CAER: Chester Amphitheatre Environs Research Project

Lucy and Jack’s group get to the bottom of things in trench 4… Lucy… Today the main focus in our section through the ditch was to remove the last remaining large stones from the fill, and to hopefully reach the bottom. This afternoon after many attempts we finally managed to get the last sandstone out (shown in the photos below), which nearly led to some missing toes. Overall today has been a fab day in the trench, as all our hard work over the last few weeks has paid off, with us managing to reach the bottom of the ditch. This has led to a feeling of accomplishment amongst me and my group, as for a long while it was debated if we would ever reach the bottom. Team work and some rope skills required... A sense of achievement in visual form?! Jack…Today our group had a study leave break for the morning, so we were not on site until the afternoon. This left us feeling refreshed and ready to work in the lovely weather, and the ditch we were excavating was slightly ...

Jack E is finding a bit of rain makes things easier in trench 8… Rain has finally graced us with its presence. After many days of harsh sunlight, excavation can now continue at a somewhat normal pace. With the soil now removable at a faster pace Team A has finally begun to enter the next context. Showing brick, bone and clay, things are looking promising in the trench. Morale is good because of the progress being made, so throughout the trench things are at an all-time high. It's Friday - ending the week on a high! The archaeology in trench 8 looking super clear as Dan gives his end of week round-up. Kayleigh reports from trench 4… Today started off gloomy with light rain but this was followed by a sunny afternoon, so waterproofs and sunscreen were both needed! Me, Connor and Abby started to excavate in between the ditch and the Roman Road to reveal yet more of the road. Whilst Holly M, Kimberley and Jess worked hard by cleaning a huge section of the trench revealin...

Kimberley has some dabbling visitors… Today we started with bailing out the ditch we had been excavating which had accumulated some groundwater overnight, luckily this didn't take long and we were able to move on quickly. After this we continued to use mattocks and shovels to get deeper into the ditch. During our break we were visited by some ducks which is always a cute addition to the day. A couple of mallards hoping to have a dabble [ geddit? ] at archaeology perhaps? Lucy had a cracking day… Once I’d finally managed to get the hang of getting in and out of the trench without falling back in, today’s task had me and Holly focusing on the area alongside the possible Anglo-Saxon ditch. We were trying to find the cut of the larger ditch and dig down to the same level, all while trying to keep the water that kept seeping into the ditch at bay. One of the highlights of the day was when Holly uncovered a pig jaw bone with teeth still attached!! With cracking weathe...

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 ...

So for today's task, some of the finds collected over the six days, needed a good 'wesh' as us Yorkshire folk might say. That is where we came in. The morning was spent washing finds, using toothbrushes, washing up bowls and long thin sticks. There is something very satisfying shifting mud from the little crevasses of the bone and ceramic revealing that pretty surface under all that mud. Not everything can be 'weshed' though, metals and some wood are best left alone for now. I ALMOST sacrificed a piece of wood, but saved it from the bowl at last minute. After the washing the finds our group went back to the site, which had been restored by the morning groups to its former fencey glory. This was after some delinquents, in there idea of 'faffing' around, had pulled down the fence and some of the tent overnight. Although it annoyed us all, some light relief was brought from a pigeon dive bombing and face planti...

This morning began with the interesting task of cleaning the finds; which was a very delicate, time consuming (especially when playing ‘who am I’ for 3 hours) and even relaxing job of removing all the dirt from the finds which have been unearthed over the previous week. Most of the objects we had to clean were bones and some ceramics; this included my most favoured find which is a large cow horn or possible Minotaur… It took well over an hour to clean this one object, the whole horn was filled with clay like dirt and thankfully most of the other finds were much smaller in size and didn’t take long at all. The day was definitely going our way as it had been raining all morning so as soon as lunch comes the rain cleared, the sun was dazzling and so my path to food was sealed.  The second half of the day was not as relaxing but still very delicate as me and Cam were tasked with keeping the rocks in place whilst working around them to push the trench further back, swerving o...

View along the length of the Medieval ditch Nathan cleaning out the last of the ditch fill Nathan and Dan excavating the ditch fill The Rev. Chesters visits site to see what we're finding in what is essentially his backyard Contrasting ditches and fills.  Why have one when you can have two? Ross' great discovery view along the Medieval ditch, facing south Finds are popping up everywhere

Today saw more periodic drenching of the team.  Whilst some escaped to the relative dry of the finds processing room, others battled it out as long as they could on site. Here's hoping our Open Day on Tuesday is drier than this! Adam Today was focused around post-excavation processes for finds, because archaeology does not end after an artefact is recovered. The first stage  is to wash the finds; this is a labor of love as it requires a delicate touch and patience, but only certain finds can be washed such as bone and pottery as other materials, for example iron, can be destroyed if washed. After the finds are washed and dried it's on to the next stage in the process, which for us is to mark the finds with the relevant site code so that if misplaced they can be returned to their proper place. This is a tricky and delicate endeavor that requires using waterproof ink, a fountain pen and a steady hand. Alas, I lack the latter so this was a struggle for me at first, but...

After a bit of a slow start quite a large assemblage of finds has been retrieved over the last 3 and a half weeks and predictably this week the excavation of part of a ditch running north/south across the site is producing bags and bags of animal bone and pottery. Last year’s backfill produced an amazing range of finds: clay tobacco pipes, lead shot, fragments of Samian pottery, as well as Westerwald stoneware and post-medieval Spanish olive jar and a variety of other post-medieval wares, including slipware dish fragments, blackware vessels and pieces of Cistercian ware cups. It’s interesting to see what ended up on last year’s spoil heap rather than in finds trays but it is easy to miss fragments when it’s wet and muddy. Once the backfill had been removed the quantity of clay tobacco pipes found fell considerably and stopped completely after the last of the 17th century demolition deposits were removed from the south side of the trench. It looks as if we are firmly in the 16th ce...

For Marc, Tuesday brings bones, bones and more bones… Weather forecasters eh!.....today’s forecast, warm and hazy sun, the reality, cold drizzle ALL day! Never mind, it didn’t stop me and my little team of Chris and Lauren making impressive headway with our digging. 3 foot down and the outlined features of what could be a culvert running to a pit are beginning to show through nicely. Our trowelling also brought up another lot of goodies, well, mostly animal bone, with a little Cistercian ware thrown in, but mainly bone. Hmmm....bones. If there’s one thing the last few days of digging have revealed in plenty its these, so much so that we are all getting a little sick of the sight of them.  Good job we haven’t got a lecture this afternoon on them........ The afternoon sees us out of the rain and our damp hole and into Albion Street for a lecture on............bones!!!! A visiting lecturer from Liverpool John Moores University imparts his considerable expertise on t...