The 2008 season saw a departure from the more recent excavations which had involved the use of JCB's, heavy duty mattocks and a good deal of blood, sweat and tears on the part of our numerous volunteers. This season was a return to the area to the west of golf hole 7 where Romano-British pottery had been unearthed back in 2003.
Although we felt that our work here would not produce anything that we didn't already know with regard to actual artefacts, we did wish to find out whether the pottery finds would be in much the same quantities in this extended area. As expected, just below the humic area, pottery of the Romano-British period was found, although the further south we excavated the density seemed to tail off which was a useful development in itself and might need further investigation.
What was of more immediate interest was one small piece of highly glazed ware with decoration, much more sophisticated in manufacture than the usual pieces that have been typical of the assemblages in the various trenches we have put in to date. Either our Romano-Brits have just gone up in the status stakes or they nicked it. This piece will be taken to the University of Reading for identification and dating along with the two pieces of glass found in the datable pottery layer; our first glass since we began with the geophysics in 2003.
Just as we were about to close the work for the season we came across a distinct anomaly in the soil structure. What began to emerge was a highly compacted flint layer, circular in shape but surrounded by loose gravel, much more typical of the site as a whole. There was no way we had the time to section this, let alone take it down completely as mattocking only caused the mattock head to bounce off in a shower of sparks. Next season maybe.
Once again our thanks go to all volunteers who helped out.
Felix Beardmore-Gray
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