Last digging day

A beautiful morning and an early start, trying to make it to the site by 9am. Another digger stopped and offered me a lift, so I was there before 9 and the site was empty. Shortly the rest of the crew materialized and I set to work on the extension to my rectangle, with Sheila alongside, continuing what she had started on day four.

Soon it became clear that the ditch had indeed been found, but 90 degrees to what had been assumed, meaning that Sheila and I were almost certainly not in the ditch... An almost complete lack of finds for the first 90 minutes -- a sizeable hunk of ROman brick being the only execption -- contributed to a sinking feeling that the expected plethora of interesting finds in the ditch was not going to materialize in our zone. Adding to the anti-climactic mood, the bright but windy morning gave way to a heavy shower around 1:30, so we escaped to the safety of the tea hut. After a few brief returns to the trench followed by further showers, we made it back permanently by around 2:45, leaving only 45 minutes left to dig.

After we did our final trench tidying shortly before 4, we took team photos (on other people's cameras, hope to get one later) and then we had the option of guided tours of either the current work in the vicus with Justin Blake, or an update on progress in the fort with Andy Birley. Having heard little about the vicus I chose to go there and we had an interesting 15 minutes listening to Justin summarize the vicus project and talk about the recent finds (one that I can't describe here, but will undoubtedly make the news sometime in the next few weeks or months) and current theories about the relationship between the vicus and the fort. We all went our separate ways, so I took the chance to take some final pictures around our site, having had to keep the camera in the tea hut most of the day. Here's the real ditch, the edge being approximately where the line is:

While waiting for mum to meet me I took some shots of the views around the fields beyond Vindolanda, with the storm clouds still hovering:

After meeting up with most of the team in the bar at the TBI, mum and I went for a quick drive down the military road and back via Steel Rigg. The near-sunset views were simply breathtaking. Here's almost the last one of the evening, just north of the wall:

So the blog comes to an end. Thanks to Beth, Charlotte, Jane, Mark, Jonathan, Sheila and Kevin for an unforgettable 5 days. The TBI was also a great place to stay, maybe I'll be back again...

Day four on the dig

Another day with an ideal digging temperature, this time probably ranging from the low 50's early on to the upper fifties when the sun came out late in the afternoon. We had our first light rain, lasting from a couple of hours during/after lunch, but it was never heavy enough for me to get my rain gear on. As usual, I started my morning walk to the dig site at around 8:45, here are a couple of shots of the 1.5 mile walk, one taken about half a mile from the TBI, the other about half a mile from Vindolanda. A great way to start the day:

Not a very eventful day, I was left to finish off the west side of "my" rectangle, which turned out to be about 3 inches of soil with pottery, followed by about a foot of solid, thick yellow clay where the Victorian drain was. The stone "feature" still seems to have some kind of form to it, (including a large, bizarrely-shaped slab of mud-stone), but its still not clear exactly what it is, although clearly not the wall of a building. Kevin and Beth put in some hard labor deturfing a section another 3 or 4 meters out from the edge of my rectangle (below), and once it was exposed Sheila transferred onto there, which should contain an extension of the ditch. You can see her early work on it in the centre of this image, with the last remaining piece of mostly clay still to go for me in the lower right corner:

I had a quiet day in terms of finds, with a Vindolanda-standard assemblage of Samian ware and various earthenware pieces, including a nice piece from the base of a bowl of some kind. An offcut small piece of lead sheet, unfortunately with no inscription, made an interesting change from pottery though. Too tired to get any find pictures! Mark had a nice piece of roof tile, Charlotte and Jane got a nice thick red broken slab of tile that might have once lined a chimney (Mark is inspecting it above).

After working through the tea break and going right up to 5 o'clock I just managed to take the original rectangle down to the uniform level we were looking for, so I should be over in the presumed ditch with everyone for the last day of the week tomorrow.

Soon after arriving back at the TBI the heavens opened for 15 minutes, so our luck with the weather has only one more day to hold out...

Digging, day three

A completely cloudy start this morning, but no sign of rain overnight. I had to add an extra layer over my T-shirt soon after starting the walk to the site and, by the time I was on-site, my fingers were beginning to go numb. It probably didn't get above 55 degrees all day and with a steady wind it felt colder; with no rain though this was ideal digging weather. Kevin replaced Beth in my rectangle, as she and Andy Birley dug some new narrow trenches nearby. Kevin and I got on with the task of trying to see if the line of stones Beth had started to uncover yesterday extended into a larger feature; with the team as a whole still hoping to definitively identify the ditch. I took the level down from the corner opposite Beth's stones about another 8-10 inches, revealing a natural clay level, with a fairly rich seam of Roman pottery above it. Here's what I had by midday, including a nail, and a "miscellaneous iron ring" (reconstructed by Beth):

Here's how the rectangle looked at midday, with Kevin showing the stones extended further, and me with some stones appearing, suggesting they continued fully across the rectangle. Andy came to look and was pleased to see that the stones are clearly the right type, although he wasn't sure what the stones represented, perhaps a berm?

As we paused for afternoon tea, one of the black-headed gulls that had been monitoring our spoil heap for worms came for a closer look:

By the end of the day Kevin and I had amassed around 100 pieces of pottery, and I had begun to move above a mini-mound of natural yellow clay:

But perhaps most importantly for the team, Mark extended a narrow finger of trench outside his rectangle and found a gentle slope of clay leading down to some dark black soil, clearly marking the ditch we had been looking for all this time…

The day ended with a pub quiz at the Twice Brewed, the Vindolanda team would have won, but for the three jokers played on us by other teams!

Digging, day two

After a solid night's sleep and another massive breakfast I started the hike for Vindolanda at about 9:15. My right forearm was aching just from holding the camera, so I wondered how much I'd be able to do. It was definitely a little cooler than day one, with the sun making occasional forays through the cloud and morning mist. Here's a view of the Twice Brewed Inn as I left:

One of the fort diggers took me the last half mile, so I was ready to go by about 9:40. In my 10x12' rectangle Beth and I spent most of the day taking the bottom down another 4 inches to slightly more clay-like level. Fortunately, the pain in my arm seemed to be mostly due to overly aggressive work with the spade during de-turfing on day one, so the more delicate work today didn't cause me as much discomfort as I'd feared. Pottery (all Roman this time) popped up a bit more frequently, as well as a big hunk of a broken Roman brick (below, this was taken at midday).

Beth finished uncovering what was clearly a Victorian field drain, marked by a well demarcated line of yellowish clay, probably with a clay pipe buried a few feet further below. Here's how things looked overall in the early afternoon:

Just as I was finishing off the last piece to finish out this level I spotted a black semi-circular object, this turned out to be a decorative piece, possibly jewelry, made of jet. This was the find of the day for the team and got its own collection bag:

Another notable find in our section was a couple of big chunks of Roman amphora, which Beth found as she started to drop a meter square hole in one corner to see what other much deeper levels might have in store for us:

In the last 45 minutes of the day I began pushing the level down about another 6 or 7 inches to a more definite clay level, revealing little pottery. The northern end of our set of trenches that yesterday revealed a much different looking clay beyond a rough line of medium sized stones, seems to be turning into a naturally occurring clay layer, which may not fit with us having found the ditch we were expecting. Tomorrow will probably tell us for sure, one way or the other. As I walked back to the Inn the views and roadside flowers capped off another absorbing day.

Day one of digging

After a great breakfast I left for the Vindolanda site at 8:30 in glorious sunshine. It took half an hour to get there, where I discovered it doesn't open until 10, scuppering my thought of getting a look around the site again before the digging started. After meeting the other diggers and the crew of archaeologists/experienced volunteers we were all assigned to different areas; rather than ending up in the fort as I expected, I went with a small team to work on looking for a drainage ditch associated with a major building outside the fort. Starting in an area of grass we began removing turf, hard physical labor that caused an older volunteer to give up at lunchtime (three other volunteers cried off the day before).
I was lucky early and found in one hunk of sod four or five different pieces of pottery that were all clearly Roman. Here's the eventual tally of everything I found: inside the pink marking are some pieces of Victorian pottery, in the yellow are three pieces of clay pipe, the remaining pieces are Roman (the large red piece above the sign is apparently Samian ware).

Here's a closeup of the two black pieces -- looking like the the rim of a bowl or jug -- that perhaps I broke during the digging, showing the markings beneath the rim:

At the end of the day I had done most of the work clearing a 10 foot by 12 foot rectangle down to about a foot below the surface:

Combined with the others in the team in their adjacent rectangles, there wasn't a clear sign of the Roman ditch, although something that might be a Victorian drain emerged...

More will undoubtedly be revealed tomorrow; all in all a fun but tiring day.

Arrival at Twice Brewed

An unexpectedly traumatic day getting up to Vindolanda, after I realized I had left my boots at mum's house; this dawned on me as the train up to Newcastle was pulling in to the platform. My brother in law was kind enough to drive the 25 minutes to the station and hand deliver them to me... Having missed the train I had to buy a new ticket, but the rest of the day went smoothly and I made it to the Twice Brewed Inn by around 4:30. After a really good Northumberland burger I took a two hour walk up Steel Rigg, to the ridge where the wall overlooks the valley. I passed milecastle 39 on the way (below) and the view above Crag Lough was spectacular (above). Some glorious views all round as the sun dropped towards the horizon.

Smoking converters!

Woken at 8am, it did feel a bit like the middle of the night but the sun streaming through the window quickly made it seem like the real morning. Mid-morning there was a near disaster with the voltage converter. I had charged the laptop with it successfully on the first evening, but had noticed some evidence of overheating in the converter so I set my watch alarm for one hour when I tried to charge it again. After 15 minutes we heard a strange hissing followed by a definite "pop". Rushing through from the next room I discovered the converter smoking! To cut a long story short, the converter was fried, but the laptop fortunately was unharmed. My sister took me into Leeds and we managed to find a way to plug my Mac's power adaptor into a British socket for 4 quid. Otherwise had a quiet day, finishing with a 45 minute return to see the bluebells one last time and a long and successful Skype showing the family in the US around the garden.

Over the pond

Left Boston for Newark around 5:30 yesterday evening (ash was blown north of the UK a day earlier, opening all the airports again), then spent an uncomfortable night on Continental flight 100 to Manchester. No sleep, but no delays and after a train ride across the Pennines and a lift from the station from my older sister I made it to mum's house by around 2:30 this afternoon. Feeling pretty good, so we went for a local walk through Hetchell Woods and were amazed by the bluebells. Forecast for the first three days of digging is now sun, cloud, light rain, so looking pretty good. Time for some much needed sleep and will try to get up at 8am...

Ash moving in, temporarily?

A news report just came out on the BBC website, saying winds over the Atlantic are expected to push the ash cloud over parts of the UK from Sunday to Tuesday, closing some airports again. The UK Met office will now be publishing 5-day predictions of ash cloud movement, so that's another site to monitor. Fortunately, the current prediction is for a strong south easterly wind from midweek, which would push the ash well north of Britain. Until I actually land in Manchester on Thursday morning there will be no guarantees.

Football injury

Preparations for the trip all seem to be in place, but a deep thigh bruise picked up in a soccer game last weekend is causing me some serious discomfort, six days later. Half of my right thigh is various shades of purple, yellow and green after a deliberate late tackle by a Brimfield defender. Hopefully the remaining week will see the muscle stiffness dissipate, because if the digging started now it would be next to impossible. The silver lining is that I get to watch the Monaco Grand Prix first thing tomorrow morning; no more football for me until after Vindolanda.

Volcano watching

Just 10 days to go now before I leave. Getting excited to see family, and start digging, but the volcano-that-appears-to-have-no-name-judging-by-news-reports, Eyjafjallajoekull, remains literally a dark cloud on the horizon. The eruption is not as violent as it was when it first erupted back in mid-April, but if the wind is in the wrong direction it's still closing airports. Keeping a daily watch on the Icelandic Met Office website, which has a page giving all the latest info in English; hopefully I'll be lucky...