It was a bit of a media circus on site today. The team were visited by Historic England, the county archaeologist, representatives from the Historic Environment Record as well as reporters from BBC Points West and the Western Gazette. The outcome of all this is that Historic England and County are very pleased and impressed with our work; BBC Points West did a great news story and the Daily Mail Online wrote a rather odd, not to mention inaccurate, piece about the project… still we were pleased to make the national press.
We also had a visit from Absolute Archaeology – who brought us wine and cheese! Thank you!
Elliot, Josh and James G spent most of the day working on the contexts overlying the tessellated pavement that was uncovered yesterday. They worked hard all day to record each individual layer on top of the pavement while also carefully uncovering more and more of the tesserae. While it was disappointing to find it’s just a plain grey pavement we were really impressed by its state of preservation. The slumping must indicate that the floor is subsiding into something beneath it – a hypocaust??
Meanwhile, Hayley continued to unpick the layers surrounding the burnt layer in the central eastern part of the trench along with Doug and Matt. They were rewarded by finding a late Roman coin (with Ski’s help) and some pottery.
Tom set off alone just behind Elliot and Josh working a burnt patch of his own, recording and excavating it in an attempt to understand its place in the wider picture of our trench.
Meanwhile, Jeff, Freddie and James B began the monumental task of cleaning the entire trench in preparation for a whole trench photo tomorrow.
Andy was working throughout the day with the Total Station and the GPS while also darting around site, taking record photos in between bouts of custard cream-related madness.
In other news, our crack recording team of Lucy and Becca continued to record walls as well as making further records of the apsidal room and its related hypocaust and flue channel.
The team returned hone to cheesy pasta prepared lovingly by Tilly and Frankie.
With only two days to go, the team are working hard to get as much done as possible before heading home this weekend.