Yesterday was a great day in the trenches, with all sorts of exciting things coming to light in the afternoon. We'll give you more information after we get a closer look tomorrow, but for now, here is a view from the trenches with our supervisory team.
Chez – Trench T
This is my first year as a supervisor, and so far, I’m
enjoying it. It’s been interesting having to work out all the different
contexts, which I haven’t had experience doing before. I’ve really enjoyed
teaching new students, and getting to meet everybody, and it has been
insightful listening to what everybody thinks my trench is. The current
consensus is that we have a brick kiln, which Sarah, who is studying bricks, is
very excited about. We also have located a wastage pile of bricks 20 metres
away from the trench. I think it’s going to take a few more days until we’re
finished, but I’m enjoying the experience so far.
Chris – Trench R
This is also my first year supervising my own trench and it
has been a great experience. The most different thing to being a volunteer is
having to work out the phasing and order in which things need to be excavated.
I enjoy teaching the volunteers and students but my trench has been essentially
empty for most of the two weeks so I haven’t been able to work with that many
people. Yesterday, however, the first non-negative feature in the whole trench
was found. It appears to be a floor that goes with the robber cut that we had
previously excavated. This is an exciting development because there may be
evidence in this layer that could show us the purpose of the building. The next
things to do are to clean off the floor layer and excavate the natural build-up
in the robber cut that was missed during its initial excavation. The floor
surface seems contained by at least one face of a wall that is at least two
courses deep so it is likely that there is a lot more to excavate!
Courtenay – Trench S
This is my first year working at Thornton, having previously
supervised at other training digs in the country. It was great to be thrown
into my own trench, but I was very grateful to have my overlord Rachel, who is
looking after Trenches S, T and R, to help put some context and time scale to
the pottery that was being excavated from my area, as I had not previously come
into contact with the styles of pottery found on this site. Having been
secluded across the road from the other trenches on the site (possibly due to
the secret wish of the other supervisors to lock me up behind an electric fence),
it turned out that my little lonely trench has provided some very interesting
and head-scratching moments as to the stratigraphical arrangement of the
architecture being uncovered. It seems that my trench holds some similarities
to the film Inception with its series of floors under floors, and walls coming
out of my ears. In the 5x5m space I have so far had 3 phases of flooring (one
on top of the other) and 5 walls, two potential pathways or corridors, and even
a potential external bricked courtyard. This is all made incredibly more confusing
since the corners to this architectural conundrum have been robbed out from the
building, obscuring the relationships that the walls share with each other. All
in all it’s been a thoroughly interesting experience both archaeologically and
socially, as I have met some really lovely people during this excavation.
Martin – Trench N
This year is my fourth year as a supervisor on this project,
and once again it has been rubble all the way down. After a lot of effort from
the volunteers and students in the past few days, much of this rubble has been
removed in the north of the trench, revealing potential medieval ground
surfaces. Also revealed in the past few days is a 1 metre thick wall,
constructed from some large and shaped stones that match the walls in Trench P,
despite the level of stone robbing that had occurred sometime in the
post-medieval period. This building seems to have been high status due to the
amount of painted plaster fragments that have been recovered by the eagle-eyed
diggers. Hopefully in the next week we will be getting into the medieval floor
layers inside the building, to work out what the building was used for. With
much more rubble to be removed from the south of the trench, the new students
arriving this weekend will certainly be in for some hard graft!
Claire - Trench P
I’ve had a great time returning to Thornton for the fourth
year, and supervising Trench P, which has been described by one student as
being like Disneyland but with more walls! A completely accurate description, I
can assure you. We are investigating the medieval hospital and church on the
top of the mound; Trench N and Trench P are both working on opposite ends of
the same earthworks, so it is fascinating to compare how different features are
presented in each. This week we have uncovered a substantial early stone building,
which once contained a floor of glazed white and black tiles, as well as a
brick building and several areas of collapsed wall, two walls with areas of
repair, and at least three areas where the stones from walls have been robbed
out. This is the largest trench I have supervised, and I’m really enjoying the
challenge of identifying all the different periods of activity in this area. Thank you to all of our students and volunteers who have helped us get this far; hopefully
our old hands and new arrivals over the next two weeks will aid us in finding some answers to all the questions we have. Watch
this space for our next update tomorrow night!
