Part of a series of bulletins from the BAS excavations at Wickham House
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Attendees: James P, Martin, Carrollanne, Tim L, Gary, Lindsey, Thalia, Charlie, Hazel, Judy, Julian, Jill, Gabby and Keith
With the return of fine weather work quickly got underway in Trench 4A with Hazel, Judy and Charlie to define the surfaces revealed last week thought to be part of a Roman period roadside building. Hazel was focusing on the defining the linear feature of large flints and Judy was exploring a lens of CBM/pottery sherds on what was thought to be outside of the building as shown in Figure 1. Hazel discovered a copper-alloy radiate coin most likely of Tetricus II dating to AD273-274 (probably minted in Trier) in context giving a useful spot date to these contexts. In Trench 4A James completed the recording of the features explored last week bringing work in this trench to an end.
In Trench 2 Lindsey completed recording of the surface revealed the previous week and marked out the next context for excavation, whilst Tim and Carrollanne continued to remove deposits to the south. At the far end of Trench 2 Martin focused on recording the sections of the ditch of the Roman road.
A new 6m x 1m trench 4C was opened to explore the relationship between the building being explored in trenches 4A and 4B and the Roman road to the south. Julian, Gary, Gabby and James made good progress in removing the overburden, and in the process discovered a Roman 4th century AD numus coin and a gilded button most likely dating to the Medieval period.
In trench 3 Thalia and Jill finalised the excavation and completed much of the recording. With a small amount of work remaining it is likely that this trench too will be completed tomorrow.
