'The road you can’t get from here to there' Aka Via Stumpia!

Day 5. Today, our team - Paul, Richard, Helen, Andy, Michael, Mili, Emily, Alison and Ted made a couple of interesting discoveries.

We opened two new trenches to see if we could find some of the features that appear to run off the hill into the wood. Michael and Emily opened trench 12 and uncovered a possible pit, (yippee!) After digging several trenches and finding nothing but tree roots and clay it proved to be quite exciting.

Richard and Paul opened trench 13 and found....roots and clay!!! We will take the level down further tomorrow to see if we can find any archaeological features.

Mili and Paul returned to another dig site to backfill a trench we opened on day 1 but which contained nothing. We recorded it and then backfilled it.

Yesterday, I jokingly said that our stones in trench 7, that we have lovingly referred to as 'a something' since last year, and which only yesterday I referred to as a 'conundrum' finally revealed itself to us.

After sterling work from Andy, Ted, Alison and Helen clearing away more soil and tree roots under Mili's watchful eye I can say with some certainty that our stones are part of the feature running off the hill into the wood (the white X marks the spot). The stones are part of a paved track or causeway that runs directly from the feature on the hill in the direction of the wood.

We don't know yet when the track or causeway was laid down. However, we found some pottery, coal and galena on top of the stones which may help to date it.

We wondered if the pottery might be Iron-Age, Roman or medieval so Emily contacted her colleague, Lorraine at Wessex Archaeology who analysed our finds last year. Lorraine said: "Well, they could be either Roman or medieval! But I think on balance Roman, looking at the body sherds." YIPPEEEEEEEEEEEE!

It has been another enjoyable day, shared with some fabulous people.

I wonder what tomorrow will bring?