An archaeologist once said, ‘it rains six months of the year in this country and the best way of dealing with it on site, is to carry on regardless’. Unfortunately it was training dig director Chris Ellis.
We began the day in Martin Green’s Down Farm Museum viewing some of the amazing finds from his excavations across the Cranborne Chase landscape. Sheltering in the museum and listening to the water drumming on the roof we realised that the dire forecast for today’s weather was entirely accurate. Undeterred, our team enjoyed a tour of the archaeological features on the farm before proceeding onto the site.
Despite the constant deluge, which has been described as ‘verging on last Friday’s levels of atmospheric humidity’, the team continued to record and excavate features and managed to remain in good spirits.
Thankfully Matt Leivers, Wessex Archaeology’s prehistoric finds specialist joined us during lunch ready to deliver this week’s worked flint workshop - in our warm, dry tea-room!).
At the moment we are all hoping that the rain will stop and allow us to return to site this afternoon. If it continues at this level we run the risk of damaging the archaeology because the rainwater has softened the chalk geology making it vulnerable even to footprints.