CAER: Chester Amphitheatre Environs Research Project

Today was day five of the excavations here at Grosvenor park. In Trench IV there has been some interesting developments, with most of the soil from last years excavations being cleaned up, we were able to start uncovering some of the new archaeology yet to be investigated. In the front left corner of the trench, large, thought to be Roman stones have been removed, this is to see whether earlier contexts are beneath them, on removal all sides of the stones were cleaned and examined in case of an inscription.    Elsewhere in trench IV more work has been undertaken just to the side of the Roman road and exciting amounts of Samian pottery have been found including a lovely lid of a pot. These finds along with obvious collections of stones suggests an area of civilian occupation near the road, we cannot wait to keep exploring this area tomorrow! In trench VIII, more cleaning up, trowelling and mattocking went underway to better understand the post medieval and civil war...

Today was day three of the Grosvenor park dig, and almost all the back fill has been cleared. Sadly, the bank holiday sunshine didn’t stick around for us as we continued prepping the trenches for the excavation, with the ducks seeming to enjoy the rain much more than we did. Despite this, when we weren’t taking shelter in the pavilion, we were discovering more of Chester’s historic past. Over in Trench IV, further evidence of the Roman occupation was uncovered by Kelly, in the form of a small piece of samian ware, bearing a maker’s mark. Meanwhile, over in Trench VIII, the day was orientated towards identifying the features of the context, of which the rain helpfully cleaned. Amongst these was an in-situ brick feature, the purpose of which is still to be discovered… Emma V

Finally, the smaller of the trenches has been completely uncovered, and the tarp removed. While a sudden bout of rain hampered efforts to do much more than this, it was still cause for celebration, and we stopped to marvel at the sight. Most impressively, a stone structure – its angle likely caused by it sinking into a ditch – was now visible, although we’d stepped on it many times before! Unfortunately, it did start to rain, and our next task, scraping the top layer of dirt off, turned into a muddy slog. When break time rolled around, there was a brief moment of trying to all huddle together in the tool shed for shelter, before someone had a better idea and herded us back off to the pavilion. While it did stop raining eventually, it was almost time to pack up at that point! Hopefully we will have more progress tomorrow. Delenn

It is the second day of the excavation and we have yet to completely get through the back fill from the excavation of the previous year, yet we have still uncovered some exciting finds and features, which we are hoping to fully explore next week.  So far, our favourite find is a current penny which has made us one whole pence richer than we were yesterday, I suppose the musket balls and animal bones we uncovered were pretty cool too. We are still suffering from the looming threat of the park's squirrels but hope to befriend the little blackbird that frequently visits our humble trench. While locals show an interest in engaging with the archaeology, their dogs seem much more enthusiastic to help us dig and uncover bones, for which we are grateful. The one thing we learnt today is that sometimes not even factor 100 sun cream is strong enough to protect our delicate shoulders from the unforgiving sun (Thank you Emma for lending us this sun cream yet it was not strong eno...

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...

Ben gets to grips with geophysics: Today began as every other day it seems, wet and cold. This morning me, Andrew and Dan were given the task of clearing a section of the site where it was believed the main wall would continue across the site. Needless to say this was not very pleasant as the area was covered with pools of water and mud, after this was cleared we began to trowel at the area, and started to uncover the wall. However after break we did not get a chance to finish our job as we then had the task of surveying an area using geophysics, more specifically a resistivity meter. This process was quite enjoyable and was certainly a new experience for all of us. Christian talks us through the last full day on site (boo! L ) After almost four weeks at Grosvenor Park today was the penultimate day of the dig and the last day of any excavation on site, so everyone was busy finishing digging and recording the features before the terram is laid and the tren...

Ryan’s plans are scuppered by the changeable weather… As the last day approaches it's all hands on deck as everybody is trying to finish the features and other areas of interest before Friday comes. The weather has been vile over the past few days starting mostly with the open afternoon which happened yesterday. To everyone's surprise, we had   quite a few people turning up, even in the continuous heavy downpour of rain. As for today, the morning was sunny and the afternoon was dull and overcast until the last hour when, yes, the heavens opened AGAIN. The context that Michael and I have been digging has finally been finished, removing the mortar and brick layer. We used the last hour of the day to plan the feature but with the dumpy level ready and set up it decided to rain so we left it until tomorrow. Group C finished the last session of finds washing this morning and we now have a completed list for the portfolio. All in all another day on site however with the end lo...

Rafi... Today has been the coldest and rainiest day of the four weeks, but possibly the funniest! In the morning, my team went to the finds store for the final finds session in which we finished our "finds record sheet" with the help of Gill and many interesting books. We definitely have gained a lot of practice and we realized we can easily recognise most of the artefacts in our trays. After that, we carried on washing and marking some finds, while Gill explained what we were doing and what we had found. In the afternoon all the team were on site for an exciting (and wet) open day. Despite the rain, many people gathered around (we were really pleased to see people from past weeks coming back for the open day). We showed them the site and how we worked (digging and troweling), we displayed the best artefacts (pottery, glass, etc.) found also in past years, and we did some washing of finds directly on site, to make people see how it worked. Despite the rain, i...

Da nielle  finds evidence for French cuisine?  Today I was working on an area near the wall of the building, I was gradually taking down the soil and found a large amount of snail shells and evidence of charcoal. Dan was not sure if it might be a feature or if it was a waste pit like Frances and Christian have been working on next to me. I will be continuing on with this area on Tuesday until I have come to the bottom of the charcoal. Liam avoids spoilers and gets spoils: Today, for me, was generally made up of the same activity. Excavating mine and Liz's trench never seemed to end, mortar and brick becoming the new bane of our lives. Luckily the site was calm and allowed everyone to have a friendly chat while working. Whilst avoiding spoilers for the ‘Song of Ice and Fire’, I managed to find some more carved stone, bone, lead, pottery and a shaped piece of quartz possibly from a Roman ring (cool! – Ed.). I plan to enjoy the three day weekend and ...

Hayley spends the day trowelling for finds: Today we focused on excavating a medieval deposit next to the Roman road, this was a slow process of trowelling down and back, rather tedious but the only way we could collect the smaller finds. For instance, today we excavated the jaw bone of a pig with all the teeth still in situ as it were. We also spoke to some interesting people today, one guy was telling us about a construction site where they found a Roman well, he said they excavated a lot of brooches, the best I've achieved so far is a bead ;) The weather stayed fine today and the rain from the day before made the soil much more pliable. Rhianna explains the Roman Road to the public It’s Wednesday, Week 3, and my group continued to remove another layer from our section and finally completed it today. During this we found more pottery and bones, including a handle. We then proceeded to trowel the area to see what was underneath the loose soi...