SERF blog

Day 4: 06/08/09

So today I was at the Pictish Cemetery and the first task of the day was mattocking.
Dr. Campbell started by sectioning off part of the site which contained a very unusual, large, square, enclosure ditch for a Pictish site. In the heat the mattocking was quite difficult work, which wasn’t helped by the sun drying out the soil making it difficult to see the features of the ditch. However, it was this part of the day when the most significant find was discovered – a 13/14^th century piece of pottery (as shown in the photo). The mattocking was finally finished just before lunch, after which we began trowelling back to clean the area, in order to define the feature. It was then when Anna found her first archaeological find ever, yay. On site another team were also mattocking in the afternoon; they were looking for features inside the enclosure and through this process found a posthole, how exciting! Meanwhile, throughout the day Carmen and Natalia were surveying next to the site using Ground Penetrating Radar – looking for the ditch coming out the southern side of the trench. Unfortunately their battery ran out; however they are hopeful to get a chance to finish it off tomorrow. The day finished off with a quick photography lesson from Dr. Campbell – illustrating the ditch and the hard days work of day four.

Eilidh