Community Dig – Day 6 – Julia’s gone potty
It was a little quieter on site today, as four in the morning turned into the Triumvirate of myself, Julia and of course, ‘The Boss’, Roy after lunch.
We’ve made good progress today. I’ve hacked out most of Trench 1 down to nearly 5 feet at the top end and at over 2 metres in length that was a lot of mattocking! The blisters on my hands now have blisters of their own and the dirt is well and truly settled into my fingernails. I finally look like an archaeologist again!
Today finds have been varied, in my section at what we are calling ‘Layer 4’, which is pretty far down, I have had a lovely piece of a waste flake from a knapped flint blade and dozens of further tiny knapped flakes. The only other thing I’ve nearly had out of my trench is a dislocated hip from attempting to step in and out of a 5-foot hole with 30-inch legs.
Julia has done much better and made Roy very happy. Yesterday he wanted pottery from the ‘wall’. He got it. Today he wanted 3 pieces of animal bone for carbon dating. He got it. He wasn’t expecting another fragment of the coarse black cooking ware, potentially Iron Age/Saxon, we found yesterday, but he got that too. Finally, Julia found the most delightful salt glazed stoneware potshard dating to around 1650 from Germany.
So at the end of Day Six what do we know? Can we explain the ‘wall’ feature Julia has? Not yet. Will we know by tomorrow? Possibly. Have we found the natural? No. Are the biscuits running low? Definitely.