Our best supported day so far, with 19 volunteers attending, on what also turned out to be the best day of the week so far, fortunately bearing only a passing resemblance to the weather forecast. We received permission first thing from the National Park’s Historic Environment Team to extend the trench to the East, so thanks to Sarah there, increasing the size of the excavated area by 50% to 27m2. This has given us a much better understanding of what is going on. It is easy to see features and patterns which don’t exist but it does seem that we are beginning to see the wall(s?) of one or more structures, possibly the elusive roundhouse which we are seeking. Towards the end of day Tony, our Site Archaeologist, took a large number of photos to enable him to use photogrammetry to both record and better understand the site. It will be interesting to see the results tomorrow.
Meanwhile work in the test pit continued. It seems clear that this has achieved the objective of determining the nature of the ‘surface’; rather than being at around 40cm as suggested by the geophysical surveys, it is a roughly cobbled surface at around 25cm, initially identified yesterday. The geophys suggests that at one time the surface covered a large area of the mound; indeed, some cobbling is evident in the main trench as can be seen on Marks’ overhead drone shot, below, taken towards the end of today.
Thanks very much to those who came out today and enjoyed the decent weather.
We look forward to seeing many of you tomorrow, Thursday 11th June, 9:15am for a 9:30pm start, when we again hope for a much better day than forecast.
Alan
