Week 2 has been a very successful week despite the weather on Tuesday and Wednesday. We began the week able to plan Trench 2900 and then to start excavating some of the features in that trench later in the week. In the large trench with the ditch extension we have now cleaned and photographed half of the 20m area and the extension. We will be ready to plan the features that are now showing and dig the sections of the ditches to find dating evidence for the occupation of the settlement. The picture below shows Trench 3000 on Monday morning, with everybody in the trench as the weather forecast for the middle of the week threatened any digging.

As this is a training excavation, we like to show all our participants how to use all available equipment. We use an EDM (Electronic Distancing Meter) to record small finds and survey in the trenches, as it measures both distance and level. The machine is also used to survey bigger areas when we do geophysical surveys and to make contour maps of the sites. The picture below shows two of our students learning to use the equipment.

On Tuesday we had to find alternative activities as it rained heavily all day. We looked at the finds and how they are interpreted, particularly looking at human bones and pottery. Dawn, our finds supervisor does a superb lecture on human remains and this is always a popular session (see below).

Wednesday started well and we managed to get in some geophysical survey and excavation in the morning, but the heavens opened in the afternoon and we were treated to a thunder storm, thank goodness we have a new site hut and were able to stay in the dry!

The rest of the week has been devoted to excavation and recording, with work progressing well on Trench 2900. Half of the trench has been planned (picture above) in detail and excavation has started on the features in this area. 
A small section of the gully was made on the eastern edge of the trench. This seems to be a clay-line drainage channel enclosing an area to the north of the entrance track to the villa enclosure. (See previous week's entry for plans). The picture below shows the excavated section and also shows how close to the surface of the field the archaeology is found.

By Friday we had cleaned nearly half of the large Trench 3000, ready to take vertical overhead shots and start to plan the complexity of features in this area. The rectangular building found last year shows very clearly as a dark stain running at an angle to the trench, but other trenches and cuts are now visible. The two photos below are taken from the "Monopole" (see week 1) and show how the work has progressed this week and the frantic clean-up campaign in order to get the pictures before the weekend!

Trench 2900

Trench 3000

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