Day 9 - a blustery day in the car park

Another wet and windy, and busy day unearthing bodies in the car park... We will be excavating the skeletons tomorrow so if you want to see them before they go you would need to get to the site tomorrow morning.

 

Tony Corey, a professional photographer from the NIEA joined us for the day and took lots of photos and we also had a visit from NIEA archaeologists Gail, Edith, Kara and Christina. Emily also did an interview on Drive 105 with Felix Healy.

Paul Logue (NIEA) and Ruairi O Baoill (CAF) called by and they confirmed that the two pieces of medieval pottery, unglazed earthenware, are the earliest pieces of pottery from the town while the worked flint found last Friday is not a gunflint but a scraper either prehistoric (possibly Bronze Age?) or early medieval. Flint scrapers would have had multiple uses but one of the things they were employed for was to prepare skins or hides. And if the scraper is indeed medieval we could suggest (we're archaeologists - we're good at this!) that it was used to prepare vellum for use in the scriptorium of the Dub Regles. The annals record the death of the scribe of Derry in 724 who presumably lived, died and was buried in the Columban monastery.

John Hegarty, one of our volunteers uncovered the base of a wine glass or goblet late in the afternoon while the 2nd John (John Strickland) found the bases of two bottles close by; these probably once held the wine, sherry or madeira drunk from the goblets.

The base of a wine glass or goblet just out of the ground - probably 17th-century in date

 

 

Our most glamorous volunteer - Hazel Philson from St Augustine's