Part of a series of bulletins from the BAS excavations at Wickham House
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Attendees: Doug, Björn, Bob, Beth, Ben, Pam, Jill, Philip, James C, Mark P, Deborah, Jane, Tim L, Peter C, Martin and Keith

After being rained off the day before it was good to be back on site in fine weather – and with the ground a lot softer than it has been of late after the long dry spell. Work got off to an exciting start in Trench 2 with the discovery by Martin of what appears to be an iron stylus within the context believed to be the northerly ditch of the Roman road. This context is revealing large numbers of Roman period pottery sherds so should this iron artefact be confirmed by specialists as a stylus, that we have evidence of literate members of the population of this settlement (or users of the Roman road) during the Roman period. Shown in Figure 1, this artefact has a pointed end and a flat “eraser” at the other end for removing mistakes from a wax tablet. Cast detailing of the shaft can be seen on close inspection further suggesting that this artefact is not simply a nail. A great find!

Beth continued to explore the contents of the ditch of the Roman road, and Ben excavated the contents of a pit immediately to the south as seen in Figure 2. Meanwhile, Peter and Doug excavated the gully associated with the medieval building built upon the remains of the Roman road to evaluate in section as shown in Figure 3. At the northern end of Trench 2 Jane and Deborah 100% excavated the post holes and pits discovered last week and together with Tim completed the recording of contexts at this end of the trench.

Philip continued to lead the remaining earth resistance geophysics surveys of the site with Mark and James so that we will have a complete record of high resolution earth resistance across the site. Meanwhile in Trench 3 Pam and Jill continued to excavate the stratigraphy and record the surface exposed the previous week.

In Trench 4 Mark, James, Bob and Björn continued to excavate the features revealed the previous week, and discovered a large pit in the northeast corner of the trench with a linear feature to the south of the pit on the same alignment as the Roman road. Initial exploration of the fill from this pit is already revealing Roman period pottery including a couple of sherds of Samian pottery – so has the potential to shed further light on Roman period occupation. Work in this trench continue tomorrow to define and record these features before interpretations can be finalised.