Elliot would like to begin with his daily dose of Lufton excavation humour…

I used to work in a clock factory. The job was great but after a couple of months I was fired. I never found out why, but it might have had something to do with all the extra hours I was putting in…

Today on site, we were joined by James’s family, who helped James to do some levels and some drawings of the site while the rest of the team were occupied with a large section of the trench on the north side.

At the start of the day, Elliot was tasked with supervising Charlotte and Imogen in trying to define the deposit of collapsed rooftiles on the western side of the trench. They were partially successful in this mission but things got a bit complicated. Charlotte even found a neolithic flint

Henry was occupied during the morning with the important task of creating a route for wheelbarrows to be pushed onto the top of the spoil heap.

We were also joined by Ski in the morning who was able to turn up some more interesting finds for us, including a few more coins! James G did, however, manage to find a coin without Ski’s aid. Dig team 2; Ski c.26.

Meanwhile, Hayley supervised Dan, Chris, Henry and James S in removing a thick brown deposit. This is basically (115) but seems much thicker  in the northern end of the trench. Under it are elusive, yellow mortary deposits.

It was touch and go for a while, yet thankfully back up arrived in the form of James I, who joined us after lunch, as well as Elliot’s team who joined in after they had finished with their rooftile related activities.

Antonia meanwhile was trained in how to draw plans and helped by Pete from SSARG went about the task of drawing the demolition rubble to the west of the building.

With only minutes before the end of the day, however, Hayley made a huge discovery, in the form of a what appears to be a giant tile (or possibly tiles). Quite what this will be remains to be seen but James G thinks it’s probably part of one of the buildings walls.

The day ended with the team returning to camp to enjoy fajitas prepared by Holly-Ann and Kevin.

Tomorrow the team is looking forward to cleaning up the features on site, in preparation for Historic England visiting on Thursday, as the end of the first two week session approaches rapidly.

Elliot (who is writing this blog with James G) has received a request to make the blog funnier, so he wants to begin with an anecdote from his childhood:

When I was a young lad, I had a pet snail.  I wanted to make it go faster, so I took its shell off, but it only made it more sluggish.

Elliot (aka Spannerman) at the rear of this photo. He writes blogs, researches late Roman and symmetrical archaeology and occasionally wins open mic competitions.

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After a few deliberations over the weekend James G decided that the day should kick off with the removal of the remnants of the mixed rubble / backfill deposit that fills the building. We started by numbering this deposit (115) and proceeded with the whole team to mattock it off of the interior of Room 4.

One of the aims of this task was to reveal a partition or cross wall excavated by Hayward. Holly and Pete (newly joining us from SSARG) found the line of this wall, although there is far less of it than Hayward’s report suggests. We also found what might be the late ‘squatter’ partition wall in Room 4. If our interpretation is correct then this feature is further south than we might have thought.

There was good news on the finds front. For the first time we’ve discovered large, fresh sherds of BB1 pottery. One impressive chunk comes from a jar and other finds were made by hawkeye Hayley who spotted a coin! We also showed these finds to Carol, the landowner, who visited us today.

Due to our pre-emptive sun dancing, the sun was kind enough to stay behind clouds for the majority of the day.  Unfortunately for our team, however, the fields in which we are working were being harvested, and although everyone was excited to see a combine harvester in action, the dust and pollen kicked up by the machine caused intense break-outs of sneezing across the trench.

Meanwhile, Elliot picked up where Hayley left off in the South-Eastern corner of the trench, searching for the corn dryer mentioned in Hayward’s original report.  Despite his best efforts, Elliot was unsuccessful in his quest, ultimately concluding that the corn dryer is either outside of the trench, or had been removed entirely by Hayward’s team.

All the while, Hayley supervised Dan, Chris, James I, Charlotte, Antonia, Imogen and Kevin in the big mattocking exercise.

The end of the day saw James G’s family join him for the week from Newcastle.

The team returned home to spaghetti Bolognese, expertly prepared by James S and Henry. This could only be topped by our TV interview being broadcast on BBC Points West!

Today was the end of the first week of excavation at Lufton Roman Villa.

The team struggled with the heat today, but despite the weather they managed to be incredibly productive throughout the whole day.

The team was also joined on site today by Sue from SSARG.

Andy spent the day surveying the trench using the GPS and Total Station equipment (below) to set up the site grid.

James G spent most of the day directing the action and trying to wrestle with all of the exposed contexts, he did find tie to start recording the building (below).

Elliot led James I, Henry and Sue in exploring some difficult archaeology in the North-Eastern Corner of the trench. This mainly seems to be backfill from Hayward’s excavation overlying earlier Roman deposits.

Meanwhile, Hayley was in charge of Dan and Kevin as they searched the South-Eastern corner for the villa’s corn dryer. We didn’t find the corn dryer (the trench may just be a little too far north) but did determine the edges of some of the trenches from the earlier excavation.

Situated between those two teams, Holly-Ann directed Charlotte and Chris in attempting to resolve the stratigraphy of the newly christened wall 111. They added about 4m of length to the wall by removing the fill of a robber cut (identified yesterday) to expose the wall’s lower courses. An important discovery was what is almost certainly the line of the waterpipe discovered in the earlier excavation. This is further evidence that the trench has been located in the right place to answer our questions.

Although the day yielded little in way of finds, at the end of the day the entire team was proud of how much work they had achieved across their first week.

We returned to camp to enjoy cheesy pasta prepared by Imogen and Antonia.

Everyone is looking forward to a day off tomorrow that should hopefully start with a nice lie in!

Today on site the team were tasked with the huge task of cleaning up around 2/3 of the trench so that we could see what features and contexts were visible and so that we could photograph them before excavation.

.Imogen and Hayley identify a robber cut for a robbed out wall (above)

At the start of the day, Antonia, Imogen, James I, Henry, Kevin and Charlie (Charlotte) were led by Hayley and Elliot in trowelling back through the trench, starting in the South-Eastern corner of the trench, and working in line with the building’s walls.

James watching the team trowelling (above)

Meanwhile, Holly-Ann finished off chasing her wall further to the west of the trowel line.

Luckily, however, we were joined on site today by Sue from the South Somerset Archaeological Research Group (SSARG) and Hollie, a sixth-form student who wants to study archaeology after her A-levels.

Before long, Ski also arrived on site and located many targets with his metal detector. Where we could excavate these they were almost all iron nails.

Elliot then bagged up Ski’s finds before recording them in the Register, so that Andy could take their GPS location.

After this, James oversaw the whole group’s mammoth task of cleaning up a huge portion of the trench, ready for Andy to take some photos (below).

After a hard day’s work, the team returned home to a delicious meal of Chilli, prepared by Dan and Chris.

Overall, this was a slow day with a huge amount of work undertaken by the whole team. With this necessary exercise complete we’ll be able to get on with digging the building.

The first day on site was characterised by our intrepid team of diggers struggling against the elements.

Before anything started James G was interviewed by Claire Carter of BBC Radio Somerset. This was picked up people far and wide including a colleague who teaches at the University of Florida!

After arriving on site, Andy and James laid out Trench A, in preparation for the topsoil to be machined off tomorrow.

The team was joined today by our friendly neighbourhood metal detectorist, Ski (acting under a Section 42 license) who scanned the top of Trench A.

It didn’t take long for Ski to unearth a Constantinian coin from the early to mid 4^th Century – a promising start to the excavation!

While Ski scanned the trench, the rest of the team were split up and dug out some test pits.

Unfortunately, the weather had conspired to make our first day of work slightly harder by unleashing more rain during our working day than in the entire month of July! We also had trouble with a delivery, which couldn’t make it to us because of a gas leak.

We soldiered on, despite the difficult conditions and got a good day’s work done.

The team arrived home with muddy boots (see below) and a hearty meal of cheesy pasta prepared by Dan and Chris.

We’re all looking forward to opening our first trench tomorrow and getting to grips with a Roman Villa!