I should explain that I’ve been digging this site, on and off, since September 2002, working ahead of the construction of a new business park. What we have found in previous seasons is a palimpsest of Iron Age and Roman field systems and settlement, with quite a few burials and cremations. Now, after several false starts, we are back on site (“we” being my assistant Jude and I, Nigel who drives the mechanical excavator and John in the dumper truck).

The down side is that there is a large area to strip, so I’m in for at least a week of machine watching. This can be one of the best parts of the job, being the first person in centuries to see what is going on beneath the turf; but there is also the slow, grinding tedium. It is a tricky balance between keeping sane by engaging in archaeological speculation, gossiping about colleagues etc, and maintaining concentration. And concentration is essential on these soils; cut too deep and you will truncate all the features, possibly losing important relationships; on the other hand it is very easy to be too shy and miss everything. One further complication is that I have dug here before, and therefore have some preconceived ideas of what I should be finding; this is always dangerous.

The week passes, with some very ordinary weather. Uncover a feature and spray-paint it. Then it rains. Now everything looks grey and I know the diggers are going to hate me because we will have to clean everything again with hoes. But it is evident that the site is as busy as expected; we have some ditches of course and an awful lot of post or stake holes. Because there are so many, spread over such a large area, I will need to see them plotted before I can make much sense of things. At the very end of the week we uncover some more cremation burials, but I still can’t see the other side of that Iron Age enclosure I was expecting…

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We are lifting the cremations first as they are quite fragile, and also because in previous years we have had some nocturnal visits from metal detectors.

Most, but not all, of these interments are in a ceramic vessel, sometimes with one or more ancillary pots, and would have been outside the boundaries of the Roman settlement. Unfortunately, because of the nature of the soils it is very difficult to see the pit cuts within which the burials were placed. This means that we usually only spot them when the machine clips the top of the highest vessel.

This idyll can’t last, and at the same time that we finish the cremations the weather takes a hand. The next week is spent putting in a site grid (so we know where we are) and trying to clean back from the western edge of the site. And trying is right. We spend a large part of our time in the site hut staring at the August monsoon. And when it stops the site is like an ice rink, over which we slither to inspect the damage and start all over again. We are all looking forward to the bank holiday…

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Was I complaining about the wet weather?

Well now the site is too dry and we are working in a dust storm most of the time, some of the team have resorted to wearing goggles when digging! Worse than this, all the archaeological features are fading from sight again. Every time we get a drop of rain it is essential to scurry around scraping the surface and re-marking with spray paint. Luckily this seems to be working, as the alternative would be to re-strip the site, which would be both expensive and damaging.

The work has settled into a routine now, and with four or five of us on site progress is steady. We are concentrating on the smaller features, mostly post holes and pits, for the moment; this is because the ditches won’t disappear in the same way if the dry spell continues.

The picture starting to emerge is of an area of domestic occupation in the Iron Age, represented by groups of postholes and associated hearths and rubbish dumps. These are to the east of a large circular enclosure excavated previously. There seems to be no overlying Roman period occupation, apart from the cremation burials, implying a shift in settlement patterns. I will need to get some accurate pot dates to narrow down when this occurred. Investigation of the ditches around the perimeter of the site should reveal if they are bounding the Iron Age settlement or are a later Roman field system.

After waiting an age to start the site, the developer is now breathing down my neck wanting to know when we will be finished. Plus ça change…

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At last, no grumbling about the weather! We’ve had just enough rain to make digging easier and to find any missing archaeology. After some backbreaking hoeing, the pattern of ditches is becoming clearer. They seem to surround the site, with the smaller features bounded by them, which is convenient. Now time (=money) is the main worry.

But not for me. I’m off back to school for a week, so I’ll hand over to my surrogate, Jude…

I’ve been left in charge for the week so naturally there are now twice as many diggers on site ( another site has just finished and the next hasn’t started yet), and with Dan gone I have to find things for all of them to do. Luckily there is no shortage of horrible big ditch slots to dig! Iain found a sword in his pit on his first day on site, and as rest of us have found mostly burnt flint and tiny sherds of pottery he’s not too popular. James and Tom have found an enormous area of complicated archaeology in the NE corner of site that we have to figure out a way to deal with. Naturally all the complicated stuff has to crop up while the boss is away! Still I don’t seem to have broken the site too much, and at least the weather was kind so I didn’t have to make them dig in the rain and lose all my friends!

Finding swords while I’m away is just not on. Well, ‘sword’ perhaps. Some very corroded lumps of iron. But the shape and section seem very sword-shaped. Unfortunately the x-rays are not particularly revealing. An Iron Age sword not from a river or a grave is very interesting, especially as it seems deliberately broken and was deposited in a pit full of burnt flint. Just don’t ask me what it means yet, very probably that stand-by of perplexed archaeologists, ‘ritual’.

Now back to digging slots through ditches and trying to work out how many there are, how old they are, and how long they were in use. This hurts more than lectures and libraries…

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Not long to go, and the weather is definitely turning. I’ve dug here in the middle of winter before, and it is not a good idea. Just time to…

Check the paper work…	Take a few final measurements…
Make sure we haven’t missed anything…	And go to the pub!

Nothing to do now but settle back in my padded leather library chair in the west wing of Barrett Towers and mull over the results.

Was it ever like that? It’s actually months of correcting records, digitizing plans, compiling a database and tying together everything from four seasons of work. The finds have to be dated by specialists and the soil samples processed etc. etc. Not very Indiana Jones, and takes far longer than the fieldwork, but vital if any evidence-based interpretation of the site is to be achieved. The bare bones story of a substantial and long-lived Iron Age settlement replaced by several centuries of Roman or Romano British occupation has long been apparent; the devil is in the detail.

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Please click on a plan to view it at a larger, more legible, scale (opens in new window)

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