It was a beautiful sunny day at Down Farm today – typical then that Thursday is the day the students spend the morning in the site hut learning about finds processing! Talla Hopper from Wessex Archaeology came out to train all the students in finds identification, processing and marking. We have found so many artefacts from the site in the last week that the students were kept busy washing and marking flint, bone and pottery until lunchtime. Alex and Sophie had already learnt about finds processing in their first week and so they carried on recording their features on site. One of the students from the excavation two years ago (Margaret) came to visit the site with her friend (also Margaret) to see work had progressed since then. They both came bearing the most delicious cakes - carrot and orange and chocolate and banana - which considerably improved morale!
The sun continued to shine in the afternoon and the students came back on site to carry on excavating and recording their various post-holes, pits and quarry hollows. Fortunately we were not visited by Hurricane Graham as this would probably have made conditions on this rather exposed site rather difficult!
Tomorrow is the last training day for 2006 and all of the students involved have achieved so much. Over the last three weeks they have excavated and recorded a total of 65 post-holes, 13 quarry hollows, seven pits, three tree-throws and two interventions through the enclosure ditch – quite a feat!!