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Badlesmere Bottom 2019 - Day 3

Submitted by Fred Birkbeck on 21 August 2019
Day 3 on site and time to start digging in earnest (in very compact clay in actual fact!).

 

The first 'slot' of the season was opened on a very innocuous looking linear in trench 1. The first couple of spades produced some Iron Age potter which puts a whole different perspective on the trench. Any thoughts of a quick clean-up, record and shut-down were quickly put to one side.

Ian and Richard 1004.
Some volunteers were digging...

Apart from the linear feature, there was what looked suspiciously like a metalled surface in another part of the trench which needed a good clean-up to see what we had to deal with.

Cleaning up 1006.
… ohers were cleaning the metalled surface.

Our reward for the considerable effort was that we got to record the features by the end of the day.

Richard photographing 1006.
Photographing the metalled surface.

The volunteers all got some guidance on recording.

Measuring 1004.
Richard explains why and how we record before a preliminary sketch of [1004].

Day 4 will see us taking up the metalling and seeing whether it's hiding anything underneath, we're also putting another slot through the linear and seeing if there's a relationship between the two contexts. That should see us complete trench 1 but, as we saw today, anything could happen in the next 24 hours. We'll update you tomorrow!