Fossil Festival Lyme Regis

Dorset Diggers had a stall at the Lyme Regis Fossil Festival this May weekend. Lots of new contacts were made, including home educators, a Palaeontologist from UCL, a brick expert who will help us with our bricks from the Drift Road excavation and many individuals who are interested in the group.

 
The town was packed and several thousand people must have come through the marquee over the three days. Many other heritage and geological groups were represented.

Nether Compton site visit

Saturday 5th April saw DDCAG members visit the site we will be digging for the next few years.

We met at the car park and Alison gave out the new DD badges we have had made.

We headed up the lane toward the site in rather murky conditions, although it was mild. Being misty we did not have a nice view from the ridge when we arrived.

 The field had been ploughed and Chris pointed out the area next to the hedge where we will be excavating, to locate the pits and possibly have a look at the 'temple' that had shown up on the geophiz results. 

After a nice lunch at Sherborne we visited the museum in the town to look at the types of finds we may encounter on our site. The best of the finds will be shown at the museum. 

Nether Compton talk

Chris gave a talk at the village hall at Nether Compton on 26th March. He went through some of the hoards that have been found from the Neolithic to the Anglo-Saxons and what sort of materials were deposited in the ground. He then explained the NC project where DDCAG will be excavating the field where the 22,500+ Romano-British coin hoard was unearthed in 1989. The Metal Detecting club that found the haord was represented by several members in the audience, so it was a great opportunity to form a partnership between the groups so we can share information and help further the project into the future.  

Nether Compton - DCCAG talk

DDCAG are giving a talk at Nether Compton village hall on 26th March at 7.30pm on the forthcoming excavation project and putting the hoard found in a field there in context with other hoards from the Neolithic to the Anglo-Saxons. Call Chris on 0776 869 51 62 for more information.

Update

The new committee has been elected at the AGM in January. Chris (our new chairperson) showed a short film about the Drift and gave a talk on the new project at Nether Compton. We had many members turn up and some went to see the Drift Road excavation after the meeting closed. All are excited about the coming campaign for 2014 and into the following years. The new project could be one of the most important sites to be investigated in Dorset for many years and bring new insights into how people lived in the changing landscape of the county over thousands of years. Funding applications are in progress.

Meanwhile Chris is working on the report for the Drift, with much help from Brian and Jenny, who are working on cataloguing the finds.

Roman inner wall, Top O' Town, Dorchester

Last month the fund raising walk was cancelled due to inclement weather (no surprise there), but Chris is taking people around Roman Dorchester this coming Sunday, meeting at the old library car park opposite the county council buildings, at 10.30am. We will be looking at the Town House, the aqueduct terminus, the town wall and Maumbury Rings. Hope to see you there.  

It's the pits, man.

Yes, we all have to face the fact that archaeology is about preservation in situ or by record and that means paperwork.

Angela enjoying doing paperwork!?

So we are digging in the vicar's garden in Maiden Newton to understand stratigraphy and how it builds up, then we can draw the sections and fill in the context sheets.

Peter, Ben, Richard and Angela hitting the pits

That also means getting to grips with clayey silt, silty clay, sandy silt, silty sand and all the other variations that describe, basically, dirt. Not to mention all different types of stones!

Although we are left with a hole in the ground this is a vital learning experience in basic digging and the understanding of how layers form. Blessed be the hole diggers.

Cash in the Bank Barrow

Members walking along the BB to hear Vaughan's theory

A storm was a'comin' but the Dorset Diggers are never put off by a bit of wind! So we went to the Bank Barrow of Martinsdown. Identified by O.G.S. Crawford in 1938 this is a long bank of 195m x 20m with parallel ditches 4.5m wide x 0.7m deep. Dating is difficult, but generally they are considered to be middle Neolithic. There are no primary burials, unlike the Long Barrows of similar, but smaller design. 65m from the north eastern end is a V-shaped depression appearing to divide the mound into two unequal parts and may or may not be contemporary. There are only a handful recognised in the UK and we have most of them, including ones at Pentridge, Broadmayne and Maiden Castle. Nearby are other mounds, a long barrow and the Poor Lot round barrow cemetery. They are a mystery, but our member Vaughan has a very good mathmatical theory to do with using the mound to line up on various points in the landscape so as to predict the appearance of celestial bodies on the horizon.

Members on the BB with a round barrow to right

Our next visit will be to Maiden Castle 24th November.