Updates from the end of Week 2

St Serf's

Trench 04 is now down to the medieval subsoil.

It took us over a week to get through the modern midden and structures in Trench 04, and we are now well into preserved, possibly medieval layers. The finds we are getting at our current level are fragments of medieval redwares, white gritty ware (12-14th century) and some later green glaze, but they are all quite abraded fragments so we are still in what are essentially garden soils. Here's hoping they are sealing earlier features!

Meanwhile, in Trenches 05 and 06, we have found out a lot about the modern history of the village, especially the impressive feats of early modern engineering that reclaimed land from the riverbank. Trench 06 extends from the churchyard wall down to the Dunning Burn and shows that most of this area is actually made ground postdating the modern embankment of the river. And all done without the help of JCBs!

The 19th-century embankment wall and our trench through the made ground reclaimed from the ancient riverbank.

Kay Craig

The massive outer wall of the structures at Kay Craig.

Excited update! The bedrock wall face we extended the trench to investigate has turned out to be a wall after all! Alex uncovered courses of faced stone under the large bedrock chunks with lovely wee chock stones packing the gaps between the wall and the bedrock face. Now we are uncovering this fully to start to investigate its relationship to the structure on the top of the hill.

Open Day this Sunday!

Don't forget to swing by Dunning for our Open Day this Sunday June 30th! See our previous post for more details.