Part of a series of bulletins from the BAS excavations at Wickham House

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Attendees: Karen, Tim L, Lindsey, Julian, Chris, Stuart, Louise, Jackie, Geoff, Nick, Nigel and Keith

Over the weekend all the finds from Day #1-Day #8 were sorted, washed (if required) and re-bagged by material/context as shown in Figure 1. There is a wide variety of finds so far dating from the 20^th century to the Roman period indicating some exciting post-excavation analysis in store later in the year.

During Day #9 Lindsey, Karen, Jackie, Chris and Nigel continued work to remove the remaining topsoil in Trench 2A as shown in Figure 2, which was achieved by the end of the day. Tomorrow will see this surface cleaned and recorded before the first layer of archaeology is then removed.

In Trench 1A Stuart and Louise focused on the careful excavation of the ditch feature as shown in Figure 3. This resulted in discover of iron slag and pottery sherds. Work on excavating this feature will continue tomorrow.

View a photogrammetry model that Stuart made of the trench here

In Trench 1B Tim, Geoff, Julian and Nick removed a large portion of the context containing pottery, iron slag and nails and revealed a new context beneath which will be cleaned and recorded tomorrow. The finds of the day from Trench 1B were two Roman coins – a Numus dating to the 4^th century AD found by Geoff and an As dating to the 1^st century AD (found in context) by Julian. 

In the afternoon Tim and Geoff led training of use of the earth resistance meter adding further to the detail of features in the south of the site close to the Roman road. This image suggests a N-S aligned structure across the Roman Road (but not aligned with it) that will be explored over the coming season together with the Roman period features likely to lie beneath.