Digging Hill 80 - Second Report

Again a reminder.  More about the dig and an opportunity to support it if so inclined can be found at:

 Dig Hill 80

We'll start again with the Concerning Photo of the Day:

There's a lot of this stuff around.  Perhaps 30 percent were defective when made and never went off.  This one has been looked at and deemed harmless.  Uh....OK.  I should mention that while there are idiots out there who would try to dig this up as a marketable item, there is live in security on site.....

I'm told my old Vindolanda pals back in the UK are reading these posts in the pub after digging.  I raise my beverage (Pater Ename 5.5%) to Absent Friends.  You'll have to feel the clinking of glass instead of hearing it.

By the way, on this dig there is no tea break.  We did have to retreat 30 meters yesterday while some hand grenades were being dealt with but you really can't count on that kind of luck every day.  So I'm a bit tired out.

Working with a Belgian gastroenterologist today.  A good digger.  Our piles of German ammo clips grows ever larger.

Archaeology is not all finds, Features are also important.  Here's Feature of the Day, our arched roof cellar.  The part to the right was all dug out by Your Humble Correspondent yesterday.  After the photos and mapping we bashed out the bricks and took the whole thing down.  A fair amount of work for two guys with grey beards.

Let it be noted that we significantly "out barrowed" the languid Uni students digging next door to us.  Also returning to old form, the management brought several sets of visitors by for me to hold forth.  Bricks and bullets are an interesting combination.

Iconic find of the day.  Genuine World War One barbed wire.  

This is held by one of the folks who came on site for one day of digging.  They are from the UK, on a trip to find path trod by his grandfather during the Great War.  He was fortunate enough to unearth the find of the day, a bayonet.  I'll pass on that picture, it was a really nice find and we mustn't encourage night time metal detectorists.  Hope you'll settle for this:

French uniform button.  The globe with the burning fuse is supposed to be a grenade and this designates a Grenadier unit.  As the French were only here for a few weeks in 1914 this is a rather good artifact for dating purposes.