This week I have been back in South Yorkshire on more of an urban type of site: both rural and urban sites have their advantages and disadvantages so a balance of working between both is good. On Tuesday I graduated from the University of Sheffield, which was slightly unusual hop from commercial archaeology to the ceremony and academia and then back again in a few days. The site is just under a hectare in size and I spent a few days digging slots through a potential boundary ditch for a small settlement and across some outlying field boundaries. Working so closely with such experienced archaeologists has really developed my eye for often indistinct features on site. The site consisted mainly of Iron Age ditches although the archaeological features were obscured in places by modern and geological features which gave us something to think about. I really enjoyed the balance of digging and thinking about the site and its formation and the relationship between the features, both archaeological and geological or modern. Site taphonomy is something we are taught about at university but there really isn’t any substitute to working it out on site. In this respect being an intern has really helped as everyone has been enthusiastic to help me learn as I work in the field. I can’t believe that I’ve completed two of my three months of my internship already!
By Hannah Holbrook