of five found nearby last year. The afternoon was also productive in both trenches, however, in trench IV we had a bit too much enthusiasm. During the early afternoon it took a while to get things going again after a blissful lunch break in the sun, to which we were joined by a group of Mexican school children keen to learn about what we were doing and what we had found. This session contin...

Day 13 has been another day of exceptional sunshine and heat, which made excavating fairly difficult as the soil had become hard, requiring plenty of energetic mattocking, especially in the west end of trench IV..  After another long day spent digging (and sweating profusely) in Grosvenor Park, we are still nowhere near the bot tom of our early medieval ditch and have been left with aching muscles, sunburn and mosquito bites.  This rather brings to light th e meaning of a certain  quote  we encountered (and ignored in disbelief) during first year : “Archaeology can be very boring, distressing and physically uncomfortable”  - unfortunately, it’s true (especi ally for Connor ,  who fell down Dave’s test pit  and was  promptly followed by a wheel barrow full of soil!) .   A piece of (very blue) Roman glass On a slightly more serious note, today’s finds include a piece of Roman glass, substantial Roman pottery, a medieval Cistercia...

Day 12 of the dig was certainly the hottest so far (a pinkening 24℃) and possibly the most intriguing day. Numerous finds from the Roman road today have begun to tell a part of the story of life in Roman Chester.   Several Roman iron nails were found within the context of the Roman road one of them may have been rather enthusiastically mattocked through, along with a melon bead and a lead spindle whorl.  Across the site, preparations were made to dig two sections through a possible ditch, which also recovered some large cattle bones. A black tessera was also recovered, could there possibly be a villa nearby? Samian ware and Black-Burnished ware pottery sherds were also frequent finds from the baked concrete like earth, which was subsequently dumped over the EDGE of the spoil heap upon its removal. The day was intersected by the Bone Lab a crash course in the bones and bits of beasts and how to draw and identify our muddy pieces of past creatures by the lovely Ian, a ...