CAER: Chester Amphitheatre Environs Research Project

Catherine also reports on some more of Monday’s finds: On Monday I planned the section of wall that I had been excavating for the past week. I had to use a grid to draw each stone in the wall and lost my balance a few times almost falling into the supposed grave that was close by, much to Helen's delight! Later on in the day I moved on to digging with Maeve, Hayley and Rhianna, and Maeve found a Jet bead! Which was very exciting!  The jet bead! Lovely!  Rhianna, Maeve and Catherine on the look out for more finds

Christian gets to grips with the robbed out medieval wall... Week three of the dig at Grosvenor Park started for group A with a second session of finds washing. In addition to washing some of the finds from the previous week we also learned the conventions for marking the site code and context numbers onto the dried pottery and building material. In the afternoon I continued to clear the section of wall that had been uncovered last week. The section of wall I was working on had very little stone or brick inside because it had previously been robbed out, meaning that judging where the wall extended to was more challenging. Later, using the site grid we started to draw the plan of the wall, marking on every stone and brick as precisely as possible. However, much of the afternoon was taken up by public archaeology, talking to and explaining the site to members of the public, some local to Chester and other tourists from further afield such as the US and New Zealand. The f...

Ryan enjoys the finds: Well it’s the first day of week 3 of the dig and the site is getting excavated in all different parts. There are several different features that are on show, especially the wall of the supposed building. The finds are also coming from the site in all shapes and sizes with an interesting piece of a late medieval roof tile with green glaze still visible on one side found by me (yay :)) when I was excavating and cleaning the padding stones of the remaining wall from the rubble of the robbing trench. The weather remained dull but at least it didn’t rain, which is always good, and apparently the weather will pick up and be sunny by the middle of the week which will be great. Ryan and co in the distance excavating on the far south side of the trench near the end of the wall of the probable medieval building, running north-south across the trench. You can just see the remaining masonry at the corner where it turns west (just in front of the plank) . Other...

  Frances gets a star find on the first day of week 3: Today our group (A) started off in the morning with our second finds washing session. As well as the washing we learnt how to mark finds properly and what can and can't be marked. After dinner our group returned to the site where Rafie, Christian and I continued working on the same area from last week. After about an hour of troweling the site I found a medieval seal! You could even see some writing around the edge of it which could have been a name or a motto. It was really tempting to remove the soil from it but probably doing so would take off the decoration.   The medieval copper-alloy seal matrix As well as the afternoon of troweling our group was on public archaeology and because we didn't have many finds we kept stealing Helen’s tray to claim for our own and show off to the public! To end the day we started drawing a plan of the area of the site we had been working on – the north wa...

Maeve sums up the end of week 2: Friday came with perfect digging conditions. Rain from the previous night definitely made trowelling and scraping much easier. Our team (Team C) was assigned public archaeology in the morning and we all took it in turns to talk to passers-by. I enjoyed this as most of the public were really friendly and it felt good to be able to answer most of the questions we were asked. While doing PA, me, Rhi and Hayley continued to remove the top 2 inches of earth from a context in the NE of the site. This context revealed some great finds such as a bronze ring, the base of a roman vessel and several fragments of a black medieval jug, two of which appear to fit together. Playing 20 questions while we were working also meant that we had a pretty fun morning.  In the afternoon our team went finds washing which I found weirdly fun. We were allowed to wash finds from our own contexts and it was really satisfying washing things that we had found ourselv...

Today started off with me and Dani finding a grid reference for what we originally thought was a grave site but after excavating it, it turned out not to be, but there was an interesting piece of pottery!  I was then put onto another part of the site to help with the excavation of a large area. There were five of us working on different sections with me on the far right as you looked at the site. This area turned out to be a little treasure-trove of finds with their being about four finds trays worth of artefacts that came out of it, with the centrepiece of these being a comb that was found and a piece of tile, on which you can see still see all of the decoration that was on it. What was surprising as well was the amount of bone that seemed to be coming from here, it seemed to be every other trowel full we were uncovering a new piece. I was also on public archaeology in the afternoon which gave me a chance to talk to some people from Australia who were very intrigued about...