The closing down week is always daunting…we are tired, so tired! And grumpy too……as everything closes down I dread the moment that we lose the facility to make coffee on site. That morning shot of caffeine has become a crutch I cannot do without. The first 2 days of closing down week fill me with horror…how can I possibly possibly remove all of this infrastructure in 5 days? 12 portakabins? 46 portable toilets? Marquee? Tons and tons of rubbish,rubbish building by the day as people leave and discard their tents – and what seems like the entire contents of their tents? Showers? Move the samples, all of the finds back to Reading? Clean the equipment and move it into storage? Dismantle the IT equipment? Say goodbye to broadband? Move the walkways? All the people?? Simply not possible. Despair builds.
But…the sun was out and in the end we had 2 days of glorious tying up of loose ends! Of finishing off contexts of archaeology with a small, perfectly formed team. It was actually fun….and not nearly as stressful as I had anticipated. And we DID finish things! Every area was finally (and finely) recorded….multicontext plans drawn, records digitised (thanks, Jen!), matrices drawn and completed. For the first time in many seasons we were ahead of the game…..no-one trying to finish a mountain of context records while the portakabin was dismantled around them.
And both wells were finished – Rob Cole’s well was superbly and professionally completed by Hannah, Helen and Will. Sadly no goodies at the bottom beyond one pennanular brooch – but it was a very well-executed piece of excavation and they should all 3 be proud of it.
The well in Sarah Henley and Tom’s area was more challenging…..the wooden shaft was revealed in all of its glory, with a protruding collar at its base. The shaft became too narrow for Stephen, Perry or Tom to work in – so Rose was volunteered to descend to the depths and help with the final éxcavation and recording. There were finds from this well – some very nice ones….and its date is not as late as we first assumed. It may in fact be of the same date as well 1750 excavated by us several seasons ago and by the Victorians before us. This well also had a wooden shaft and was dated to the mid to late 2nd century AD. At the bottom of well 1750 was found several sherds of a pottery vessel….and at the base of this year’s well were found several sherds of what looked like a similar pottery vessel! It will be extremely interesting to compare the 2 sets of sherds…if they are the same vessel were these 2 wells dug at the same time,and then a pot broken and ritually shared between the two….? Watch this space – a task for the winter months!
The final task after recording all aspects of the shaft, the well cut and shape, its primary fill – was to lift one of the well planks for dendrochonology dating. The rest of the shaft we will leave in place – preserved for an as yet unguessed future generation. To do this, Tom donned his wetsuit – don’t ask! And with relatively little stress and some small effort, one plank was retrieved. And it was perfect in its execution – wonderful craftsmanship of all those years ago.
The south-east well shaft in all it’s glory (note the ducks)
Stephen in the well
Not a lot of room down there!
Rose in the well (a blur of movement!)
Ready for wet suited action
Tom, Perry and Tom – and a 2nd century AD plank
The well shaft is protected before being capped off and the shoring removed
Elsie finalising the recording of Matt G’s round house
A last look at Natalie’s collapsed clay oven before protecting it and covering it up until next season
Some final looks on site before covering the archaeology
The End of Excavation