CAER: Chester Amphitheatre Environs Research Project

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 2 Dig Director Simon introduces us to the trench - Work has successfully started for the new season blessed by some fine weather with the odd shower to keep the site moist. We have reopened Trench IV, which we last looked at back in 2008. It is an area that has great potential with loads of demolition material from the mansion destroyed during the Civil War in 1645 and the hope that a Roman road passes under it. The process of emptying out the old backfill (mainly by machine but finished off by students) has produced quantities of finds even though it had been excavated before (that's the second hand archaeology!). Our metal detectorist, Colin, has found a quantity of musket balls from the Civil War, whilst the students have found lots of pottery and clay tobacco pipes from the period. Now we have cleared that away, we are on to the serious stuff, cleaning up new undisturbed layers. More updates soon! Julie sums up the day's events - As well as clearing out the backfill, e...