I woke during the night to the sound of rain – the familiar sound of rain. But it holds little fear for me now! When you have dug through 4 weeks of solid downpour, a little light rain is no deterrent. However I was not so sure when I arrived on site. The droveway puddles were overflowing again, muddy tyre tracks crisscrossed the access to site. Everyone looked just a little gloomy – and I had to remind myself that Week 5 is always a tough one. We have lost our 4-weekers, the stretch of the excavation is taking its toll – and we still have to bring the excavation to a successful conclusion. The site was very wet: Sarah Henley’s area and Natalie’s in particular. The clays of the early Roman buildings are very susceptible. I organised a few people to go onto finds work while the site dried out – and by tea break we were all fully back in the trench. 161 people makes for a very full excavation – plus we have a new supervisor. Ben has joined us and he will target the north central area with a small team. It’s a bit like introducing a substitute in the dying minutes of a match – except none of us are coming off. But Ben definitely has the energy to lead the rest of us on through the early days of Week 5.
Some days for me on site are a blur of issues to be addressed, people to talk to, events to organise – and this was one of those days! I had a group to meet at the church, Dr. Richard Stein arrived to work on a pottery project, I delivered a teaching session on context recording in the church. I met with Amanda, Hazel and Jen who are entering data on a moment by moment basis onto our Integrated Archaeological Database. I talked to students intent on embarking on a career in field archaeology. Nick and I walked around site, estimating what can be achieved over the next 10 days. People revolved in and out of my office all day as though on pieces of elastic. Sometimes it can take me half an hour to get from one side of the trench to the other…..but by the end of the day it was apparent that we have made huge progress these past weeks.