Part of a series of bulletins from the BAS excavations at Wickham House
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Attendees: James P, Judy, Julian, Jackie, Carrollanne, Nigel B, Louise, Lindsey, Gabby, Karen, Vaughn, Paula, Charlie and Keith

With only five more days remaining of this season of excavation after today and the return of fine weather after last week’s downpour, the team set about their tasks with renewed vigour! 

In Trench 4C Julian extended the trench a further 1m to the south to span the full width of the ditch of the Roman road, where a deposit of large flints had been discovered at the end of last week. On cleaning the newly revealed surface, Roman roof tiles and pottery soon emerged as seen in Figure 2. At the north end of Trench 4C Louise and Gary focused on a sondage to identify the stratigraphy of deposits.

In Trench 2 Lindsey and Carrollanne cleaned up the newly revealed cobbled surface above which deposits were found to contain a number of fragments of patterned Samian ware. Whilst in Trench 4B Judy continued to excavate the CBM filled pit found to contain a large fragment of pottery that hopefully will be able to suggest a likely date for this feature. In the north of Trench 4B James opened a sondage to investigate what lay beneath the deposit of large flints which  revealed a layer of black organic soil rich in Roman period finds – but not showing the expected continuation of the foundation deposits seen in Trench 4A 2m to the north. This new evidence will require the initial interpretation of Trench 4 to be reassessed.

In Trench 4D Paula and Karen explored the newly discovered linear feature and pit so that they could be planned, recorded and photographed. It is not clear whether this feature represents an external boundary or part of a building, although Roman period pottery sherds were being found at the top of these contexts suggesting a possible period of occupation.