Vindolanda 2012 day five

After discouraging weather forecasts I was surprised to see breaks in the clouds this morning and-Sol Invictus!-sunshine by lunch time.

So we got a little better than a half day of digging in, albeit much of it doing clean up duty.

On one end of the site they are down into the layers where organic stuff gets preserved.  Mmmmm...nice soupy mud with fence posts coming through:

This is called "cut and crumble" technique.  Slice the murky Jello with a spade and the up top crew crumbles it into bits looking for the small and interesting.  A rather pleasant job actually.  They found a bit of leather in this trench, as well as these:

Either barrel staves or parts of a bucket.  Also the usual pottery and glass.

My crew was unable to get back into our "almost organic" trench, and were detailed to deturfing duty.  This involves removing the upper layer of grass prepping for a new trench.  Oh, and don't call it sod, that's slightly rude over here.

You might imagine that there would be few finds just under the grass roots, and that what there was would be new:

And right you would be.....a 1970's beer can pull tab!

I will likely take the weekend off from posting, I shall be resting up and doing a bit of countryside walking.  More digging updates on Monday, weather permitting.