Trench 2 now open!

Trench 1 is no more. Thanks for all the goodies Trench 1. Trench 2 is now open and we hope that it will disgorge some diagnostic finds for us to date the enclosure ditch.

The enclosure ditch can be seen just in front of the bucket.

The first job is to clean the base of the new trench.

Tune in for further news and keep your trowels crossed that artefacts turn up.

Open Day success

A very successful open day at Nether Compton village hall with a talk and site visit plus a look at the finds for villagers and members. Lets hope that Trench 2 will add to our knowledge of how people lived here 2,000 years ago. 

Even more recent finds!

Here's a nice little thing, small but beautiful. Some plaster that has the imprint of a small persons fingers from nearly 2,000 years ago. Make's yer fink dun it!?

Digging away

Other good news it that we finally finished digging the ditch and we can now record and backfill. After which we can then get started on Trench 2.

Finished!

Trench 1 has been a gold mine of finds which will tell us a great deal about the date of our features and usage. Fingers crossed that Trench 2 is as forthcoming.  

Recent finds

A very nice example of the use of slip on a Romano-British pot rim. Would have been a cut above the usual black wares.

We had a discrete assemblage of bones in the ditch this week and we are looking forward to finding out what species are represented.

Update

Our first trench is now coming to an end and we have made great progress with the ditch. One more day digging and we should be at the base and have a full profile. Meanwhile it continues to produce some great pottery fragments:

Most of the pottery has been very high class and today we also had a bag full of bone, which we will have an expert examine to determine the species.

On 6th September we will have an open day for the villagers and DDCAG members to see the and find out what we have been up to so far. Also the plan for Trench 2!

Last time we were on site we found this:

Answers on a postcard, or here on the blog!?

Saturday dig

Today saw us hot the ditch, where most of the finds have been coming up.

Another fine piece of Black Burnished Ware.

We also started to do the recording of the posthole and pit. Here two Dorset Diggers are drawing a section at 1:10 scale. This gives a measured profile of the posthole before digging out the other half.

It is looking as if there was a substantial building nearby into which much of the material from it, after it was abandoned, was dumped into this ditch. The military base, that the substantial 3m wide ditch surrounded, must have been also long gone when this happened. The building material, pottery and possible painted plaster (found today) indicate a high class building, perhaps a well-to-do farmhouse or even villa.

Ditched Pottery

This lovely piece of Black Burnished Ware came out of the ditch fill this morning. The decoration was a surprise after it was washed.

Here is Ben excavating the pot. We were using a small spade, slicing away the soil rather than using a mattock, otherwise the pot may have been in smaller pieces than we would have hoped.

The pit is now excavated and it has turned out to be a bit boring, being one of those flat bottomed RB possible grain pits with no finds. After recoding we will excavate the other side. The posthole has also been half sectioned and is now finished. So it is only the ditch to excavate now and the top fill is full of building material, undoubtedly from a large nearby building.