St Leonard's Excavation — the second season

Week 5 10-14 July 2002

The site was very busy this week with the beginning of more 5- and 10-day modules which have attracted trainees from Australia and the USA as well as from throughout the UK. As has become traditional, a 50th and a 60th birthday were celebrated with sessions on site.

Christina Cule at work wet-sieving

In addition to excavation and finds work, trainees had a chance to carry out some environmental work under the direction of Christina Cule, a third year bioarchaeology student on placement from Bradford University. This involves wet-sieving sampled deposits and sorting the residues. The results of this type of work can be fascinating. The medieval drain, for example, produced material such as animal and fish bone and shell, including eel bones and oyster shells, and snails, roots and seeds. It had been thought that the medieval drain contained only Victorian backfill, but work this season seems to show medieval layers too, which is very exciting. Clearly analysis of such material can tell us a great deal about diet and life in the past. YAT has produced a set of reasonably priced books on environmental archaeology, The Archaeology of York, vol. 14, nos 1-7, which provide absorbing reading for those interested in such material.

Trench 1

Clive Green, who also dug on site last year, taking levels on the Roman turf rampart. The Roman interval tower wall is on the left

Work began this week on pealing back the thin layers of the Roman fortress' turf rampart, a very difficult task with interleaved deposits which appear to merge in places. Environmental samples should reveal the composition of the rampart.

Adjacent to this, Roman pottery and glass continued to be excavated from the build-up within the Roman interval tower. East of the medieval drain, a layer of compaction was uncovered which may have formed at the time of the construction of the drain or column bases. In the covered area of the undercroft work continued on differentiating what seems to have been two buildings belonging to the early phase of hospital occupation (11th century).

Planning in Trench 1. Medieval drain on the right.	Trainees Matt Beresford, Esther Londono and Angela Kendle examining records

Trench 3

Dumped medieval bricks

The whole of Trench 3 is now being excavated, with planning and recording of the 16th century layers proceeding apace in order to get down to the same level as the earlier layers already exposed on the south-west side of the trench. A layer of clearly subsided silty material, either levelling or a floor surface, was excavated. Some medieval bricks which had emerged seem now to have been dumped rather than to have formed a structure as had been hoped. Bone, shell and medieval pottery continue to be found in this area.

Archaeologist Ben Reeves and Dr Richard Hall, Deputy Director of YAT, watch work in progress

Trainees at work in Trench 3, supervised by Ben Reeves

Some recent finds

	Probable Bronze Age flint thumb scraper, found in Victorian back-fill.
	Roman glass. Glass has to be kept wet before conservation, as do materials such as bone, jet, amber and leather, to prevent cracking when drying out.
	Hand-made pottery.