Day 3

WA Archaeologist, Dora explains how to draw the Section of a trench to Harthill volunteer, Andy.

What a great day! Today, we had 8 volunteers from Harthill. Myself, Olivia, Sarah, Alison, Si, Ted, Chris and Andrew. Ted came in the afternoon after going on a 38 mile cycle ride with Kiveton Park Cycling Club, such is his enthusiasm for the dig.

The bank and ditch feature (Trench 4) is proving to be the gem of the dig so far. a hand made nail and more brown glazed pottery came out of the top section and a large decorated piece came out near the bottom of the ditch. They have almost reached the very bottom of the ditch and they think they can see where it begins to return to the top, but they need to remove a few more inches of subsoil to be certain.

Trench 2 has been completely scraped and cleaned back to the natural and apart from a few bits of slag, an animal bone and some other small finds there was not much else in it. There were no features cut through the natural indicating any enclosures or structures. The trench was photographed and recorded and will be closed down tomorrow. Dora, one of the WA archaeologists showed Harthill volunteer, Andy how to mark out and draw the section.

Trench 1 also had a few small finds, but the linear feature that we were hoping to pick up did not materialise. So tomorrow that trench will be recorded, photographed and will probably be closed down too.

Two new smaller trenches next to Trench one and Trench two will be opened tomorrow in the hope that we can pick up the linear feature that we believe to be there.

All of the volunteers again said how much they had enjoyed themselves, but more importantly, how much they had learnt. The WA team are excellent teachers and every question is answered and every procedure is explained in understandable english. All of the volunteers said that they will be coming back to help again as soon as they can. One volunteer is changing his work shifts so that he can spend more time helping on the dig. It really is proving to be a memorable dig for the volunteers from the Harthill community.