The last day of this week and time for an appraisal of our small area.
Finds from our area this week:- Bags of red painted plaster, plaster with impressed sea-shell, broken roof tile – tegula and imbrex, broken box flue tile some with plaster adhering to combed surfaces, Cu alloy pin attached to organic material, Cu alloy and Fe – possible decorative nail bosses, various Fe blades , fine silver (?) metalwork , substantial fine plain samian sherds, more pieces of decorated imitation samian bowl with hippocamp and acanthus figuring, “run-off” sprue from lead casting, various pieces of glass – both flat and shaped one a lovely aqua colour, huge great chunks of Dorset black burnished ware (we were averaging 1 ½ trays full of tile/pot a day), over 125 nails from the room and our 2 star finds – the beautiful glass base of an unguentarium and a lovely large green glass bead. I have a picture of the ungentarium but unfortunately not the bead. With glass you have to be quick to bag it up because it tends to deteriate and laminate. Unfortunately I wasn’t quick enough with the bead to get a photo but I hope to get lots of post-excavation photos.
I hope I’ve remembered everything, if not Kat and Neil will give me a good kicking on Wednesday.
Wednesday there will be a slight change of strategy in “room one”. Because of a suspected feature elsewhere (about which I can say little more) It has been decided that we stop digging out the “find mine” and take a vertical strip down the soil adhering to the walls just to see what we have and how far it goes. Decisions based on the result of that investigation will determine what we do then.
Other things to mention about the trench as a whole is that there is one area which is being interpretated as a praefurnium (furnace room) from the extent of burning and proximity of the hypocaust fabric. But there is also another area with similar features adjacent and is either a second praefurnium, servicing the bathhouse at the same time, or one of a different period showing a change of use of one or more of the rooms. So we are acheiving the aim of the excavation and answering questions about the building. More from Wednesday 