Bincester 2013: Day Fifteen

And so the first stage of Binchester 2013 draws to a close. Today was the last day for our Durham undergraduates participation in the excavation. We've had an excellent three weeks on site and made really great progress- certainly exceeding our expectations. In Trench 1, the focus really was on tidying up and finishing off recording- Fabian did a cracking plan of the latrine. We got the pit photographed and Stuart and Mark were doing sterling work planning the new barrack area. Still some nice finds, with Charlotte finding her second silver coin of the week. In Trench 2, the boys were recording the small room and its splendid floor, whilst Rhian and Jenni made good progress on the inside of the post-pad building. There was also planning and recording underway in the large room. In addition to the excavation we had some additional work underway today. Ashley our HLF/IFA Geophysics trainee completed the outstanding areas of geophysics in the north field (thanks to Mr Sedgewick, the farmer, for letting us in). We also had a visit from Professor David Sanderson and Tim Kinnaird from the Scottish Universities Environmental Research Council, who demonstrated some new kit for doing portable luminescence analysis, using some of the material from the section in the small room as a practice example. This gave our BSc a students a chance to see this work done in the field. Our professor, Ian Bailiff, came out to see the kit in action, which gave me an opportunity to chat about the possibilities for luminescence dating on some of our hearth features. We had a slightly early finish (well deserved) and had time for a few team photos- a great end to the first three weeks of the project!