Whirlow Hall Farm Archaeological Field-School 2018: Thursday 10th May 2018 Day 4

Day 4
With some jobs being continued into day 4, new tasks also had to be undertaken in order to start work on the newly dug trenches.

General tasks today include:

Floatation
Test Pitting
Geochemistry
Starting the first load of work on the trenches
Geophysics

The day started with heading over to the floatation area to see how the students were getting on. After having a slight bump in the road with the water not working yesterday, it was great to see the students were able to continue their work, even getting 18 buckets of soil! Unfortunately, after 18 buckets, the water was stopped for unknown reasons again, and work took a slight break.

Up on the grass field, work on test pits continued and major trench work began in trenches 4 and 5. After a full day of being in the test pits, one student found a bone which excited them... before Clive from Archaeological Research Services gave the suggestion of a possible chicken bone. After washing and cleaning yesterdays test pit finds with water and a toothbrush (being extra careful); interesting items such as led and glass were found in pit 41, and pit 43 included rusty nail and bits of ceramics. In trenches 4 and 5, work began on troweling and cleaning the surface and edges, whilst looking closely at any interesting items they may brush past. On last check in, trench 5 had found a not yet seen before on site piece of unique metal in a weird shape, but nothing extremely old! Within both trenches 4 and 5, bits of pottery and clay pipes were present in both.

Checking in with the geochemist's, an hour into the day (and continuing on with yesterdays work), they had finished! This means they had managed to analyse the whole area of the grass field, looking at the soil composition and what this means for the previous years.

The geophysics team today had results that show a possible roman enclosure within the grass field. We have begun excavating for a possible neolithic henge!