What a day!

Trench B produced its first substantial dating evidence in Cubby and Dave’s ditch to the north-west. The guys uncovered a number of Roman Grey Ware sherds in a concentrated area of their feature and are currently trying to determine if they come from their ditch or a feature cut in to the ditch. Johanna drew the longest section to date – stretching the whole 15m of trench B. Meanwhile, El furthered her quest to find meaning in ash-filled charcoally pits, to no avail.

Mary from SSARG recording a ditch © The Lufton Project

Pete discovered that the gully that he was excavating was earlier than the southern ditch whilst Mary and Peter worked with Andy digging in the western end of trench B.

Cubby and Pete also had a go at sieving clay which is almost as  much fun as sieving clay with finds in!

Cubby sieving some clay © The Lufton Project

Over in trench C, the team tried to get started on some new features but were defeated by the baked clay and spent the day recording yesterday’s archaeology and drawing a section across the southern ditch which had been excavated earlier.

Lucy and James finished excavating their ditch in the northern end of trench C and removed large pots (at least 2 vessels) and found one of them to be perforated like yesterday’s finds, reinforcing the assumption that there might have been cheese or beer production in the settlement.

Lucy and James' Iron Age pot © The Lufton Project

Week 2 got off to a great start as the team powered ahead in both trenches. The weather was a bit cooler which made everyone happy!

It's not all hard work on site! © The Lufton Project

Cubby and Dave explored a ditch with no dating evidence as of yet while El investigated some post holes and an ash-filled pit. Georgia and Johanna started on the Iron Age ditch to the south of trench B – which runs through to trench C – and recovered some flint and pottery.

Meanwhile, over in trench C, Lucy continued excavating her complicated Iron Age ditch with James our new volunteer. They uncovered  a piece of Black Burnished Ware jar which James G dated to the 1st century AD (An Exeter Type 12.3 to be exact). Its perforated base might suggest the production of cheese or beer. Danni started on a new linear features in which she found a Roman pie dish rim and some Iron Age pottery.

Lucy and her big piece of Black Burnished Ware © The Lufton Project

There was also lots of recording going on today. The more we dig the more paperwork is generated!

Can’t wait to see what this week brings!

The end of our first week has come around very quickly – Monday seems an age away! The team has been powering through the features in both trenches, and our record folders are steadily being populated with dusty context sheets and plan drawings. Georgia and Danni’s Iron Age ditch was also the first to be photographed. Johanna had to douse her feature/pit with water just to make it out in the baked clay – it was full of charcoal but sadly no artefacts.

Ski dropped by this morning to metal-detect the spoil heaps and found a couple of pieces of pottery and a piece of lead. James brought out his new toy a Bartington MS3 magnetic susceptibility meter and with Cubby’s help measured the magnetic susceptibility of the soil in and around the features on the south side of Trench C. We hope this technique will help us to identify features in the very dry subsoil.

The big discovery of the day was made by Lucy and Andy – our biggest sherd of Iron Age pottery so far. Hopefully there’ll be lots more where that comes from.

Lucy finds a big sherd of Iron Age pottery © The Lufton Project

All in all we’ve had a very successful week and morale is very high – looking forward to the barbeque tonight though!

SSARG volunteers Peter, Pete and Graham enjoying some hard labout © The Lufton Project

Today, our JCB driver arrived with his toothless bucket and stripped both trenches revealing loads of interesting archaeology, including last year’s Iron Age enclosure ditch. The team took turns machine-watching and marking out features in the clay before it dried out and they disappeared. Trench C (40m x 2m) unveiled an unexpected number of features which surprised James, our site director.

Cleaning up the sections of trench C © The Lufton Project

Lucy and Dave spent the afternoon with Andy setting out the site grid whilst Danni, Johanna, Mary and Dave then spent some time cleaning up the archaeological limits of excavation in trench C and the rest of the team started trowelling back trench B (15m x 15m).

Lucy and Andy setting out the site grid © The Lufton Project

The team excavating trench B © The Lufton Project

Cubby found the base of an late Iron Age vessel, and a bit of Black Burnished Ware was discovered on the spoil heap.

Cubby and his Iron Age vessel © The Lufton Project

The preliminary report on the 2012 excavations has been completed and can be downloaded by following the link below.

This report is a ‘post-excavation assessment’. As the name suggests, this is a provisional statement that assesses the significance of the excavation. It also includes lists of finds, records and a stratigraphic matrix for the site.

Any questions about the assessment should be directed to Dr James Gerrard.

Lufton Post-Excavation Assessment 2012

Excavation is a small part of the archaeological process. We dig for a little while but spend much longer trying to figure out what our discoveries mean. Finds analysis is a big part of the post-excavation work. Our flint assemblage was looked at by Dr Rob Young and this post is based on his analysis.

Flints were used by prehistoric peoples for tools. They worked (or knapped) the flint to produce edges that were sharper than surgical steel. A wide variety of prehistoric stone tools are known but the object illustrated below is a heavy and thick end scraper of Neolithic or Bronze Age date. It is roughly contemporary with the ring-ditch we dug in 2012.

Flint scraper of Neolithic/Bronze Age date © Rob Young and the Lufton Project