CAER: Chester Amphitheatre Environs Research Project

Thursday has b een a day, to use a  sporting punditry term , of two halves for team A. This morning we found ourselves with in the warm  sanctuary  of the finds room  away from the sudden down pours. Our aim was to start separating out our clean finds, so that we had pottery, building material, bone, etc. in separate groups.  We then had to describe what a select number of objects were like in those groups, e.g, colour, texture, condition, etc.  To do this we were ably supervised by Jill, who we no doubt preceded to  irritate  with our level of questioning , which was somewhat a kin to an annoying five year old. After that task was finished we cracked out the tooth brushes and lukewarm water and set too cleaning yet more finds!  However soon lunchtime arrived, and we were told to down tools. Our lunch break was spent enjoying the hilarity of BaneCat, a must watch for anyone with a love for batman, cats or with a sense of humour!  ...

I’m not really sure what to say to be honest… gone are the days that an excited Daniel looked forward to getting out of bed to rush to this once captivating experience of archaeology even if it is a fabricated version of a much coarser, unforgiving version of commercial archaeology. The shelter from realism is a dangerous filter, one that I am sure will become apparent  later in life .  Today  I found myself debating with Sid the sloth whether a piece of Roman, that turned out to be medieval, pottery was the 35 th  or 36 th  shade of grey. The answer of which still evades me.  Those initial gleeful days spent excavating every fragmented piece of indiscernible bone soon came back to bite as my attempts to clean with my trusty Colgate tooth brush, there are other brands of tooth brushes available, was inevitably futile. The only worthwhile thing to look forward to, to bring the day back fro m the ashes was a pasty from Pasty & Co, there are other pasty re...

Hello lovely internet humans! And obviously the secret aliens. Today was a fine morning for another finds session, but this time there was no 'weshin'.  No no, it begin with detective work... well somewhat detective work. We needed to begin categorizing the finds, which meant splitting the types of finds into different groups and beginning to describe the assemblages we had. Using magnifying glasses we could look up and close at our little ceramic sherds and see if they clay had inclusions or we could look at bone with the magnifying glass too to observe any decoration or cut marks. I have included plenty of photographs of the finds sessions for you, our ADORING internet public! You will also be able to see the writing on the sherd, we did this last week (believe or not the ink and those 'told fountain pens). We marked anything that can absorb the ink and artefacts which will not be damaged by the writing process. Aaaaaaaaaah the afternoon time for tea an...

Day 11 of ‘The Big Dig’ and group D have spent the day rehearsing their Cinderella skills and bailing out their trench … Although, we are most definitely not sinking.  The first part of the day was spent finds processing, which consisted of myself and my team marking the pottery objects that we had previously washed last week  with the sites code, trench and context number . It was amazing  to see the objects clean and dry  and the sense of achievement  was overwhelming. After all, some of the objects present may have been used some 2,000 years ago. A different time, a different civilisation, a different set of social values. It’s in my  blood;  I just want to know all that I can  about the people who used these objects , if only there was such a thing as a time machine. Mind, in hindsight, would there be any need for us archaeological folk if there was?! This is one of the main reasons I came to Chester to study  a rchaeology, that connec...

Day 11 on the dig and I think  I'm  finally starting to get the hang of these early mornings. After walking to the site and staring at the clouds above I was convinced today was going to be a cold dark day with the odd rain shower. However much to my excitement my team, group D got told that we were washing and marking finds until lunch. This may not sound overly exciting but the fact I was going to be out in the cold for the morning brightened my mood greatly.  The four of us sat around a bunch of tables and discussed the finds we had  in front  of us, which we had worked on in previous sessions. The theme of this session was marking the finds.  We discussed which finds and materials could be marked and what finds and materials couldn’t. After we had filled in our  worksheets  required for the third  elelment  of our portfolio we then were told to begin marking the finds. Expecting to be given some fancy pen to write on the find...

Today started slow, after a three day weekend and an essay, aye it began a bit slow BUT we got back into the swing of it by first break. Although somebody did fall asleep *COUGH* Kate *COUGH* ('told lass dint get much kip') The weather today was 'orate', a little sunny in places sometimes cloudy and a bit chilly through the day.  Today my task was to finish removing and level a specific area on site, to see what on earth these suspicious rocks are, and once I get it all removed we might be able to see! So keep Tha eye on the blog folks and keep reading. I did not get a lot of finds, a few small bones and bits of reddish ceramics but its nice to be out and excavating anyway. While I kept busy, Kate, Megan and Ellen started removing a clay deposit that had previously taken two days to make a site drawing and taken levels off. So I think they thoroughly enjoyed removing it after waiting so long. After not long I heard excitement as they unveiled a rib, a shoulder bone...

The second week is over and we are finally free of the backfill .  Today,  me  and Ellen finished the drawing of the clay deposit ,  that can be seen to the west of the site, adding the rocks and the hachures to indicate slopes and dips in the clay. To make this drawing accurate a metre grid had to be placed onto the earth with all of the 4 sides being level. This does not sound like a hard task, but we have concluded that this is extremely difficult especially as once it becomes perfect it can be easily knocked.  This is mainly due to the fact that each of the corners are hel d up b y a series of rocks balanced precariously   under or on top of the grid itself, resulting in a test of whether or not the rock or brick we are holding is going to cause the bubble to reach the middle of the spirit level or whether it will throw the whole thing off balance. We also attempted to take levels using a dumpy level this morning however, this needs the use of mathemati...

The weather went from being awful and raining (typical British weather) to lovely sunshine and then it ended on a moderately warm but not sunny day. We also had many laughs at various things, one being a piegeon flying straight into the fence and leaving behind its body weight in feathers, and another whilst playing the Alphabet Game which got a little out of hand. But all in all we had a very productive week and we found many interesting things!   Personally my goal has been to find animal bone or teeth and I finally achieved that and found my first ever cattle tooth!!! Woo! My mother thinks it's slightly weird how excited I was but she's supportive none the less. Whilst I was excited about finding my first tooth, Kate was onto her billionth. Our team had been slowly but steadily excavating the Roman road which has been amazing! Although we did mistakenly take out a few stones but the road is still intact, thankfully. For today and yesterday Meg and I have been drawing th...

The past week mostly consisted of digging and interacting with people coming to the site, but one of the things I found myself enjoying most was our finds workshop.  Whilst in all honestly, brushing bone with a toothbrush in some lukewarm water is most definitely not the first thing I feel like doing in the morning, I found the exercise to be rather relaxing, though I had to enlist the help of Dan and Chiara on both sessions to clean the teeth for me – I sincerely refuse to like to texture, it’s so… gross.  There’s not a lot to explain with the actual process of washing teeth; you fill up a bowl with warm water and brush the artefacts with a toothbrush, or a sponge if you’re unlucky enough and you then have to leave the artefacts to dry. Whilst I’ve lost the pictures of them being squeaky clean, I  do  have pictures of some of the artefacts we had to wash, though thankfully they can be seen even without the hard work of a toothbrush and a sponge. After...

It is  fairly often that I get asked what I am studying for my degree and generally the initial response I get is 'But how can you be an Archaeologist?'. This is often followed by a swift glance at my crutches, wheelchair or mobility scooter, dependent on which mobility aid I need that particular day. Obviously the whole idea of having mobility issues and working in a trench does seem wildly improbable at the outset, but it is simply a case of doing what I can, when I can. Today, for example, I have been having a pretty good pain day. My pain levels were low enough for me to be mobile without straining any of my joints. The other major factors with being 'in the field' as a disabled, Trainee Field Archaeologist are the team around you and the weather. We had almost perfect excavating weather today - cool enough to be comfortable with the troweling, but warm enough to prevent us freezing to the spot! I am very, very happy to be working with the amazing bunch of st...

Sam, Celine and Maddy clean the area within the structure, adjacent to the Medieval ditch Rachael, Ellen and Katie cleaning down on to Roman(?) layers Ethan and Megan removing the last of the Medieval deposits in their part of the trench Harry and Hannah learning to record their pit with the help of Simon Kim and Katie getting handy with a mattock The top of the Roman road is starting to appear

The battle continues ….  Charcoal layer beneath the clay deposit Myself and Meg were still battling through the clay mound situated near the drainage network trying to reach the charcoal surface, but at the same time searching for our hidden treasure hoard. Alas no treasure hoard was found! Nonetheless we embraced the same exuberance as we unearthed some more crunchies (bones) and some ceramic sherds of the Roman and Medieval period. Although, hands down, Meg found the best find so far in our section; two fragments of bone that tailored together, possibly a leg joint. Good job Meg, I guess the gold will have to wait for now. Come dinner time we’d completed our mission and reached the charcoal surface, which was timely as Ellen, Rachel and Kate had finished their section on the western section of the site, finding a lot of cattle teeth and few ceramic sherds. Unlucky girls! It was at this stage that we began playing the alphabet game in the morning which extended...

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...

18 May 2015 18:33 Week two of our dig started poorly..... I lost a bet to Dan. This however didn't dampen my spirits for the days activities as today was the first day of post excavation with the finds. We were only cleaning the finds today, which for the first couple of hours was very therapeutic. Mine and Ross' boasting over our horn finds started to deteriorate during this activity as cleaning them took a long time and was extremely tedious and annoying as the dirt got into every nook and cranny. Also, towards the end of the session our hands became so wrinkly that it became very uncomfortable to wash the artefacts. Luckily I missed the showers, which the other groups got hit with in the morning and the sun came out for the afternoon. We carried on excavating our designated areas, and it was business as usual really. Our finds were typically of animal bone and pottery sherds, although it seemed as though Harry and Hannah had come across quite the find - a large ...

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