Ben Bright, Eve Jeffreys, Charlie Doogan, Freya Sinclair-Brown, Charlie Thom

Trench number: 9

 The aim of the second week was to remove the rubble from the interior of the iron age round house to expose the floor surface as well as the interior face of the wall. During this process a flat stone was found showing signs of scoring indicating it may have been used as a whetstone, several rubbing stones were also found. Cleaning the interior area of the house resulted in the interior wall face being exposed. What are thought to be post holes were found which contained charcoal which can be used in dating the roundhouse.

We also made efforts to expose the exterior face of the roundhouse wall. Which exposed a layer of clay which has been found across the site, including the core of the wall.

Thursday, we began cleaning the trench to do photogrammetry using a camera and drone. After clearing more of the floor surface, we took samples from across the roundhouse floor, then used a planning frame to record the floor. One of the post holder areas was sectioned and the section stratigraphy recorded

We began a slot running from the trench corner through a section of the house hoping to reveal the exterior face in week three.

Where the main trench joins the thin extension, we uncovered a lot of larger rocks in somewhat of a curved shape. We started digging a slot trench in this area to investigate. This took quite a long time because many of the rocks were very stubborn but removing them revealed some very large stones that likely make up part of the roundhouse wall. Following the photogrammetry and recording, we used trowels and mattock’s to get to the next context, which is a very dense clay. 

On Monday, the lower trench extension, was expanded on the side by a meter, exposing the wall of the enclosure entrance. While removing the turf (in the rain) we found a George III coin, dating from 1806 which was exciting. We also found a piece of iron, while removing the next deposit layer, indicating metal may have been worked on site. We worked at exposing the entrance wall all week, recording four more contexts. The last context was a clay layer containing another deposit of tumble rocks from the rampart/entrance. At the very end of the last day, we uncovered the metalled surface of the entrance path under the tumbled deposit. While cleaning the wall facing stones, we found what is believed to be a circle of stones used to hold the gate post. Samples of the clay context were taken for dating purposes. Finds in the clay layer included split quartz, charcoal, and burnt bone.The skills we added to the ones learnt last week were the importance of recording different contexts, sampling, drone photogrammetry, planning, illustration and section recording.

The wall of the enclosure entrance with a deposit of stone tumble in front of it. In the lower left can be seen the smaller stones of the metalled surface.

The roundhouse floor surface starting to reveal the interior wall and groups of stones surrounding the 4 postholes. The entrance to the left of the flat stones in the upper right.

Preparing for drone photogrammetry

One of the rubbing stones found.