Week One is complete and the students from Oxford, Nottingham, and Harvard are excelling. On Thursday their hard work was rewarded with a guided tour up the Wittenham Clumps by our very own Doc Morrison. The stunning sunset was well worth the hike!

Work continues across the site with the Roman road surface in the east of the trench coming up, coins, worked bone, and a pair of Roman copper alloy tweezers being found by the ever vigilant students.

Watch this space for further updates!

So it begins...Dorchester 2014

Day Three and we have triumphed over the back fill. The sections have been cut and the lines have assembled... time to excavate some archaeology!

Digging commences!

We've started taking the backfill out in preparation for Sunday's start. Assistant Director Ed and I arrived to find a field full of vegetation! 

But a few hours with the machines had the field looking more like an archaeological excavation. The good folks at David Beecroft LTD sent us a fine crew of digger drivers and we were off! We even made a little friend which we saved. 

At the end of two days, things were looking pretty good and we are on schedule a bright and early 0830 Sunday start. 

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Not quite Dorchester

At the end of last month several of the Dorchester team decided they had had enough of the English winter, and so opted to swap rain coats for sun hats, packed up their trowels, and flew off to spend four weeks excavating in Southern India! The temperature change proved quite a shock to the system, going from c. 12°C in the UK, to 33°C and very high humidity in Kerala. We were working on a project exploring the ancient past of a village called Pattanam, which has tentatively been linked with the port of Muziris, mentioned in various ancient texts including Pliny's Historia Naturalis. You can read a press release about the excavation, run in partnership between the Kerala Council for Historical Research and the University of Oxford, here, and you can read about a lecture that Professor Chris Gosden, one of the Directors of the Dorchester Project, gave whilst we were out there, here.

We had an excellent time getting acquainted with some highly intriguing archaeology - some things were very recognisable, including Roman amphorae and intaglios; most things were obviously very very new to us. This included not only the finds, but also several aspects of the excavation methodology, and in particular the different tools used! (At times we did dream about good old one-wheeled wheel barrows...).

Pattanam 2014 Excavation Team (looking rather clean!)

© Sandeep Suresh

You can see some of the amazing 360° photographs of the Pattanam trenches taken by the Archaeology Institute's photographer, Ian Cartwright, here (and if you go down far enough, you will also come across some of his 360° photographs of Dorchester!).

Fortunately we didn't manage to lose anyone to poisonous snakes, so we still have a full contingent of supervisors for this summer. And on the note of this summer, there are just 3 places left for the second week of the public field school (20th - 25th July), and none at all in the first, so if you're interested in coming you really do not have long left to sign up! Once they're gone, they're gone.

As ever, if you are interested, or have any questions, please email edward.peveler@arch.ox.ac.uk

Just a quick update

Week A of the public field school (13th - 18th July) is now full, so I'm sorry to say we can't accept any more registrations for that week. There is still some space in Week B though (20th - 25th July), so get in quick if you would like to join us! Email edward.peveler@arch.ox.ac.uk for more details.

And I'll leave you with a photo I took of the site in some gorgeous weather last month - looking rather green!

Tiles, and dig applications!

Post-ex work continues on the ceramic building material from Dorchester: all of those shapeless lumps of clay you find do get looked at! And sometimes you find traces not just of past human activity....

Places on the two weeks of the public field school are now filling up fast, so if you want to be involved this summer you need to act quickly! Email edward.peveler@arch.ox.ac.uk  for more information and the application form. 

2014 is here...

... and that means we are well underway organising this year's dig!

The Discovering Dorchester excavations will resume this summer under the leadership of Oxford Archaeology's Paul Booth. The dig will run in much the same format as previously, with undergraduates, predominantly from the University of Oxford, excavating in the first two weeks, and a public Field School in the second two weeks.

Excavations this year will be concentrated in the eastern half of the trench, in particular on the area adjacent to the North-South road. In addition we will be continuing our investigation of the possible well in the southwest quadrant of the trench, with the hope of uncovering waterlogged remains at the bottom!

If you would like to learn more about how you can join the excavations at Dorchester, please email edward.peveler@arch.ox.ac.uk.