CAER: Chester Amphitheatre Environs Research Project

Updates from Team A and B… Jake… On a wet first day back excavating after a long weekend, Team B returned to trowelling back the far corner of trench 8 where we left off on Friday. Due to the wet weather it was easier to see the difference in colour of the contexts and we were able to find an orange/red clay that we were looking for on the Friday. After completing that we were tasked with removing a previously recorded feature at the end of the trench. After lunch Team B had a finds session in the pavilion where we looked at separating finds and also looked at how the finds might be interpreted. Team B ended the day cleaning some finds from the excavation. David… Today  marks beginning of the end for the excavation [ noooo! ] but the A team continued on with the trench. The tasks that we accomplished today were based on cleaning up the trench and creating a section drawing of the new archaeological features. It seems the A team were not affected by the weather, consi...

Robert and team C continue to dig deeper… today we tried to find the bottom of what might be an Anglo Saxon ditch. We had many interesting finds such as Roman pottery some of which may have been from an incense burner and containers, there was also plenty of animal bone. Although the soil was difficult to take out of the ground, the sun was shining and ice lollies were provided at the end of the day so on the whole it was a great experience. A well deserved ice lolly at the end of a hard days work! Edward reports for the A-Team… today we were tasked with taking height measurements or ‘levels’, and drawing plans of areas of Trench VIII. I also took part in excavating a suspected post-hole. There were also large groups of visitors at the site today, including some from a school, all of whom seemed interested in the site’s history, and what we had found. The rain water that had collected in Trench IV was needed to make the trowelling more easy, but the nice weather made ...

The first day of the week, and it has been a great start. The sun has been keeping us company the whole day and not a cloud to be seen. Up until now most of the work in trench VIII has been about mattocking, shovelling, and getting the dirt out, then cleaning the surface before repeating the process over and over again. Today, however, seemed like the proper start of the excavation itself. Planning frames were put out and areas of interest drawn and recorded and we have so far started to excavate two potential postholes. Today was also our turn to clean finds, and I would like to ask: How can it be that so many stones find their way into the finds tray? Almost half of mine were filled with slate and sandstone! Nevertheless, it was fine sitting in the shade of the gazebo, which arrived at the site today. And the tray also contained a wide array of pottery, bones and metal. So, all in all, a good tray and a good start to the new week.    Maiken