SEDGEFORD HISTORICAL  AND ARCHAEOLOGICAL RESEARCH PROJECT

Weblog Week 4 (29th July to 3rd August 2007)

by John Boothroyd

Thankfully this week saw a change in the weather, with sunny and dry conditions, enabling us to achieve a great deal. 

Chalkpit North Evaluations

With work having progressed so well last week, trench 2 required a large amount of recording. Sunday was spent cleaning the trench to enable us to fully photograph our features. Once recorded we were able to further investigate a few of our features, including the east west Roman ditch and our exciting finds rich Anglo Saxon ditch. Having placed three slots across our east west ditch, and having found only a single sherd of Roman pottery we began to remove the bulks. This provided us with more pottery unfortunately, yet importantly, this pot consisted largely of Saxon Ipswich and Thetford ware, thus making it unlikely for our ditch to be Roman. The second feature that was further investigate was the north south ditch from which the loom weight and vessel glass were found in previous weeks, despite this our continued investigations proved less fruitful. What was discovered however is that we had two ditches a smaller one that had been truncated by a larger later ditch.

With the final excavations being carried out first thing on Sunday morning the mammoth task of drawing and recording Trench 3 was undertaken. To achieve this the oven had to be sectioned. Doing so revealed three further layers, one which contained our old favourite the oyster shell. Interestingly this does suggest that our oven is not the earliest feature in the trench, though whatever preceded it is no longer identifiable, hopefully with the removal of the second half of the oven, next week, we will gain some deeper insight.

This weeks B.E.R.T.s did a sterling job finding features where none were thought to be found. As well as cleaning the whole of Trench 4, good headway was made investigating the newly discovered features, which included a north-south gully, an east-west ditch and possibly the terminus of the same ditch. As well as being excellent at finding features this weeks B.E.R.T.s provided us with some of the best small finds of the season so far, including a near complete copper alloy pin, of Saxon date, and an amber ring. The pin, though similar to others that have been found across the site, is particularly special because of the unusual addition of a cross on the end. The ring, was initially thought to have been a bead; however, on closer inspection, it was discovered that it was ring that had been broken during the manufacturing process. This accounts for the non-polished exterior and enticingly may suggest that amber was being worked on the site. 

Investigations were started on the features discovered in trench 5. Initial areas of focus revealed two drainage gullies that contained a minimal amount of animal bone and shell. A larger ditch was found running north-south through the centre of the trench; from this we recovered Thetford and Ipswich ware. Pete spent the week painstakingly excavating a large box section trying to the reveal the mystery of a reddish orange layer across the trench. Unfortunately as the week drew to end, having only found a single shell and small piece of animal bone it became apparent that it was a natural feature. The final features to be investigated were the two pits containing the evidence of burning and possible metalworking. Despite retrieving a large piece of unidentifiable iron from the surface, no other evidence for metalworking was discovered, although we found several several sherds of pottery, ranging in date from possible Iron Age through to Saxon. With further investigations on these pits planned next week, we are still hoping for evidence to support an area of metalworking area hypothesis. 

New Trench

Fantastic progress was made with the removal of the abandonment layer identified in week 3. Despite the dry weather there was no shortage of water at the bottom of New Trench. Although a vast amount of man power was being dedicated to water management a number of features were found and investigated. These including a ditch that contained Thetford and Ipswich ware; possibly our last Saxon feature before the juicy Roman and Iron Age features. We were teased with a taster of what was to come when we excavated an east west ditch, which ran along the north edge of our trench. From this ditch an array of decorated Roman pottery and a simple copper alloy finger ring were found.

Next week, Jon aims to remove the final layers to reach the long sort after natural. Thus the completion new trench, and 7 years of hard graft, but its all been worth it.

West Hall

Having been abandoned by Pauline and Christine, Terry continued to lead his intrepid team as they dug deeper, now reaching the ninth brick course under the house. Their excavations revealed more pipelines that thankfully had been long out of use. These pipelines however ran over something much more interesting… a cesspit. Fortunately this pit contained their first piece of dating evidence, a locally glazed sherd of Grimstone pottery dating between 1450 and 1500. As well as finding the pot an environmental sample was taken to ensure we could gain as much insight into this feature. Of course everybody did their duty and aimed as many bad jokes in Terry’s direction as possible. 

In other news we congratulate Ray and Kathy on their engagement, we at S.H.A.R.P. wish them all the best for the future.