We don’t usually post on Saturday but thought that we’d record our thanks to the Mason’s Arms in Odcombe for their welcome and fine beers. We had a lovely time and Kimberly especially enjoyed the visit!

Most of Saturday was spent shopping for food and mooching about Yeovil. Elliot is returning to Odcombe tonight with his guitar and high hopes for the open mic competition…

Bill, Pete and Hayley investigated the stone feature in Trench A and discovered it was most likely a land drain and probably modern.

There was lots of activity in Trench B today.

Kimberly, Chris, James G and Ollie continued to excavate an interesting feature in the north west corner of Trench B. They moved a large amount of earth to reach a blueish grey context which could be the fill of a hollow way. This area produced a large amount of medieval pottery including green glazed sherds.

Also in Trench B, Andy, James SA and Elliot continued to excavate a slot running through a large feature. Having removed a context, which produced medieval pottery and iron slag they then recorded the underlying deposit and took some levels.

A journalist from the Western Gazette also turned up to take photos of the site and the team.

We returned home to a lovely carbonara prepared by Flora and Jess.

Tonight we will be sampling some Somerset cider in the Mason’s Arms, Odcombe

Day 4 was a pretty busy day. In Trench A Lucy and Jess continued to tidy up after the machining and identified what is probably a modern field drain. Lucy began to excavate it in the afternoon and found a tiny fragment of medieval pottery.

In Trench B James G, Kimberley and Ollie continued to dig a deep slot across a feature we think might be a ditch or holloway (trackway). This feature has produced a lot of medieval pottery but the upper fill also contained a piece of industrially produced blue and white ‘china’ and a piece of modern glass. We think this fill might be the result of the bulldozing in the 1970s and hope to find out whether there are medieval deposits below.

Andy, Flora, Elliot and Hayley began investigating a big feature in the south-eastern corner. This is a complicated area that we don’t fully understand yet. Nevertheless medieval pottery and pieces of iron slag provided plenty of excitement.

All of this activity was aided by Bill on the sieve.

The evening saw the team return to Chris and James St A’s excellent chilli and also a new camping shower.

This morning Andy and Ollie spent some time establishing a temporary bench mark (TBM) by traversing across the landscape from a datum which tells us height above see level. A TBM is used to work out the height above sea level of features and artefacts when using a level and is a really important part of the recording process.

The work in trench A began with Lucy, Flora and Hayley drawing a section. Later Pete and Bill scraped back exposing an interesting feature in the south eastern corner. In Trench B Chris and Kimberly used the magnetic susceptibility meter.

After lunch the team continued to straighten the trench edge, expose the interesting stone feature and excavate a slot across one of our features, this produced a number of medieval sherds. Another find was a seal matrix found by Ski, our local metal detector, near one of our trenches. More on this exciting find to follow!

In the western end of trench A Jess, Pete and James cleaned up to prove that it contained no archaeology.

However in the eastern side of Trench A, James and the digger driver carried on machining to uncover an interesting linear stone feature of unknown date and function – it could be a drain or a wall.

In trench B Andy and James continued to open the trench to discover it was full of archaeological features. These seem to fit the geophysics. Finds so far include medieval pottery and a stone hone.

We came home to a delightful tea of fajitas and potato salad from locally grown potatoes.

Today we spent our first full day on site. This started by setting up the site office (including some improvised carpentry to support our finds table) and laying out Trench B.

Today’s major event however was the opening of trench A. This gave the team the chance to watch a digger take up top soil and look for archaeological features in the clay – archaeological machine watching.

After trench A was opened a section was cut and cleaned up to show different stratigraphic layers; After lunch, trench B was opened as well.

Hayley found a few sherds of medieval pottery which was encouraging and gives us a bit of hope as to possible medieval remains.

We returned back to base camp after a trip to the supermarket and around Yeovil, to a delicious bolognese made by Kimberley and Bill.

Having traveled from the north-east, the midlands and south-east, we have finally arrived at camp, Maggie and Collin’s garden.

Part of the team managed to set up base (including a rather dubious camp shower) and gathered our first lot of provisions from Yeovil.

Another part of our team spent today collecting tools from our friends at South Somerset Archaeological Research Group (SSARG) and setting up a site grid as well as laying out trenches for tomorrow.

Just walking over the surface of the site we found some medieval pottery sherds and a key.

Tonight we are having a BBQ.

We set off for Somerset tomorrow.

The portaloos have been delivered.

We have a van.

We’re nearly packed.

Here’s hoping for a safe and swift journey to the SW!