Day 17
Blooming Heck! The days are flying by too quickly. At packing up time, I wonder where the day has gone.
Out of everybody on site, and that includes the volunteers and the archaeologists, I have done the least amount of work over the last few weeks and yet I feel physically exhausted at the end of each day. I can only imagine that it’s ‘phantom’ exhaustion after watching all of the WA archaeologists hard at work day after day.
All hands were hard at work on our bomb crater today, which has all the hallmarks of becoming ‘a something’ if we’re not too careful! Everyone is scratching their heads over it but it is interesting to have found a feature to work on, especially for the Harthill volunteers who have had the chance to be hands on in the bottom of a trench.
The whole Community Dig experience was, initially about finding ‘some’ archaeology to help us build up a better picture of the archaeology and the history around our beautiful village. To be honest, the archaeology ended up being secondary to what we did find, which I personally feel is much more valuable. It is the incredible Community Spirit that we discovered in each other. That includes everyone who has been involved, volunteers and archaeologists alike. After all that is what a Community Dig is all about!
All of the volunteers from the village have got to know each other much better, and we have made some marvellous new friends amongst the WA archaeologists. I can not speak too highly about these wonderful young people. They are a remarkable and close knit ‘Band of Brothers & Sisters’ and I have loved spending time with them.
This mad idea that Mili and I had 12 months ago to do a Community Dig in Harthill has been the most wonderful experience and I hope that we will be able do another one next year. However, I do worry that some of the WA archaeologists will start nervously twitching when they hear the word ’Harthill’ mentioned in the future. :-) The back breaking work they have undertaken every day, with a smile on their faces has been incredible.
Even today, whilst digging through the limestone, they were laughing and joking and were letting the volunteers get involved and showing them how to use a trowel.
We had 8 volunteers on site today, including the father and grandfather of Hannah, the WA Supervisor who lives in Wales village and a 9 year old home-schooled young girl called Rachael and her mum, Jacqui who had come from Stocksbridge to join in after hearing about the dig from a friend. Hannah gave them all a tour round the site and let Rachael hold the rat skull that Harthill volunteer, Andy found yesterday.
It was not long before WA archaeologist, Amy encouraged Rachael to join in and help clear out some soil from the bottom of the trench. Rachael then then had a go at cleaning the limestone with a trowel.
It was heartening for me to see my own daughter, Olivia also in the trench trowelling, but showing some of the experience that she had picked up from the Wessex Archaeology North team, and was showing Rachael how to use the trowel and clean the feature. A priceless moment!
At trench 7, WA archaeologist Justyna, cleaned up ‘The Something’ or wall as it was for a brief couple of days and she drew a Section of the trench including tree roots and then did a plan drawing of it. It was fascinating to watch as she measured the position of every stone for her drawing.
Tomorrow, trench 7 will be filled in once Justyna has done all of her paperwork, and our bomb crater will probably be drawn and photographed and then prepared for back-filling.
