DAY 9 - 12th August 2010

Forteviot


Trench 5

Today began with a glorious group photograph of Team Awesome. Voila.

As the weather remained fine for most of the day good progress was made with Vivienne and volunteer John finishing their features.

Andy has been working hard on his post-hole feature for several days now. Due to the great depth of this post-hole feature a necessary invention of the Taladel was made. This involved high tech implements such as ladels and masking tape in order to create an instrument which would reach and clear out soil from the post-hole bottom.

Thanks go to everyone for the particularly delightful, high standard of conversation, especially Dean ‘Awesome’ Paton for his manly lifting of people and Nick Window, simply for his name really.

Finally a massive HAPPY BIRTHDAY to our team member Ailsa.

The Birthday girl herself looking fabulous.

Ciao, Charlie x

Trench 6

Hi – I’m Giles, your blogger for today for trench 6. I’m a desk-based archaeologist currently working for the Highland Council. I’m here at Forteviot this week, as the chance to explore a Neolithic site in Scotland, particularly one with such great evidence from the timber side of things is a chance not to be missed.

Progress has continued well today, and only a few showers to slow us down!

I am working with Sandi in the ditch, which is now shaping up as a re-modelled terminal for a henge. This ditch is filled with a number of silty fills, and whilst there has been little of artefactual interest from the lower deposits, it certainly has been interesting to try and untangle the confusing, if not complex, stratigraphy!

The key task today was ensuring that these deposits were fully recorded before excavation could be undertaken of the basal orange sand within this feature, potentially a primary henge fill.  The ditch is in places nearly 6m wide, and is now about 1m deep. Numerous examples exist in Britain of ‘special deposits’ being recorded at the terminals of Neolithic ditches – such as the recently discovered Bluestonehenge at Stonehenge - so hope has not been abandoned of finding an interesting cache or assemblage!

Elsewhere in the trench, the heavy work continues apace in the pit which dominates the interior of this henge. We yesterday recorded a number of very large stones which seemed to be deliberately placed. These have now been removed, and probably represent rubble fill of this feature. 

Again, this has produced very little in terms of artefacts. However, the large pit recorded during the previous season at Forteviot,  within the henge, contained fragments of Iron and lead, Roman amphora and sherds of medieval pottery, so I don’t feel hope should be abandoned here either.

Lighter work continues on the posthole which has now been almost completely excavated by Alistair– and his ladel. Work also continues on the two potential grave cuts which have to date produced a number of sherds of All Over Corded beaker – dated to 2400-2350BC. No more Early Bronze Age pottery today but a number of fragments of burnt bone isn’t too bad!

A newly opened feature is a potential pit or post hole cut into the inside edge of the henge ditch. This is going to be a key relationship to explore in the next few days – particularly if this new feature produces any datable objects.

Trench 7

So the day started with only 3 of us on site! We are pleased to announce that Robbie’s posthole is the deepest feature on site measuring 1.6m and has reached the water table at 1.4m. Elaine continued to excavate her tree throw which is getting deeper and when Corinna  arrived later on in the morning we both made section drawings of our two features and then filled out the context sheets...not to mention getting another heavy rain shower in the process. The paleochannel is now thought to be far more modern than it was before since some tarpaulin was found. Unfortunately, Robbie’s  ‘trowdel’ didn’t make an appearance today but hopefully it will again sometime in the near future!

Robbie's Posthole