Summer 2008 Weblog Week 1
By John Boothroyd
1. General site
Despite the wet weather, the first week of the 13th season of
S.H.A.R.P. got off to a cracking start. With only a 4 week season
being undertaken this year, the decision was made to further our
understanding of the northern end of Chalkpit field. With this in
mind, a plan was formulated which continued the strategy from 2007,
thus sinking more evaluation trenches, however slightly south of
last year’s.
2. Interpreting features
With this agreed upon and the machine booked, we
intended to sink 4 trenches, the largest of which was 20x20, then
one 15x4 and two 4x10, however when machining, the 20x20 became
20x24 and linked to the 15x4, which was extended to the west. This
left us with one large area known as trench 6, and two smaller
trenches 7 and 8 (the numbers 1-5 where used in 2007).
Each week the weblog will aim to provide a breakdown of progress in
each trench. This week all work was carried out in trench 6.
Trench 6
Much to our volunteers delight, the first job when we arrived on
site Sunday morning was to clean the whole trench, this enabled us
to get some pre-ex shots taken and to do a pre-ex plan.
3. Almost finished cleaning
This having
been done we were able to move on to the exciting bit, the
archaeology. The cleaning had enabled us to observe two large,
roughly 2m wide, east-west ditches running across the trench, as
well as two smaller north south ditches. On top of the ditches, a
wide variety of pits and possible postholes were identified. Apart
from these distinct features, a large spread was observed in the
northwest corner of the site; this covers an area well over 5x10m.
The area that was originally going to be a separate evaluation
trench (which from this point on shall be referred to as the western
extension), contained a couple of north-south linears and what
looked like a series of possible beam slots, which had us all
excited.
4. First slot across E-W ditch
The first slots were placed across both of our large east west
ditches, the southern one, which had been very apparent on our
geophysics, at first seemed to be only a few inches deep.
Thankfully, however, this was soon proved wrong, when a sharp drop
was detected in all 3 initial slots. The first finds out were the
old favourites, Theftord ware, Ipswich ware, shell and animal bone.
However soon a few sherds of suspected Iron Age/Romano British
pottery were uncovered. This suggested to us multi-period use of the
site. The first slot placed across the northern east-west ditch soon
revealed that this was in fact a series of 4 ditches, one of which
was terminating in our slot. Unfortunately a lot fewer finds emerged
from these ditches, however the little dating evidence we have had
suggest to us a Saxon date.
5. Stuart identifies pottery
As well as slots placed across our ditches we looked at some of our
individual features, many of which turned out to be post/stake
holes. So far we have not been able to detect any real pattern to
enable us to discern their use. Unfortunately as we have moved
further up the hill this year, there is little depth to our trench -
just under a foot. This means that a lot of our features have been
heavily truncated by ploughing. The worst affected so far have been
our postholes, some of which have been only a few cm deep. Despite
this a series of 3 postholes were found in the profile of the
southern east west ditch. These were not visible before excavation
of the slot began, and as yet their purpose in not clear.
6. John cleaning pot
One of the nicest features excavated this week, and still undergoing
further excavation, was a large pit in the south east corner of the
trench. This pit contained a vast number of excellent, and large
sherds of Ipswich ware, animal bone and slag.
As well as the
individual sherds of pot a large, near complete pot was uncovered,
that appeared to have broken in the ground. Associated with this was
a single piece of cremated bone. This provided great excitement as
it suggested that this was a cremation urn. Unfortunately, when we
all calmed down, it became apparent that this was unlikely, as the
pot itself was burnt. It was also believed that the bone was likely
to be animal, however there was a small chance that it was from a
child. Further investigation needs to be done, and we will hopefully
lift the pot and get our answers on Sunday.
7. Planning the pot
The pot was not the only interesting artefact found on site during
the week. As the week progressed further slots were placed along our
northern east west ditches, in which a small iron brooch or buckle
was found by one of the B.E.R.T’s, which we hope made his week.
The final excitement of the week came when another of the B.E.R.T’s
8. B.E.R.T's excavating
excavated what could only be a beam slot, associated with a post
hole, our first structural evidence, and this was not one of the
possible beam slots identified in the northern extension after the
cleaning session on Sunday morning, a treat saved for week 2.
Next week hopefully we will get some better weather and our rich
archaeology will continue, watch this space to find out more.
Addendum: Click here for pictures of some small finds and events from week 1.
Back to Summer
2008 Weblog
