7th July

Today has been a strange day! We evacuated the hall for a pilates class and set up camp very comfortably in the marquee, only for some scaffolders to turn up to fix the hall roof! However, not many marquees can boast their own tea urn and wifi hub...

We continued excavating yesterday's features. In Area 1 we've almost finished recording the strange modern burning and redeposited natural, have planned it, and are probably going to mattock it off tomorrow. Amongst the redeposited natural, Josephine uncovered the butchered remains of some animal all clumped together in a pit. We think it's a sheep/goat, but need to get it formally identified. I couldn't resist hoiking the mandible out while Josephine's back was turned, and then posing with it... And here's Alfie, our budding SHARP archaeologist, posing with it as well.

Alex, John and Emily have finished the Medieval ditch in Area 1 and are going to start their recording tomorrow. The diggers in Area 2 are still slogging through their massive ditch, pulling out some very nice Medieval pottery. I think we may need to do some serious mattocking tomorrow lest everyone loses heart! At the top end of the field, David, David and Glenis have completed excavating their Medieval ditch (I said there were a lot of ditches!) and took their photographs this afternoon. Tomorrow morning they're going to learn the intricacies of context recording, before moving on to the next feature...

Simon and James gave a talk on how to draw sections and plans at lunch time, including a 'Double D Ditch' illustration that had to be seen to be believed... At this point our Jigsaw boss turned up! Jo has been busily organising our Medieval Pottery Making courses for tomorrow, and we were also pleased to see that the bricks and wood for our Roman kiln have arrived - it's going to be fascinating to watch how kilns are built next week! We've also been busy washing finds today. I promise we'll have some nice pictures of pot tomorrow.