Day 14

Today was a relatively quiet and slow day after the media madness of yesterday. Having said that, we started to count the numbers of visitors to the site from lunchtime and by 5 o'clock we had a tally of 420!

 A notable brief interlude after lunch when we had no visitors

 

We spent much of the day working on the western half of the trench. There has persistently been a subdivision within the trench with the burials and loamy garden/urban soil  into which the graves were cut confined to the eastern half of the trench while anomalous spreads, lenses and possible linear features (differentiated by the differential composition of the soil, e.g. darker or lighter in colour, mores/less clay or stones, etc.) distributed across the western half. We have speculated that the absence of burials in this area may mean that they were respecting a boundary of some sort. Much of the spreads of material in the western half are quite stony and relatively sterile and reminiscent of redeposited subsoil - possibly upcast from a bank latterly slighted and spread out when the city walls were built. The finds suggest we are in the 'Dowcra' phase of the development of the town (late 16th - early 17th century) so perhaps these deposits are the remnants of part of Docwra's fort.

We recorded and investigated some of these anomalous lenses and layers during the day, one of which yielded another musket shot (bringing the total to 6 so far) and a sherd of vessel glass with raised ridges.

 Brian recording and Tony Wilkinson (volunteer) excavating