A medium size piece of samian was found along side the timber and intriguingly some wood that looks like a sort of roman ply wood i.e. made from laminates of wood grains at 90° to each other.
An expert will be looking at this and it is being speculated that this is showing us the floor construction of an early, possible first phase flooring with strong construction, crossply surface over timber floor members, but I must stress this is a first stab interpretation but I have to admit I am very excited by this find as it will give us a lot more information than we really could have wished for. Loads of photos taken.
Right I’m going for a lie down 
The timber
The timber
Kat
Cleaning up the timber with a small leaf trowel
Kat
Further cleaning
Timber
shot with scale
Timber
Larger shot with scale
Keeping it damp
Whilst the profile of the Roman god of the wood, Faunus, appears from the right side of the trench!!!
Thursday.
Sample taken for dendrochronology
X-section.
Going into macro mode
Bark is visible.
Rings and bark can be seen
X-section macro.
The rings and the medullary rays can be clearly seen
Ref.
4 reference points recorded so that a photo can be slotted into a plan of the site.
Official EH update for – Week 5 Day 2
Life gets even more interesting. Having got to the point where we are getting are thinking about how much we can hope to do before we finish digging – effectively on Sunday 18th July as the final week will largely be recording and backfilling we can perhaps see light at the end of the tunnel. In Trench 6 we have had to reduce the area of Room 1 that we are digging for safety, but in what was going to be the final piece of excavation in the room we have come across an in situ piece of wood. It is apparently part of a wooden beam set parallel with the south wall of the room and seems to be fairly well-preserved. The heated part of the bath house (Room 2) is being taken down and we have again found what might a later floor inserted into it after the heating system went out of use. We thought that Room 4 was part of the cold range of the bath house, but the presence of a possible in situ hypocaust tile and a box flue tile from near the wall may indicate that it was in fact a hot or warm room! In Room 6 we have excavated our late post hole and it has gone down nearly a metre. In Trench 7 we have completed the section and until next week will be doing no more in the trench until next week.
Designed by Corinne Mills 2005
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