Well the rains came down. On the positive side the site is not too hard to dig like it might have been in the summer. And, apart from when the rain was really heavy and the site too slippery for safety, the work went on. No soft, fair weather archaeologists here.
The site is looking good. Parallel medieval walls in Trench 1 are clean and have been expertly exposed. These are not puny garden walls but large structural foundations. Elsewhere in Trench 1 the pits and ditches of the Roman period are being exposed. There is a lot of archaeology and, at present, not much of the natural gravels exposed. Plenty of work remains to be done.
Trench 2 is also moving on apace. Things are less clear-cut here, apart from the presence of pits dug by builders to bury rubble (but at what date?). Because the archaeology is less-obvious in Trench 2 a series of one meter square test pits are being dug to clarify the deposits. These can be just as interesting, being windows on the earlier deposits.
Finds are coming up at a rate and the team of ‘pot-washers’ are weaving their magic and what appear to be lumps of mud are being expertly cleaned with toothbrushes and (cold!!) water to be transformed into gleaming pottery, tile and the like. Surprises abound. It is like Christmas, with each ugly duckling of mud-covered lump being ‘unwrapped’ to become a beautiful swan-like sherd of raw Old Sleaford history.
See you down there then? For a place on the dig team contact [email protected]
The site is looking good. Parallel medieval walls in Trench 1 are clean and have been expertly exposed. These are not puny garden walls but large structural foundations. Elsewhere in Trench 1 the pits and ditches of the Roman period are being exposed. There is a lot of archaeology and, at present, not much of the natural gravels exposed. Plenty of work remains to be done.
Trench 2 is also moving on apace. Things are less clear-cut here, apart from the presence of pits dug by builders to bury rubble (but at what date?). Because the archaeology is less-obvious in Trench 2 a series of one meter square test pits are being dug to clarify the deposits. These can be just as interesting, being windows on the earlier deposits.
Finds are coming up at a rate and the team of ‘pot-washers’ are weaving their magic and what appear to be lumps of mud are being expertly cleaned with toothbrushes and (cold!!) water to be transformed into gleaming pottery, tile and the like. Surprises abound. It is like Christmas, with each ugly duckling of mud-covered lump being ‘unwrapped’ to become a beautiful swan-like sherd of raw Old Sleaford history.
See you down there then? For a place on the dig team contact [email protected]