Boys and Toys
Brian and his JCB
IT IS NOT RAINING. Today is Brian’s day. Brian is our JCB driver – he arrives with a 10 ton dumper which needs a driver. Jim, Jon and Nick fight over it, I watch and take pictures.
We set Brian to work on removing the top layers of our east-west street in Insula IX. One of our aims this year is to look at the preserved layers underlying the streets in our trench. It would take us another 16 years to excavate the streets by hand, gravel layer by gravel layer – hence the machine. Revealing the dark occupation layers beneath the streets is thrilling. These are truly undisturbed and will help us date the Roman streets.
Carefully removing the top layers of the East-west street
Ditto: a craftsman at work
Voila! Revealing pre-street layers in Insula IX
Meanwhile, on Insula III work continues…..
Test pit in Insula III
Su reveals a beautiful street surface in her test pit, along with a mass of brick tesserae…..and a backfilled feature cut into the street. In a pit this size it is almost impossible to interpret – but we have now firmly established the depth of archaeology here. Brian can now be given instructions!
It’s fun working here!
Insula III Test pits
Happy days.