Part of a series of bulletins from the BAS excavations at Wickham House
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Attendees: Björn, Bob, Beth, Ben, Pam, Deborah, Peter C, Terry, Barbara, Dee, Carrollanne, Martin and Keith
Another day of fine weather allowed us to continue to make good progress in our excavations. In Trench 2 Ben, Martin and Beth continued to define the ditch of the Roman road and began to record the next layer of fill within the ditch as shown in Figure 1. Work will continued next week to explore this new context once recording is in place. In the morning Peter and Pam recorded the section of the gully excavated by Peter yesterday and then in the afternoon moved over to help Ben/Beth. The find of the day was made by Pam “Eagle Eyes” Hart who spotted this tiny fragment of a green glass ‘melon’ bead which was recorded as a small find. This beautiful object is likely to have been worn by a female and suggests that both men and women were present at this roadside settlement during the Roman period.
In Trench 4 recording, levels and photography was completed by mid-morning by Björn, Terry and Barbara, and work started to explore the contents of the pit identified by the gradiometer survey as being part of a rectilinear alignment of pits at the side of the Roman road. The soil of the pit was dark and organic and soon started to reveal lots of Roman period pottery including the early fragment of Samian pottery possibly dating to the 1st century AD. Also within this pit was a large amount of iron slag and at the bottom (just above natural earth) a large flat stone. Further work is needed to define the cut of this feature – but initial finds from the fill suggest at iron production was taking place nearby during the Early Roman period when the pottery sherd was deposited.
At the north end of Trench 2 Carrollanne, Dee and Deborah completed the excavation of the contexts beneath the deposit of large flints, which at the south end which continued to reveal pottery from the Roman period. However, there were few finds at the northern end of the trench 2. The cobbled surface seen at the very north end of Trench 2 has not yet been seen elsewhere, with work needing to continue next week to remove further strata of deposits.
The high resolution earth resistance survey work led by Philip yesterday was processed overnight, and shows new details of possible archaeology on the west side of the site. However with only 12 days of excavation remaining decisions will need to be taken to decide which features are to be explored this season. This survey work has taken a lot of patience to record, but with only one 10m x 10m grid square remaining to record, these results will provide much food for thought during the post-excavation analysis.
