Day 7 A new week begins with mattock mania and sunny weather!

Sophie’s team has mattock mania… Today Teams A and Bee were tasked with mattocking trench 8 to determine whether we had reached a new context. The mattocking was hard work but we all cooled off in the breaks in the shade after the first full sunny day in Grosvenor Park!

Finally some sunny weather for excavation in the Park!

Alex discusses dust and discovery… The mattocks were out for the A-team on a roasting day. The dry mud caused hassle but once in the swing of it the A-team and team B continued on with their work finally getting past most of the backfill and into the new contexts. Discoveries were plentiful with large pieces of bone and pottery being found. Throughout the day the A-team engaged with the interested public answering questions and showing our finds. However, the heat was a difficult opponent causing much needed water and shade breaks, yet the A-team continued through this and completed the day. Now the A-team is in preparation for the next day of heat, dust and discovery.

Jessica reports for Team D… the day started with our first finds session, which meant we washed the objects we had found in our trench. Most of the finds were ceramic and animal bone which meant they were able to be washed in water to remove the large amount of mud attached due to the weather on Friday. In the afternoon we returned to Trench 4 and started the process of trying to find the gully which should have run alongside the Roman road. We managed to clear quite a bit of material and hopefully found a possible feature which we will continue to try and uncover tomorrow to determine what it could potentially be. The best find of the day was a piece of Roman glass which we showed to many of the visitors that came down this afternoon, along with our other finds, to show them what we were doing whilst they enjoyed the warm weather.

Finds from each context are carefully washed and dried. 

Washing of our finds is an important part of the process.