CAER: Chester Amphitheatre Environs Research Project

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

Pottery, bones, and more bones! After a hard week of digging back fill in the hot sun, we were rewarded with finds. An eventful day on the site started off with team D scraping back loose soil from the remains of the Roman road and wishing Kate a happy 20 th birthday! After hours of what seemed like endless scraping of rocks, bricks, and clay soil we finally made progress in revealing the materials this ancient road was made from. While scraping, we also noticed a large chunk of a Roman pottery (Samian ware), protruding from out of the Roman drainage gully! While we weren’t allowed to move it yet, it was deemed by the group worthy of a photo. Later on in the day, team D went on to mattock a large open space near the end of the Roman road. While the section of earth looked plain and boring to begin with, a medieval pottery handle was found in great condition. This one large chunk of a pot can only mean more medieval domestic finds to come! Later still, tea...

Day 5 was a great day. Firstly because it was my birthday secondly because all the groups came up with some pretty awesome finds and thirdly because Jenny brought cake.   Our group was levelling out a medieval layer ready for further excavation next week, of which in the process we discovered some pretty cool cattle teeth… that are MASSIVE! Seriously, my dentist always tells me I have big teeth; I’m going to have to correct him next time because these things were huge. It was a pretty biological themed day, with lots of the groups finding fragments both large and small of animal bone, including Chiara who excavated what we believe to be a pig’s jaw with teeth still attached. Cameron and Ross had a great day getting through a medieval rubbish pit that was found to contain a well-preserved cattle femur bone and some lovely antler. The boys and their bones became the running joke of the day; we just couldn’t get enough of them. Excited to see what next week brings and p...

Day 4: Removing the last of the fill from the Medieval ditch Day 4: Starting to remove one of the baulks within the Medieval ditch

After yesterday's weather blessed many of us with a good tan, and I'm sure a few with some good burns, it was only a matter of time before it was forecast to be rainy and miserable. Although as the hours rolled on, this expected rain was nowhere to be seen. This made our day much easier as we have now started to get down into the layers which have been untapped by the previous excavations.  I had the lovely pleasure of sharing a trench with Rossy, and with a team effort we trowelled our way through a foot of hard clay, in search of medieval refuse. Whilst the findings may not have been ground-breaking, there were some interesting finds such as a pigs mandible, a couple of cattle teeth, and SuperDan uncovered what has been thought to be part of a Roman jug.  Day 4 was also our introductory lecture into public archaeology, in which Jane from CWAC showed us how the public can get involved with archaeology and what the public can bring to the field. This was accompan...

In all truth, today began well and ended brilliantly. This was the beginning that I think everyone was waiting for. Shovelling past all the backfill from last years dig in the previous three days was encumbering, unexciting and full of questionable quotes from the Simpsons, Back to the Future and The Office. However, I finally managed to pull out my £10 trowel and use it for the right reasons.  Although the weather had stopped shining, the clouds rolled in and the Cornettos remained in Tesco, (Thanks for the food by the way Mr. Pond, I’ll repay you in some way…) my burnt neck, which looks like it has been viscously slapped by the greatest (or worst) dictator on the planet - Kim Jong Cameron, was thankful for the cool breeze. One of the many highlights of the day took place during the 'introduction to public archaeology' workshop, where we visited King Charles Tower, which was occupied by a painter who produced pictures of storm troopers, Daleks and Darth Vader chilli...

It's day three and the end of the pit is in site sight It has been 3 painstaking days and we have finally got to the bottom of the backfill, with little rain, a whole lot of sunshine and a lot more hard work.  By the end of the four weeks we will all almost certainly be looking like the Hulk, Popeye or a WWE wrestler, but thankfully we are almost to the stage that everyone has hoped for. Our main objective now (other than excavating) is to remember to watch our balance in order to not fall into the varying depths of the trench, therefore as well as body-builders, we will also be professional gymnasts.   The several features of the site, that were uncovered during the previous excavations, are now identifiable, with the Roman road, the pipes and the building structures being visible, which now gives us a visual aid when discussing our work with the public. These when the site is fully cleaned up can then be excavated in order to uncover any other secrets hiding be...

The first thing I noticed was how hot it was and how much harder than I thought it was going to be! When someone says dig a hole I expected it to be easier but it's a much harder task than I thought! The wheelbarrows are so much heavier than I thought and you can burn in English weather! Who'd have thought?  We have had a few finds which have been cool! We found one cattle tooth which was awesome along with pieces of pottery and many clay pipe pieces.  We have had a few people watching us dig, a couple of them laughed but at least were getting a tan as we work and the teams have become really close to each other and I think that's been the biggest highlight. We have all become good friends with each other by bonding, complaining about the hard work!  But it has been fun even when you can't lift your arms up next day! 

Today we saw a continuation from yesterday, with many groups continuing the removal of the back spoil, at least for the first half of the day. Unfortunately, the weather of yesterday couldn’t be found anywhere during the morning, with rain and wind accompanying the start of the morning’s activities. More of last year’s excavation was revealed during the opening few hours, hidden beneath the terram, including the Roman road and accompanying ditches, as well as the later Tudor tanning pit, excavated during the 2007 period. Once I substantial amount of the terram had been exposed, then the plan was to start removing it after lunch. However, before we went ahead with the removal of the covering, Simon went over the correct method of filling in a context sheet, as we were to use these later on in the excavation. This quick outdoor lecture include the proper use of a Munsell colour chart, as well as the correct information to include in each field found on a context sheet, and a brief hist...

OMG. Maddy reports on Day 2 in the trench... Yay! Day 2! Was it as sunny as it was yesterday? No. Did I still get sunburnt? You can bet your bottom dollar I did. Today was again mainly focused on getting rid of the rest of the backfill from last year which wasn’t bad however I have the same strength as a wet noodle I can definitely say getting rid of backfilling and using a wheel barrow is not my forte. Jenny showed off her bodybuilder arms whilst Chiara expressed her undying love for the mighty ostrich and Sam continued to be my break time pillow, for which I was grateful. Cameron continued his habit of wearing questionable clothing, however he didn’t eat an entire block of cheese like yesterday so I suppose things are on the up for our resident dictator. Simon taught us about the magic that is context sheets and how to fill them in, however the tent we were sitting near was attempting to come to life and kill us all so his words kept getting lost. However I must say Sim...