Day Nine: 1950s fun

Word of the day: wet

It drizzled most of the morning and into the afternoon. This made the site and all the diggers rather soggy. However, not deterred by such things work continued and we made great progress again.

Alex shares the joy, as ever

Today saw us remove pretty much the last of the disturbance from the 1950s on the site. It's now clear that the tops of some of the walls were located in last century by digging a narrow trench around their sides, a technique known as 'wall chasing'. This practice is now frowned upon by archaeologists as it has the effect of cutting off the walls from other contexts such as floors, making it harder to relate them to each other.

Hugh frowning on old fashioned practices, such keeping a site diary

Luckily most of the archaeology is undisturbed, but when digging we always remove the most recent deposits or 'contexts' first. This means we have to dig any 1950s backfill before the more fun archaeology, which we can do quite quickly as it has now been fully recorded.

Veronica whips out that backfill with her Mexican flick

One advantage the rain has is that it cleans up the stonework a treat. The fireplace feature is now looking really impressive as are the other 'kitchen' features associated with it. These include two stone 'tanks' to the north of the main hearth. Although we don't know what these are quite yet, one still contains an untouched dark deposit which will hopefully contain some clues as to their function.

Lovely features to the north of the fireplace

Braving the rain were a dedicated team of community volunteers. This enabled us to crack on with trench two. With the topsoil off a good 'spit' has been taken off the first archaeological deposit, although it's still early days here.

Trench two starting to shape up nicely

The community tent is proving quite a hit in this weather, and Christine is keeping everything (and everyone) firmly in order. It's also here that finds processing is taking place. So far we've not washed any finds, but this is now being undertaken by our community team so we'll soon be able to show you lovely pictures.

Christine multi-tasks, simultaneously cleaning up and checking the racing tips

Don't they scrub (up) well?

So despite a small amount of discomfort, by the close of day real progress had been made. Although it feels like topsoil and 1950s backfill removal has gone on for ages, this is now complete and from now it's just untouched and hopefully exciting archaeology to go!!

If like Emma you just can't wait to find out what happens next, do check the blog regularly!