Yet another amazing dig day; finds with practically every insertion of the trowel. Our small finds of shards of glass, ceramic, metal & plastic weighed over 4kg! The rain earlier in the week had dampened down the dust so it was much nicer digging than last week. Finds included: A fair quantity of ceramic shards, […]
Author: David Cuthbertson
Sharing my explorations of the world around me, both locally and philosophically.
Despite the cold windy weather and a severe lack of volunteers, my mother and I had possibly our best day’s dig yet! We excavated a relatively deep layer of demolition rubble in the corner between the front door of the house, the garden/farmyard wall and the outside toilet – and it must have been where […]
A breezy day was spent digging through more demolition rubble in the vicinity of the site of the outside toilet. A piece of iron had been found sticking up out of the ground on our previous dig day, in the vicinity of the outside toilet. A 50cm wide sondage was therefore started, to excavate the […]
A mostly sunny day, and though digger numbers were low, the digging was good. We were digging just inside the north boundary wall. This north-west corner of the garden was the location of the outside toilet! Excavation revealed a relatively thick layer of unmortared flints under the topsoil. Surrounding these flints were roof slate fragments, […]
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Visitors
Over the past few weeks we have had many visitors interested in what we were digging, and the history of the area in general. They included the local shepherd, passing families and individuals out walking, with and without dogs, both older people and young. We hope they felt welcome, for they are very much part […]
Friday’s dig was another successful day. And the weather was really good as well! Trench 1 has now been extended right up to the north boundary wall of the property. Enough of this north wall has now been exposed to estimate its course, only a couple of feet south of my earlier estimate based on […]
Just three volunteers on this sunny bank holiday Sunday. I was able to use my new homemade soil colour chart! I made it from Dulux colour swatches converted to the archaeologist’s standard Munsell colours using a free online colour converter. Munsell colour charts normally cost over the £100! The topsoil was Dulux’s Earth Glaze 1 […]
A small but select few turned up to dig last Sunday, on a grey miserable looking day. Fortunately the weather cleared up and we had a good day’s digging. Half of us opened a new 1m wide trench to investigate a metal pipe which had been found at the base of the demolition layer in […]
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Soil Colour Charts
Archaeologists are expected to characterise soil colour for all relevant contexts. I understand that this is important for two reasons: To distinguish between contexts which differ by colour; To help identify the nature of the soil, which would help in an understanding of the preservation of the artifacts, as well as helping to understand the […]
A small but keen group of volunteers turned up to continue working on the foundations of the south-west end of the Cottage. Last week’s sondage through the chalk rubble fill of the interior of the extension on the south end of the house was widened. It was found that the mortar foundation found underneath it […]
Newmarket Hill 