8th July

Richard Mortimer from Oxford Archaeology East popped in this morning to look at our features and pottery. Richard loves Saxons, and unfortunately it looks like we're a bit late for his taste, but he was still pleased with our progress! He says our site and finds mostly date from the 12th to 14th centuries AD, and fit the general Medieval village pattern of growth from the 12th-13th centuries into new areas as population grew, and then contraction and abandonment of these new areas after the Black Death decimated the population.

Caoption has to be: 'ooooh, pretty pot!' And more pretty pot below:

Graham Taylor led a course on how to make modern replicas of Medieval pottery. Here's a few pictures of people having a go on his potter's wheel:

Despite a lot of changeover between people who were on the morning and afternoon pottery courses also attending the dig, we continued to press on with our excavation and recording. We're going to move into a new trench tomorrow, where we think we have a beamslot for a building. We're also hoping to open some new trenches over the next few days when we have the machine again. Here are James and Simon plotting where to position our new trenches to target some interesting features on the geophysics!