Once again the weather has been warm, bright, and sunny on site. Good progress is still being made in all trenches. Trainees have been given the opportunity to learn how to survey this week as well as gaining more experience working with finds; the work begun last week of recording the walls which surround the site has continued and is proving very useful for improving understanding of the site. Also on Tuesday a TV crew were filming on site for a new series, 'What I'd really like to do', to be aired on the BBC later this year.
Trench 4
This week work in trench 4 has concentrated on the area to the eastern
side of the possibly medieval wall, where deposits on both sides of the
modern pipe trench have been planned and excavated. The week began by
planning and excavating a dump containing large amounts of brick and tile
which appeared along the eastern edge of the trench. The layers of trample
and rubble running between the wall and the pipe trench are currently
being removed. The construction cut where the footings for the wall have
been dug into earlier deposits is beginning to show through under the
rubble layer and it is hoped that this will become clearer as we continue
to dig. Two possible pits have been uncovered, planned and photographed
to the north of the trench and are awaiting excavation next week.
Planning and levelling in Trench 4
Finds this week include animal bone, medieval pottery and brick and tile, including a number of roof-tiles showing holes for wooden pegs used for attaching them to the roof of a building.
Trench 5
Once again work in Trench 5 has been concentrating on cobbled surfaces.
The second of three cobbled surface was given a final clean at the beginning
of this week; this revealed a number of features to the southern end of
the trench. These features were planned and excavated; one was a yellow
clayey deposit filling a pit, another, a sandy dump with large amounts
of mortar in it, was being investigated alongside the small wall uncovered
previously. It is possible that this dump extends beneath this layer of
cobbles.The second layer of cobbles was planned earlier and has had a
temporary division line established across it. The cobbles to the north
of this line are being removed, which has revealed a further layer of
cobbles; according to the previous site report this should be the last
cobbled surface, the earliest road surface on the site.
Finds this week have been very interesting, with various different types
of medieval glazed pottery, animal bone, an unidentified lead object,
and a human tooth to name but a few.
Trench 6
Work in trench 6 this week has concentrated in the north and south of the trench, with a big strip of the centre of the trench taken up by the large wall foundation. Excavations around this feature have show that it is probably the footings for a large wall rather than the wall itself. To the north of the trench the smaller wall, or wall footing, has been removed, In the southern half of the trench the linear deposit which was uncovered last week has been excavated, and appears to have been filling a small cut dug into earlier deposits; these earlier deposits have also been removed and cobbles are becoming visible, possibly linking this trench with the cobbles in trench 5.
The finds have consisted of both medieval and Roman pottery, animal bone and pieces of brick and tile.
Trench 7
This week work in trench 7 has focused on recording all the visible archaeology,
with the brick and tile tank lining being recorded, the levelling dump
to the south being cleaned and recorded and everything being made neat
and tidy for photographs and plans.
The finds this week were mainly animal bone, brick and tile, which came
from the cleaning and investigation around a 'small' stone, which turned
out to be rather large. There were also really interesting fish bones
that must have been thrown away as a whole section of a fish.
Articulated fish vertebrae from Trench 7