On the agenda for the next few days is a rather large bit of "deturfing", the process of removing turf and the disturbed soil just under it in preparation for getting at the real archeology deeper down. I find it relaxing work.
Here we have the entire crew hard at it.
You might wonder where all the bits of turf and assorted rock and dirt ends up. Well, this is an area where I was doing deep excavations a year ago. It was a trench put into the foot print of a later building, and all the accessable archeology here has been excavated.
What a great place to put all that dirt. I must admit it makes me a bit sad to see the old trench go, but that is as it must be.
Not much for finds this close to the surface. An "unidentified metal object" that could have been a lot of different things. A round stone "pot lid". Oh, and I should mention a coin.
We are discourged from posting anything on the internet that might attract the attention of "night hawks" - illicit nocturnal pirates with metal detectors. But I guess this 1979 penny featuring not the Emperor Hadrian but the current British queen Elizabeth, is a safe enough post.
Hooray! Welcome back to Vindolanda. It will be great reading about your exploits. I hope it's a good trip. I miss it badly -- especially as I'm now building version 2.0 of my Vindolanda rebuild. What is the goal of the area that you guys are excavating? Are you going to be working the Vicus layers? Or going down looking for anaerobic?
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