'Mili Hands Make Light Work'!
Day 7. What a fabulous last day. Our team of archaeologists and visitors on site today were; Mili, Emily, Fiona, Max, Ted, Alison, Paul, Anna, Adam, Steve, Becky, Toby, Thea, Louis, Tom, Rohan, Maya, Cadence, Sameer, Adam, Donna, Christine, Simon, Michael, Tom, Gary and George the dog. With several trenches to backfill we were very, very grateful for all of their help.
The one woman whirlwind, that is my incredible friend, Mili organised us all, cajoled her work colleagues to come along and help throughout the week, entertained the children and inspired us all... as usual. She told the children about archaeology and showed them examples of pottery and bones.
Mili's work colleague, Fiona brought her microscope to the wood and the children and the adults queued up to look at tiny seeds, insects and other items. Their faces were a picture. One young man commented that he was amazed that the tiny seeds looked as big as rocks!
Mili then led the children and adults up to the dig site and showed them the stones we had uncovered before allowing them to jump in a trench and have a go at digging.
Lo and behold it was not long before squeals of delight could be heard and everyone pulled out pieces of pot and ancient plastic spiders and lizards! I had worked in both of those trenches during the week - If only I had dug a few centimetres deeper the squeals of joy would have been mine!! ;-)
The children then backfilled the trenches and did a remarkable job aided by good teamwork and lots of chatter - Each of them are definitely archaeologists of the future.
It was thirsty work!
What made the day even more special was that the owner of the wood, Gary and his son Joe came along with George their dog to see how the dig had progressed and I suspect were a bit surprised to see that they had walked into an episode of Time Team with us all waxing lyrical about the stones we had uncovered and the other features we had found in their wood.
Mili took the smaller archaeologists back to the camp and arranged for the children and the adults to make their own pots and tiles of out clay - a memento of a special day in this beautiful wood. Each one was a work of art and their handiwork can be seen at the top of the page and also below.
It was without doubt the perfect end to an enjoyable week but we must say a heartfelt thank you to Gary and his family and to our dear friend Amanda to whose memory we dedicate this dig.
