As we were packing up and leaving site last night, a large summer storm rolled over Down Farm and as we drove away the rain started to pour down. The deluge washed away a lot of chalk particles that had unavoidably settled onto the site after cleaning, and on our arrival at work this morning new features had emerged from the dust. These included several postholes and many small circular features, which appear to be stake holes. As Martin said yesterday, this is one of the most fruitful and archaeologically “busy” training excavations to date!
The morning was spent in the same way as last Tuesday, with John Winterbottom leading a seminar on prehistoric pottery and our team being shown how to make their own simple pots. The results were good and the pots have been left to dry out ready for firing on Friday. Last week we managed a successful firing, with 11 out of 13 pots surviving the bonfire kilns, and we hope to improve upon that this week.
After a short break we returned to site to inspect our newest features and continue the excavation of postholes begun yesterday. By the end of the day, two of our postholes were fully recorded and several others were nearing completion. This is very good progress and we hope to be able to keep up a similar pace in order to investigate all the features on site! Again we have postholes displaying original flint packing, as well as some that are nearing 60cm deep. This was clearly then a very important site in the Late Bronze/Early Iron Age landscape and our continuing work here will, we hope, reveal more information about the people who lived here.
