Heavy metal

As we come towards the end of week 2 and the time that the undergraduates have with us, some of the students have really started to impress us with the skills that they've picked up. It's great to listen to them discussing between themselves how best to tackle a new context, or watching them carry out the full recording procedures by themselves with little assistance.

And the archaeology has been going along very satisfactorily, with some really interesting features showing up. Various pits, dips, and hollows have given the students plenty of practice at half-sectioning cut features, photographing, and drawing them. We have also had structural evidence being uncovered, with a possible cob wall collapse in one part of the trench, and a very intriguing surface lying in the area of the road. The jury is still out on what it might be, so further work into next week will hopefully tell us more!

We find loads of copper alloy objects on site: the students have all got used to spotting those little green flecks in the soil which give its presence away. As promised in the last post, on Tuesday evening back at the campsite Peter Forward gave the students an incredible demonstration of copper smelting, working almost entirely from scratch, using just some clay, the "ore," (an artificial approximation of malachite), and his home-made bellows, built to designs he himself developed based on 8th and 9th century viking relief carvings, plus materials from the local environment. Mixing some straw and earth in with the clay he formed the small furnace, and dried out the clay to prevent any major cracking through gently bringing up the temperature of the fire inside. After about an hour of consistent firing it was ready for the "ore" to be added, and another 2 hours of constant bellowing followed, with some of the students getting to have a go as well!

2 hours later, Peter did the honours and opened her up, and we had our lump of pure copper!

A brilliant evening, and a lot of fun for everyone.

Now, time to finish off this week...

Getting our teeth into it

Our walk up the Wittenham Clumps was perfectly timed, with the best weather of the dig so far and a glorious sunset to compliment the breathtaking views of southern Oxfordshire. A lovely stroll, ending as has become traditional, with a pilgrimage to the site of the sadly now deceased "Poem Tree," and a dramatic reading of the poem given by one of the undergrads.

Sunset over Round Hill

Digging has continued apace, as we explore and remove Roman deposits across the site. No great surprises yet in our comprehension of the sequence, or dramatic changes to the 'story' of Dorchester as we currently understand it, but there have been some very nice features to excavate and record, including pits stuffed with pottery and butchery waste, and we've had some fun finds cropping up.

These have included, something of a rarity on our site, several areas with fish bones, including the rather nasty looking jaw and teeth of a pretty large pike.

We have also found several more bone game counters (with the possibility for these having been lost during use, or alternatively during production, given the evidence we've found in previous seasons for the creation of these counters on the site).

Another rather fun find from a few days ago were these fragments of a pot designed for feeding an infant, really quite a rare find. 

 And perhaps most special of all, this copper alloy fibula brooch, possibly a La Tène III, which speaks of some very early activity on site from the pre-conquest period.

The students were treated to a talk and demonstration yesterday afternoon from Prof. Nick Barton, as we roved far beyond the Roman (and possibly late Iron Age) confines of the site with discussion of the production and use of flint tools, and how to distinguish worked flint from natural flakes. Prof. Barton quickly knapped a hand axe, followed by several elements of blade technology such as scrapers and bladelets. 

This afternoon's talk will be our Fieldwork Director, Paul Booth, giving the students in insight into the masses of Roman pottery we uncover on site, and this evening Peter Forward will be treating us to a demonstration of copper smelting. Pictures to come!

Week 2 begins

Week 2 of excavation is starting off productively, and we’re all enjoying the sun (and the cows!) in the allotments today! Now that we’re fully underway, we’re back to our regular program of excavation combined with short lectures. Today was an introduction to the site grid and to planning by Cliff Sofield and Patrick Cuthbertson, followed by an introduction to Early Medieval Oxfordshire by Abi Tompkins.

Abi Tompkins introducing the students to Early Medieval Oxfordshire.

Bone gaming counter

At the end of last year’s season, we came down on several enigmatic features on the Roman road that runs N-S through the site – the most enigmatic of which were a pair of stone-lined, hollow, parallel voids running across the road. As there is no obvious outlet for drainage purposes, they don’t seem to be drains. Several other ideas have been floated: were they supports for a crane? The base of a gate running across the road? We’re open to suggestions! Last summer we ran out of time to investigate the voids – we’ve started the process of cleaning, photographing and planning them today.

The enigmatic parallel voids in the Roman road.

Roman nail cleaner (R) with modern replica of Roman toiletry kit, made by Peter Forward, one of our supervisors (L)

Another rather enigmatic feature in the middle of the site seems to be a large pit, full of mid-Roman pottery, plaster and mortar, and numerous metallic objects including an iron knife blade that we found today. Nearly everything about the pit – from its dimensions to its exact function – remains to be seen!

Numerous finds have also come out of other mid-Roman deposits under excavation – including a piece of repaired Samian ware and a beautifully polished bone gaming counter. Another deposit has furnished lots and lots of animal bone and a number of nails. All in all, we’re excited be underway, and curious about what will follow!

A terra sigillata sherd with signs of repair

Learning about bones...

This evening the students are off on a guided wander to the Dyke Hills and up the Wittenham Clumps, as we attempt to broaden their horizons beyond just the Roman period! 

And they're off

Apologies for the radio silence whilst we got ourselves going: it's been a busy week!

The undergraduates arrived bright-eyed and bushy-tailed on Sunday to a trench with a rather terrifying amount of backfill still to remove. A number of deep, narrow interventions in the trench excavated last year prevented the unwieldy digger bucket from emptying them entirely, and so it was left to mattocks, shovels, wheelbarrows, and a great deal of sweat and toil from our keen young archaeologists to get the trench ready for some real excavation to happen.

This part of the dig is often one of gloomy moods, particularly when the weather is as it has been, but the team has been working exceptionally hard to get something in excess of ten tons out of the trench and up the spoil heap in under three days. And only minimal grumbling of sore backs. We were very impressed!

Now the proper archaeology has started in earnest. Contexts are being dug, plans are being drawn, and finds are starting to come in. Perhaps the most intriguing object to come up so far has been a metal object, perhaps a knife, with a lovely carved octagonal bone handle. The photo doesn't really do it justice!

We're hoping for some slightly more clement weather now as we press on, and some exciting archaeology to come....

Rain can't stop us!

Despite some very iffy weather in the last week, we have managed to get the site all ready to start digging this weekend. Over a million kilograms of soil have been removed, the marquee has gone up, and toilets and tools have arrived. Now all we need are some students!

The first few scrapes... Our thanks to John Gibbs for cutting back the Giant Hogweed before we started!

When the Wittenham Clumps disappear, you know you're about to get soggy

It wasn't all terrible weather though. In true British fashion, we also managed to get sunburnt

Getting there...

So close!

Stay tuned for some more frequent updates once we get digging properly. And if you're in the neighbourhood, do stop by and say hello!

Not long to go now!

Digging starts in just over one week's time! We are all getting very excited as we make our final preparations, and can't wait to get our trowels into the ground.

This does mean that registrations are now closed for this season's excavations.

However, you can still come and see how we've been getting on by coming to our Open Day, on Saturday 16th July. More details can be found on our event page for the 2016 Festival of Archaeology:

http://www.archaeologyfestival.org.uk/events/2192

And of course you can follow all our updates here on the blog, or on Facebook.

Please keep your fingers crossed for some good weather for us!

Out on the tiles...

Whilst we wait impatiently to be able to get out into the field again, the Discovering Dorchester team hasn't been idle. Work has been continuing apace on our post-excavation jobs, with Sheila Raven and her volunteers putting our material archive in order, and Dr Wendy Morrison working on our digital records and mapping. (More on these in blog posts to come.)

Meanwhile I have been continuing my research into the building material from the site. This is a material category that often gets somewhat overlooked in Roman excavations: shapeless lumps of stone or tile seem nowhere near as exciting as shiny bits of Samian ware or copper alloy brooches.

However, there is still a lot we can learn from this material, and it is worth looking at in more detail. When we consider the past activities that building material represents, we are looking at some of the largest scale economic activities going on in the Roman world. Construction involves the purchase, movement, and use of really large quantities of stuff... just the roof for a small building, if the patron decided to opt for a smart new Roman-style tiled roof, would need many tonnes of tile.

In the modern world, with mechanical cranes, lorries, and a well-made and well-maintained road network, such a requirement is fairly easily met; in the Roman world, using ox or mule carts, human labour, and having to deal with far more unpredictable road conditions, getting several tonnes of tile to your building site would have been a significant undertaking.

Imagine trying to drag a reluctant mule, pulling a 1 tonne cart, along there!

And so when analysing the building material from Dorchester it was really interesting to see that both tiles and building stone were being brought in from considerable distances away: up to 50 km in some cases, even when locally made material was available.

We have to ask, why?!

One of my theories rests on the fact that construction represents one of the most obvious possible displays of wealth. You would only know if your neighbour in Dorchester had bought a nice shiny new set of Samian ware dishes if you were invited around for dinner... but you'd definitely notice if they put up a brand spanking new tile roof! As such this was an excellent medium through which individuals living in Roman Dorchester could express their identity and show off their wealth, If they used different coloured tiles perhaps, or a stone type very different to the normal local material, it would surely be the talk of the town.

So next time you're working on a Roman site, and find an ugly lump of tile that you don't fancy putting in your finds tray, for fear of breaking all that lovely pottery, please don't just chuck it on the spoil heap! What you're holding in your hand probably represented a highly significant, meaningful choice by a Roman-Briton, spending vast sums of money to import and build their fancy new Mediterranean-style roof!