Groundwell Ridge Dig Diary by Chris Walker

Saturday 17th July – Week 6 Day 4 [Day 29] Last week of digging

National Archaeology Day 1. Thankfully the weather was a bit kinder today and there seemed to be a constant stream of people wanting to see the site.
The mock excavation was open for younger punters to “have a go” and, as the “deep room” – that we are recording today – is near the observation platform, I must have heard the words “In 1996, whilst putting in roads for a new housing estate……..” 10 or more times from poor old Pete as he started another site tour off. If it were me, and thank God it wasn’t, I would have been tempted to vary the repertoire somewhat and slipped in:-

“This site is an early example of one of the Zogon fleet’s intergalactic refuelling stations, one of the best preserved we have from the period….”

You see, that is why I get on better with children.
I don’t mind explaining to a 7 year old that ”No, we are not actually building here, but digging up something built a long time ago by the Romans”, rather than answer the question from somebody who has had the benefit of a full state education and really should know better :-
“How do you know that this isn’t a hoax placed here by the developers because they ran out of money, my friends girlfriends cousin worked on this site and that’s what he said”

Well there were a couple of things I found difficult to believe: First, that he had a friend: Second, that if he did have a friend, this friend had a girlfriend. Thirdly if the friend did have a girlfriend – why wasn’t she going out with her cousin?

Anyway I brought home a little light reading tonight EH – Centre for Archaeology’s Recording Manual special attention to module 3 “Recording Deposits and Cuts” and within that, getting to grips with controlled vocabulary a bit different from the MoLAS recording stuff.