AN OCCASIONAL PROGRESS REPORT
of the 2010 Excavation
by Jeremy Cooper

The views expressed are Jeremy's own and the information is his own understanding - he has been known to get things wrong!

No blog today as it's so close to last Friday dig-wise. I'll be there tomorrow.

(Later...) Chris Wiggins has sent two photos with the following:

Today during lunch break, Beryl set up her 'market stall' to give the hard sell on all the Whitehall merchandise. 'Buy, buy buy!!!'

And what am I bid for the wheelbarrow?

Buy it, or I'll throw it at you!

Thanks Chris.

If you are on site and get a good photo or three, please send them to me. Also any news or stories will be used on the blog (at my discretion!).

Day 7 of 20: Tuesday 22 June

It was hot!



On both sites, the soil is dry and hard and the going is not easy!

While BH2 is being gradually worked back on all sides of room 5 and the South end of room 4...



... the proto-villa (known technically as AB, for auxiliary building) has been yielding some nice finds.





Here's the well-charred underside of the same pot



All the pot from AB came from underneath that large lump of bone shown last week.



Here's AB's best bits (so far)...

Lovely!

Meanwhile, BH2 did manage to produce a nice piece of worked stone...

This is the moment Steve agreed to let those who wanted (mainly the younger folk) to go early tomorrow afternoon to watch England play Slovenia at the local pub (that's where they'll watch, not where the match is). But they will start early to make up for a bit of the time lost. Fair enough.

And finally...

The last wolf in Britain guards your flock (I think!). A reference, indeed, to our very rare wolf's jaw found in BH1 some years ago.

Later addition: a better translation may be "The last wolf in Britain: guard your flocks!" I feel this is a bit anti-wolf and I prefer the first, counter-stereotypical version.

Pix and news from Chris, Sandra and Malcolm - a big thanks to all three.

From Sandra:

Steve and I climbed on the bales to get an overview of the site.

And here's the view:

Sadly the mosaic has fizzled out. (Bottom left of the photo) Literally just a few scattered tesserae and then nothing not even the robbed out foundations of a wall.

The other picture is of the Lower Slope...

... Fred and Malcolm were cleaning the bunters which lie under the foundations (now that the area is reasonably dry) and came upon a stone-lined drain running east-west which appears to go under the floor of BH2 room 4 , and also goes under the substantial wooden pipe they also found which abuts the bunters right at the bottom of the bank.

Malcolm takes up the story:

Fred and I were excavating the west wall of BH2. He found, in a drain, a piece of wood. On further investigation it turned out to be a worked log, over two metres long, with a hole running through the centre of it. It continued under the large stone in a northerly direction (away from the camera)...

The photos in the right hand column are by Chris.

A pattern emerges from the mosaic - Indianus Jonesus?

Sandra tries sitting in front of the digger in a one woman protest to stop the dig - but was unsuccessful, and a large new area surrounding the mosaic has been opened.

And now for some animal antics...


A pair of archaeological 'prairie dogs' pop up in a surprise appearence.


A toad comes (and later goes) but it stays long enough to be given its own context.

Thanks to both.

Day 10 of 20: Friday 25 June

Good grief! Half way already! I know that's easy for me to say, as I haven't been sweating in the heat of the sun quite as much as the diggers: but you must admit that time flies.

A few finds to begin today with, all from the AB site, and of a nice variety of materials.


A copper alloy (can't say 'bronze' any more) ring. Evidence of silvering or tinning, but mising its stone. Sorry for the lack of a scale, but believe me that it is kinda small - probably a child's ring. Found (where it shouldn't have been!) by the metal detecting team.

Part (most) of a bone hairpin. Looks like a long one to me, so it's later rather than earlier (right?).


The end of an antler - sawn off very smoothly.


A piece of worked antler - the side facing the camera is very smooth.

And now it gives me great pleasure (and a heck of relief) to hand over to today's guest blogger...

Take it away Barbara!

I've been told that I have to do the blog tonight before I'm allowed any dinner! So here is a brief summary of what I found out this afternoon.

It was very hot. Everyone was doing a sterling job keeping their noses to the soil despite the heat. (I like Ruth's solution to keeping cool - ask her!)

Starting with the bath house and wow! The bath house has doubled in size. I know it sounds silly but as Chris quite rightly said you don't really get the full impression from the blog as to how different it is. But it's big. And the mosaic pavement is amazing. I think the previous title for the largest number of tesserae stuck together was in Malcolm's hands at 14 pieces - well that's blown away now. But it has meant that Gillian now has been given the uneviable task of trying to clean between the joins. A subtle form of archaeological torture!

(Editor's note - he's getting hungry. And if you click HERE, you should find large annotated photo taken of BH2 - taken from on top of the straw bales - appearing for your perusal. Roll you mouse over it to see the features mentioned here).

If you recall last year, south of the apsidal end and large wall double faced wall (with some nice herrigbone effect on it) we found more pilae with an extensive area of burning. It looked like a stoke hole up against the wall. We also found some lovely big pieces of painted wall plaster just beyond the pilae. Well it's east of this room (I think we can safely say it's a heated room) that the new mosaic floor has been found - level with the base of the pilae (pink on the photo). The mosaic has been cut through by a drain at a later date. The edge of the mosaic is not quite clearly defined yet to the east but it does look as though it has now run out. But remember that lovely double faced wall well that goes on to the east beside the mosaic (red on the photo). It's not quite clear yet where the edge of the mosaic is in relation the wall, so it's not possible YET to say which was first.

Further south from where the painted plaster was found was what looked like a fairly sterile area last year with a large stain going across it at a sort of rounded right angle (the students did a grand job of cleaning it down). But that has paid dividends now because Jerry found the huge wall foundation of bunter pebbles going north/south (green on the annotated photo). Chris and Rick did a fine job of cleaning them.

Steve speculated that it could be the foundation of a tower but it's got to be for something heavy or they've over engineered the foundation. Now the task for next week is to find out where it joins the heated room and, of course, it goes on into the baulk, so that might have to be taken down one day. And Laura still needs to find where the orange soil ends.

Fred seems happy in the corner with his drains.



He even had a vortex this afternoon with kneeling mats spiralling above his head. Is Fred auditioning for the next Harry Potter? He's experimenting with flow meters and may give the drain he's found going south-west, north-east a good Dynarodding. He's also planning a spring water tasting session with Nick. Is this a new enterprise - Whitehall Water?

He's also trying to find out if the west wall foundation stones and the new west drain continue into the south west corner. But guess what, there may be more bunter pebbles coming up.

The drain cutting across the bath house from the south-west to north-east is definitely post-Roman, but what about the new west side drain running on the outside of the west wall (blue on the annotated photo). Does it match the wooden lined drain outside the east wall (see last year's blog)? Were they put in at the same time as the walls or later? As Steve said most of the drains so far have been water management drains, as we've found with the flooded site in the last few years that there is a bit of problem of flooding. But the new western wood-lined drain (which are not commonly found preserved on Roman sites so the wood will eventually be lifted for preservation - it's under the black plastic in the last photo) is the first clue on water supply. But where did it go? Was there a holding tank? It's a good start but hopefully there's some more drain left that will give some answers.

There haven't been many material culture (that's stuff we use - pots, pins, coins etc.) found in the bath house. It looks as though it's been comprehensively cleared, but the pottery found does date it to late 3rd to mid 4th century.

It's all to play for still.

Fortunately the Ancilliary Building or Proto Villa (sorry, can't remember where we're up to on the naming) has produced some lovely pottery (see earlier 2010 blogs).

And some huge trenches!

There was a large enclosure ditch running around the whole Whitehall site which appeared on the geophysics and in the trenches dug in 2002 (?).



Tony's stalwart team of students plus James and Neal (I think) have found the deep ditch in two large trenches sort of to the east of the proto-villa building platform. They also found more worked antler bone (see above).


The ditch cuts across this excavated trench from left to right (South to North)

The enclosure ditch was a bank and ditch with stones at the bottom of the bank probably for stability and drainage.


The East elevation of the ditch with the bank foundation stones in a shallow trench just beyond the edge of the ditch

The pottery coming out of the ditch fill has enough pieces for Jane to play at reconstructing. There was even some Anglo-Saxon pot on the top of the ditch fill.

But then what happened? Tony went home last night and the digger came. This morning he came back to find some lovely soil marks. One followed the line of the previously excavated ditch going towards the big enclosure ditch and near the edge of the building platform.


The pinkish line shows roughly where the soil marks are (looking North)

Then there was the continuation of a series of pits to the west of the big ditch containing more pottery.


(Looking North)

I confess I'm a bit hazy on the sequencing of the ditches and pits but the big ditch did go around the villa estate - a glorified Ha-Ha.

The excellent news is that the features found on this part of the site were not illusory in 2002 - they really do exist and are producing some pretty impressive finds (see above - the ring, hairpin and worked antler).

Thanks to everyone who made me so welcome this afternoon. And a huge thank you to Sandra and Margaret for assuming the onerous task of supervising the bath house, but in whose steady hands BH2 is just getting bigger, better and more intriguing.

Please can I have my dinner now, Jeremy?

(EDITOR) Yes of course, dear. Thanks for a brilliant blog.

Have a great, cool, relaxing weekend.