Summer diggin'... Part I

As you can see by the date of my last post, I've been away lately, so sorry to anyone who actually follows this - there are lots of new updates to come, promise...

What's been happening:

• Last term I was revising for my end of year exams (Hon Mods) whilst training for Summer Eights.  Our crew survived Eights (with some funky stash and some blesséd weather), unfortunately dropping 2 or 3 places but had a brilliant time overall - despite breaking the front of our bow(!) Exam-wise, after a week and a half of living in the library and wondering if I would make it out alive of the exam halls, I passed!

• For my course I went on a 2-week training excavation at Dorchester-on-Thames, near Oxford.  On the Roman site, at the end of an allotment, the most important find was a Saxon coin discovered by my friend (who received a bottle of bubbly for it!). Digging a cross-section of a ditch we could map the curvature of the ditch, and intersecting ditches with it by identifying what and how much of what we found in it.  For example, different levels of animal bone, its size, and how the bone stuck out of the ground gave a good indication of where the lines could be drawn, as it were. 

Team photo

Unfortunately, our group didn't get to excavate much of the Neolithic site - a great shame for me! We were taught to use total stations, about identifying different pottery (and there was a lot) and how to photo sites.  I also learnt that bathing in a lake isn't so bad (if a bit chilly) since our campsite had no showers, but the pub dinners definitely made up for it.

The Roman site

In all, Dorchester-on-Thames has a lot more history than I thought, and I found some pretty funky stuff; copper coins, nails (all shapes and sizes), Oxford faux-Samianware, and some huge animal jaws.