Binchester 2013: Days 11-12

We've had other action in the trench. The two rooms in the main building continue to be the focus of extensive clearance, although we still haven't bottomed out the smaller room. We've now reached the point where hard hats are in order. We've also now got a nice clear entrance between the two rooms, neatly marked out by a large jamb stone forming part of a doorway. In the side of the corridor beyond the dividing wall, we've started to remove material, inevitably coming down quickly onto another stone surface. Inside our multiphase post-pad building we're still worrying away at the interior. Today, this resulted in the discovery of a nice hand/arm shaped bone object- probably a knife handle. In Trench 1, the focus has been on the latrine- I think we can confidently call it that now! The cobbled surface north of the barrack, clearly runs down to the entrance threshold of this structure, showing that at the very least, they were in simultaneous use, even if not constructed at the same time. The large stone block that had been sitting on the flagstones adjacent to the stone trough turned out to be...another stone trough (but upside down). We've also removed a stone that showed some working- this is almost certainly half of a key-hole shaped toilet seat! Kim has now been able to locate the probable drainage gulley that underlay the stone floor and seems to connect to a stretch of external gully. Next to this, we have Hilly's pit, which continues to go down....