2018 Ancaster Fieldwork Season - Update 2

It has been a week of very changeable weather and whilst Friday was a great digging day - if a little humid - a fair bit of today was spent dodging thunder storms. Standing in the middle of a field waving a metal pole around is never a good idea when there is lightning about so we went without surveying today and alternated between excavations and, when the rain got too heavy, extended tea breaks.

Still, there has been a lot of advance in our understanding of the site over the last few days and the ability to get the drone in the air and get some photos of the main linear features we are seeing in the trenches did help to confirm that a number of them are very extensive across the site.

First of all there is the road of course. We are successfully locating this in each trench across the site from west to east with the northern side of the road just having appeared in our most easterly trench (10) this afternoon. We have also now identified the remains of a wall on the northern side of, and running parallel to, the road in three trenches. At the same time we are finding the ditch on the southern side of the road is also to be found right across the site and potentially has another wall similar to that on the northern side built after it had almost completely filled in.

It is this ditch - which appears to have been recut at least twice after its original digging - which is providing the best and most exciting dating evidence on the site with plenty of late Iron Age or early RB pottery coming out. And today it produced another rarity for us - a complete pot, found by John Goree in the fill of the first recut of the ditch.

 Whilst somewhat smaller this looks to be remarkably similar to another almost complete pot we found in what we believe to be the same ditch in trench 6 a few years ago.

What is particularly interesting is that both these pots seem to have been discarded because they had blown during firing. The smaller pot had blown out through a small hole in the base.

Whilst the larger pot had blown out at the base and on one side. 

The presence of two discarded failures might indicate there is a kiln site nearby.

Here are the two pots side by side. They probably date to the late 1st or early 2nd century.

Other exciting finds today included a 2nd Century T Brooch and a selection of late Iron Age or early RB tempered ware.

We are back digging again on Thursday and Friday of next week so do come along for a look if you are interested.