Roman Binchester

Binchester Research Project: Latest Update!!

2011-09-09T02:27:00.000-07:00

Welcome to all those who have found their way to the Binchester blog following our appearance on Digging for Britain. I want to take this chance to bring all our new visitors up-to-date about progress on site. When Alice and the Digging for Britain crew came to visit us, we were only three weeks into a ten week excavation season. Not surprisingly much has happened since they did the filming.

We have two trenches at Binchester. Trench 1 is situated within the fort itself. We continued to find increasing evidence for our possible late Roman tannery, including at least one small well which may have provided water for the process. Several more processing pits were uncovered, all containing lots of cattle bones. Our bone experts have had a quick look at the material and confirm our impression that the assemblage is dominated by skull fragments and feet bones. On the basis of the teeth surviving in cattle jaws it appears that they were mainly being slaughtered at the age of 3 or 4.

Elsewhere in Trench 1 we continued with excavating our main barrack building. This is almost certainly 4th century in date, but shows evidence for continued re-use and re-working well into the late 4th century and possibly later. Although appearing to be one long structure, close analysis makes it clear that it was actually constructed in several individual builds. None of the processing pits which surround the building cut the walls, indicating that it was still standing when this part of the site was given over to industrial activity.

Along the eastern edge of Trench 1 we made great progress with the investigation of the ramparts, we identified a stone lined drain that ran along the interior of the rampart and may have marked the edge of a road that ran round the inside of the fort. We’ve also excavated a rather nice example of a Roman bread oven. Finally, in the south-east corner of the trench we continued work on a small building, which we are now certain is medieval (12-14th century AD) in date. This appears to have been associated with another small circular oven, possibly used for drying grain before grinding it into flour.

Our second trench (the imaginatively named Trench 2) is located to the east of the main fort and fronts onto Dere Street, the Roman road that ran from Hadrian’s Wall down to York. In this area we have excavated two so-called ‘strip buildings’ these are long narrow buildings that were probably used for some kind of craft or light industrial activity. It is from the better preserved one of these that we located good evidence for the production of jet objects, including lumps of raw jet (probably from Whitby). These buildings had their narrow ends facing onto Dere Street and we’ve started to get a good understanding of the street frontage itself, including a substantial roadside drain and a number of socket stones which may have supported awnings or a veranda. At the eastern end of our trench we made great progress excavating a larger stone building. This had more substantial stone walls and in places traces of wall plaster still remaining on the interior walls. This structure also had evidence for at least two splayed openings in the walls, possibly doors or windows. We are hypothesising that this building may be part of a bath-house. Excavations in the early 20th century just to the north of our trench revealed a circular bath-house and the proximity of our structure suggests it may be part of the same complex. One of the most exciting finds we made in Trench 2 this year was a fragment of a stone inscription which appears to record the dedication of a small shrine (sacellum) by one of the cavalry officers at the fort. It is quite possible that the shrine referred to may have been within the bath-house. We also discovered a small stone altar nearby.

However, as in Trench 1, Trench 2 contained a whole series of substantial stone-lined processing pits associated with substantial quantities of cattle bone, which we again believe is evidence for large-scale tanning at the site. Two of the largest pits cut through the floors of the ‘bath-house’ but do not cut through the walls, suggesting that at the very least the walls were still standing to some extent.

Despite the discovery of the inscription, the altar and a number of other exciting finds including are amounts of pottery, glass and bone, for me the most exciting story this year has been our appreciation of the extent and scale of the probably tanning on the site. I want to make clear, we don’t have absolute evidence that tanning was the process being carried out here, but at this stage, it does seem the best explanation for the large number of pits and gullies and the distinctive nature of the bone assemblage. Since the programme, one of the key areas where we’ve developed our understanding has been in terms of the precise dating of this industrial scale activity. It seems from the initial survey of the ceramics that large-scale pottery use in our excavation areas had declined by approximately AD380, although we know from our coins that there was continued economic activity of some kind until the very late 4th century. We’ve had two initial radiocarbon dates from plant macrofossils preserved in the processing pits, one from within the fort and one from the vicus. The result from the fort has the possibility of being sub-Roman (50% probability of being after AD 400), though the date from the civilian settlement has much less chance (4.2% after AD 400). This may suggest that the tanning fits into the very final years of Roman activity rather than further into the 5th century. However, it is important to emphasise that we have only had a very small number of dates so far, and we are planning a more substantial programme of dating next year.

Overall we can hypothesise that we have a very large tanning industry of very late Roman date. I know of no similar parallels from elsewhere in Britain or indeed the western Roman Empire. On the programme we suggested that this tanning might be situated in the context of a sub/post-Roman power centre at the fort. Given our more refined dating evidence, I feel that we might instead be looking at large-scale Roman military processing , possibly a military factory of some kind. The army would have had a great demands for leather (for shoes, horse-harnesses and tents) and it might be that Binchester became a supply depot. Of course, we still have much more to do on site and our understanding of the situation will undoubtedly become more subtle and developed.

So what are the plans for the future? We have two more excavation seasons on site (2012; 2013). We aim to continue to explore our two trenches and crack on into the Roman stratigraphy. We’ve also plans for a couple of smaller evaluation trenches on areas of interest flagged up by our extensive programme of geophysics around the site. There is also a programme of scientific work, including lots of soil geochemistry being carried out by students from Northumbria University and hopefully a pilot project to assess the potential of bone chemistry on the animal bones to see if it can help define where the animals are coming from.

For more information about the project keep on checking our blog or visit our website to read our annual interim reports and explore a range of other related literature about the project. As always, if you have any queries or questions please don’t hesitate to drop me a line.

And finally, for an alternative view of Binchester have a look at this!

Digging for Britain: Binchester on TV

2011-09-03T07:43:00.000-07:00

Earlier this year we were filmed for the BBC2 Archaeology series Digging for Britain. The episode which we are in is being shown this Friday (9th September) on BBC2 at 9pm with a repeat on Sunday (11th September) on BCC2 at 6pm. It will probably also be on I-Player for a while. Let us know what you think!

Vinovia. The Buried Roman City of Binchester in Northern England

2011-08-10T15:05:00.000-07:00

I want to highlight a new publication about Binchester: Vinovia. The Buried Roman City of Binchester in Northern England
. It is written by Iain Ferris, one of the archaeologists who led the major excavations on the commander's house in the centre of the fort at Binchester (the results of which were published recently). Iain is an archaeologist and art historian with over thirty years of experience working in professional archaeology in Britain and abroad and in teaching archaeology at several UK universities. His research interests include Roman art and material culture and Romano-British archaeology and artefacts. He has directed major archaeological research excavations in northern and midland England and has served as a member of the Archaeology Committee of the Society for the Promotion of Roman Studies. He has published widely in academic journals; his first book, Enemies of Rome. Barbarians Through Roman Eyes, was published in 2000 and his second, Hate and War. The Column of Marcus Aurelius, in 2009.

There has been interest in the site of Binchester since the sixteenth century. This book will use the results of this work to present a clear picture of the history of the site and its place in the Roman military north. It is hoped that the book will act as introduction to the site of Vinovia for the informed lay reader interested in Roman Britain in general, as well as for undergraduate students of archaeology. Basic academic notes and a short bibliography are provided, allowing those wishing to pursue in more depth the more complex aspects of the study to do so with relative ease

'Vinovia. The Buried Roman City of Binchester in Northern England' by Iain Ferris. Amberley Publishing June/July 2011. ISBN 978-1-4456-0128-1. 192 pages, 98 illustrations/plates. £16.99.

Available through bookshops or online from, for example, Amazon, Oxbow Books etc or direct from Amberley Publishing. For those local to the site, the book will also hopefully be on sale at the visitor centre on-site at Binchester, in W.H. Smith in Bishop Auckland, and at Waterstones in Durham and Darlington.

BIN11: Day Forty-One/Forty-Two

2011-08-09T13:24:00.000-07:00

We're very much winding down now and trying to sort out the final loose ends before the end of the project on Friday. This is likely to be my last blog entry for this season unless anything exciting occurs in the next day or two.

Working in Trench 1 only, we are doing large amounts of planning so we can get all the surfaces worked on last week fully recorded. We've now finished the bread oven which has revealed a lovely cobbled floor (see picture). Elsewhere, there is still a little work going on in and around the northern end of the building (including the identification of yet another possible pit- although this one is an internal one). We've also had one of the students from Northumbria University doing some further geochemical sampling in the buildings on site.

It has been a really good seaon- thanks to all those involved. I'll try and do a full acknowledgement to everyone who has helped in the next few days. I'll also try and summarise what I think we've learned over the last ten weeks. Also, don't forget, keep an eye out for us on the BBC2 series 'Digging for Britain' which should be broadcast at some point in August.

BIN11: Day Forty

2011-08-05T14:57:00.000-07:00

Despite the fact we've only got one week to go, we're still beavering away. Although there is an increasing level of recording going on, we're still making progress with excavation. We've now got another stretch of roadside gully, which can be now seen to run the entire length of the trench, except where it is covered over by the medieval building. At the north end it appears to be curving slightly, either to avoid the bread oven or to begin to turn the corner to run along the north-eastern rampart. It is also possible to recognise a series of stone 'spines' perpendicular to the main gully- what are these for? Today we started cleaning up one of the last remaining areas of the trench that has been relatively under investigated, the edge of the north-eastern rampart. We have found at least one pit cut into the clay make-up of the bank, it will be interesting to see if the roadside gully emerges on this side too.

Elsewhere, there was more work inside the barrack, cleaning and defining floors. The new stretch of wall (the extension of the northern gable end) is becoming clearer; interestingly, a possible doorway in this gable end has now disappeare as we've been able to more clearly define the course of the end wall.

BIN11: Day Thirty-Nine

2011-08-04T14:43:00.000-07:00

A quiet day with lots of rain, nonetheless work kept on going for much of the day. More work on the ovens- Suresh has made a lovely job on the small oven near the medieval building which has a nice floor constructed from stone slabs. The larger oven has now been fully opened up and the quest is now on to bottom it, with a layer of cobbles appearing through the clay. Nearby, we've started giving the corner tower a bit of a tidy up as part of the process of getting to better understand the rampart and related features. There has also been great progress in getting to grips with the gully/cobbles close to the big pit. Work inside the main building is going well- the large stone trough/item has been more fully excavated. It has a gap at one end with some stones arranged leading to it; it has all the appearances of a stone drain or soakaway, presumably the trough has been re-used from another context. Finally, on the western side of the main building, guess what? Looks like we've got another stone-lined pit!

BIN11: Day Thirty-Eight

2011-08-03T12:41:00.000-07:00

Trench Two is nearly wound down and it was Jamie's last day on site (this season), so he was frantically recording. Still a small amount of excavation going on though, including further stones being revealed in the huge pit in the 'bath building'.

Most activity is now focused in Trench 1. Another section of rampart has been examined and pleasingly yet more of the roadside gully has appeared - and as Jamie noted in yesterday's blog, some of the cobbled surface has now appeared running beneath the medieval building (just short of where our sondage stopped last year). There was a group working away on the cobbled area near the gully/big pit. They are bringing to light a very nice surface made up of the distinctive small stones which seems to be a feature of many Roman surfaces on this site. Lots more work on the interior of the northern compartment of the barrack - floor surfaces coming up, and Marie has uncovered what appears to be a substantial stone trough. We haven't removed it yet, but it reminds me of the large stone bowl we found in the nearby big pit last year.

Finally, and perhaps most excitingly, Rosie and Jonathan have uncovered a stretch of walling to the immediate west of the northern end of the barrack, which appears to be a westward extension of the gable end. We've previously flagged up that the current structure we've uncovered is rather narrow for a barrack, which are more typically have two parallel ranges of rooms. Have we just found evidence for a second range of rooms? It is possible that the two ranges had different histories in the very late Roman period, with only our main 'block' surviving into the later 4th century. Of course, this might be just a massive over interpretation of just a small stretch of wall...

Today's photos are a collection of some our recent finds, including another image of our intaglio ring, a glass jug handle of 2nd/3rd century AD date.

BIN11: Day Thirty-Seven

2011-08-02T14:02:00.000-07:00

Another fairly quiet day on site. Our numbers are reduced although we have a group from a summer scheme run by the Oriental Museum with us for two days. We also had visits from two members of our advisory group: Iain Ferris and David Breeze, who both seemed very pleased by what they saw.

In Trench 2 we are very much focused on final recording and finishing off outstanding bits and bobs, although we are still furtling around in a few nooks and crannies to try and get a clearer understanding of what is going on between the eastern strip building and the 'bath house'.

In Trench 1, we're still tackling the larger pits. We've also made more progress on the more northerly of the two ovens, and are starting to take out the other half of the section. Still time to get lots more done in the next ten days though!

BIN11: Day Thirty-Six

2011-08-01T13:37:00.000-07:00

From Jamie

"The departure of the Americans means that excavation of the trenches is now down to the volunteers. Trench 2 saw the return of people from earlier in the season, joined by one new face and several others who have been with us for a while, while trench 1 was mainly staffed by new starters. A mixture of recording and digging took place in trench 2 (I even managed to fit in a little planning...). The main areas of work were the culvert within the western strip building, and in the northeast corner of the trench where we continued work started at the end of last week. More of the culvert was exposed, after recording was completed, and we started exposing more stones between the possible bath-house and a stone spread to the west which has previously been rather featureless. In trench 1 the main focus was on further excavation, with cobble-cleaning continuing. The main achievement was establishing the presence of cobbles on the south side of the presumed medieval building, proving that they extend beneath the building.
"

BIN11: Day Thirty-five

2011-08-01T02:52:00.000-07:00

Apologies for the lateness of this entry- we had our big party on Friday night to say farewell to the US team, so its taken a little while to recover and find time to download the photos and get 20 minutes to sit down in front of a computer.

Anyhow, not a huge amount to report from Friday- obviously, we were focussing on finishing of the as much recording as we could before the change in the team. I'd pick out a couple of key things. First, is the better understanding we are getting of the main barrack building in Trench 1. We are getting a much clearer sense of the complexity of the structure; it seems to have at least three separate sections. The northern part of the building has well worked facing stones in three and possibly four of its walls. The southern gable wall was immediately to the north of the large internal pit, which appears to have caused it to subside. The northern gable wall is not so obviously well constructed, but work on a pit adjacent to it, suggests that better quality walling may survive deeper down. This northern compartment also clearly has a complex later history. For example, there is a dividing wall cutting across the building which overlies an earlier flagstone floor and thus has no subsurface foundations. I've already touched on the flimsy nature of the northern gable end, which may suggest that the earlier wall was rebuilt. We've also identified a doorway in the eastern side of this part of the building.

To the south of this is a distinctly different build, with the foundation courses at a different level. It appears to be paved with large flagstones running into the pit; there are also one, possibly two doorways adjacent to where the structure meets the more substantial northern element of the building.

The issue of later use of the buildings also extends to Trench 2, where Daniel has been excavating a gully within the western strip building (see picture). This is a substantial stone lined feature and contained some nice finds including Roman glass and a bone counter/gaming piece. However, its extent is uncertain as one end is cut by a robber trench and the other by the 18th century roadside ditch. This means it is not clear whether the gully actually went through the western wall and where else it went; it can't be linked clearly to any other features. Nonetheless, the substantial nature of its construction is impressive.

BIN11: Day Thirty-Four

2011-07-28T14:09:00.000-07:00

As usual there has been lots of action on site, but for me its been 'a day of three ovens'. The first two are in Trench One. They are both circular stone-lined features built into the clay make-up of the rampart. The first one (see above) has been going through the process of cleaning for the last week or so, and finally we are starting to make headway with a section through it. It's clearly been fired extensively, with the stone showing reddening (although not to a very high temperature); it may well be a bread oven. After removing what appears to be the collapsed stone from the top part of the structure, we've revealed a clay surface that has also clearly been heated. It is quite well built and so far several courses survive.

It contrasts with the other oven further down the rampart (see below). This lies between the small medieval structure and the corner of the trench. This does not contain anywhere near as much as reddened stone, although it has clearly been burnt. It is also of a different structure, being built up of larger stones than the first oven, which mainly consists of small, stone slabs. The base is also different, with several large flat slabs forming its bottom. It is possible that it is related to the medieval building which it abuts. It may be a corn-drying oven, although this is sheer speculation at this stage.

The final oven worth mentioning is one that appears in the centre of the second, poorly preserved strip building in Trench 2. This is stone built, and unlike the other two, is rectangular. Today, Morris exposed a nice Roman floor surface within the building. Interestingly, the oven appears to be separated from this floor by a good 4-6 inches of dark soil, suggesting it post-dates the stone floor. There was a possible later floor surface, but this was much more inconsistent and patchy, largely comprising rubble patches and clay areas. Whatever the precise sequence, it does appear that this oven is one of the later features within the building.

BIN11: Day Thirty-Three

2011-07-27T15:06:00.000-07:00

First of all, more on the C14 dates. I asked Andrew Millard, our radiocarbon guru, to have a look at our dates. He has recalibrated them using Oxcal and come up with the results in the figures. According to Andrew, the first clearly has the possibility of being sub-Roman (50% probability of being after AD 400), though the second has much less chance (4.2% after AD 400). This works well with our current understanding of the site and there is clearly much to be gained from further dating work.

On site, we've continued to make good progress. In Trench 1, the oven in the rampart is starting to look really nice, and we've just started looking at the other possible oven feature which is crammed between the small medieval building and the edge of the trench. It looks like we may have finally bottomed the big pit (although it won't be the first time we've thought this). In the main building, having done some planning and photography, we're able to crack on with exploring the floors in the northern compartment. Jonathan's work on his internal pit is also showing that like some of the external pits it was placed immediately adjacent a wall which then shows signs of subsequent collapese (see picture below).

In one of the pits to the west of the building, we've had some great finds. Not content with having removed a number of large iron objects, possibly tools, Rosie went on to find what appears to be an iron ring with an intaglio setting (see picture below). This should hopefully scrub up quite nicely.

In Trench 2, the flagstones down the side of the strip building are looking good, although some were clearly removed in the same phase of robbing that removed some of the wall. Otherwise over here its mainly been recording work, although in the far eastern end of the building AR and Patrick have been quietly working away on the wall which sits immediately in our trench edge and are exposing some lovely stretched of walling which appear to be going down a long way!

BIN11: Day Thirty-Two

2011-07-26T13:42:00.000-07:00

We’ve finally received our long-awaited radiocarbon dates today. Just to remind you, we sent off two samples for dating. One was a charred seed from the large pit in the north-east corner of Trench 1 (Hilly’s pit) and the other was a charred seed from one of the large stone-lined pits cut into the inside of the large structure at the east end of Trench 2. Our key aim was to get an initial impression of the date of these pits and the related hollows and gullies, which seemed to comprise a distinct phase of activity across both sites and were consistently, associated with large quantities of cattle bones (mainly head and feet). We have been assuming that these features dated to either the very end of the Roman period or the period immediately following (ie late 4thcentury into the 5th century). However, although stratigraphically they were clearly later than the main phase of Roman activity, we could not be certain about how late they were, although there was a noticeable lack of medieval pottery from them. As once the Roman pottery industries ended in this region, substantial pottery use did not re-emerge until the post-Norman period, our pits could in theory date between anywhere from c.380 to perhaps 1100
The new dates have now confirmed that this phase is very much a feature of the late 4th to early/mid-5th century AD. To be precise, our dates are as follows

Sample BIN09293 (Trench One) = 1650 +/-40BP = which when calibrated at 2 sigma (95% probability) = Cal AD260-80; Cal AD330-450; Cal AD450-60; Cal AD480-530) (BETA-302143)

Sample BIN095141 (Trench 2) = 1720+/-40BP = which when calibrated at 2 sigma (95% probability) = Cal AD230-420

The first date is a little confusing and has produced when calibrated four distinct possible dates – I’ll need to find out more about the implications of this. We can probably eliminate the earliest possible date on the basis of the stratigraphy and the artefacts (pottery) within the feature. However, at this stage it looks like the features date to the late 4th or early 5th (with a possibility that the Trench 1 activity may date as late as the later 5th or early 6th century AD).
Inevitably, there are some possible limitations we should flag up. The key one is that they dates were taken on plant seeds. These are very small and could conceivably be redeposited from earlier layers, so the features may in fact be later than the current dates suggest. Nonetheless, the dates are broadly what we are anticipating and there are no nasty surprises
The dates are also broadly consistent with some of the dates from the excavations on the Commander’s bath-house. These (after statistical analysis) suggest that the bath-house ceased operation and became a focus for animal butchery in cal.AD370-400 and the butchery ended cal.AD370-410 with the end of the use of the structure in the workshop occurring by cal.AD390-430 (see Ferris 2010, 538). I'll have some more thoughts and comments on the C14 dates tomorrow.

This is not the end of the story though. In the autumn we will try and arrange a more substantial programme of dating. This will probably use the animal bone as it is less likely to be residual. We will also aim to get a sequence of dates from stratigraphically distinct layers within the same features as this will allow us to utilize some complex statistical techniques which will help refine the date ranges down more precisely. All very exciting!

Despite all the fun and games with the C14 dates, we still have work to do on site. In Trench 1, there has been good progress on cleaning and recording the floor surfaces in the main building – all now of course needing proper planning. Inevitably, more work is required on the pits. The large oven in the rampart is now being sectioned and is looking particularly nice. In Trench 2, work along the pit in the far corner is revealing more stretches of unrobed wall, some again with in situ wall plaster. The roadside ditch by the second strip building is also looking good; we’ve been able to get a look at the front of the building where there aren’t large threshold stones. It is possible that we have a lower area of drain, but this will require further exploration. Finally, plenty of work on the western side of the main strip building is proving profitable- we’ve now exposed a large area of flagstones running down the edge of the building (although robbed out in places) – these seems to be some kind of side alley running off the main street.

BIN11: Day Thirty-One

2011-07-25T14:16:00.000-07:00

After a great trip to Lindisfarne and Bamburgh Castle yesterday, it was back to the grindstone this morning. In Trench Two there is plenty of planning going on, which is keeping people busy. The work on the roadside ditch is particularly pleasing and it looks like we might now be able to recognise some earlier phases of road surface in the ditch section. In the big building, there were still people beavering away in the large pits. We've also been poking aroun in the rubble that runs through one of the splayed-window/door openings. In the course of this a rather pleasing areas of tile edging on the inside of the opening (see photo - provided by Jamie Armstrong). In Trench One, the pits get deeper... Hilly found a rather nice piece of Roman belt-fitting(?) in hers. We've also been plugging away at the interior of the small medieval structure.

A couple of interesting visitors - Professor David Mattingly from Leicester University passed through (he gave a lecture in the Department in the afternoon, so a lot of the US team went back early to hear it); we also had a visit from Andrew Birley who leads the fantastic excavations at Vindolanda. We visited Vindolanda a few weeks ago and came away green with envy at the sheer quantity of finds they have recovered (although they have had a 30 year head start on us...). Both David and Andrew seemed interested in what we had to show them, which can only be a good thing!

BIN11: Day Thirty (Part Two)

2011-07-23T04:15:00.000-07:00

As I wasn't on site yesterday, Jamie has kept us updated
"While changeable it stayed dry on Friday, so work continued apace. In trench 2 we continued working along the west side of the westernmost strip building, and uncovering further evidence that the whole side of the building was paved, although a large section is missing (pic). This demonstrates that the robber trench on this section of wall was much broader that we thought, removing masonry, foundation stones and pacing and leaving behind just rubble. Elsewhere recording was the main order of the day, with 5 new victims I mean volunteers learning how to do this this important task. The most interesting find of the day was a jet object, perhaps a pendant, with circles carved on it, which was recovered from the smaller stone-lined pit (pic).

In trench 1 there was also further recording. One of the smaller stone-lined pits which contained a number of relinings may actually have been bottomed - there appears to be underlying deposits beneath the present stone layer (pic). Work within the barrack block is showing the presence of further stone surfaces (pic), and also a potential doorway likely to be an interior door. The deposits within the medieval building appear to have been bottomed, so there is the possibility of exploring the underlying deposits in this area before the end of the season."

BIN11: Day Thirty (Part 1)

2011-07-22T14:03:00.000-07:00

I wasn't on site today, not because I was being idle, but because we had a visit from our Roman pot specialist, Jerry Evans, who came to give our ceramic assemblages an initial perusal and give us his first thoughts. Although much of our pottery from this year's work is still needing processing, we were able to show Jerry much of the material from the two previous seasons and a few select assemblages from the current season.

His key conclusion is that the sequence of pottery from both our trenches extends to around AD380, although there is very little at this stage to suggest that it extends later into the end of the 4th century or to the early 5th century. This is a contrast with the ceramics from previous excavations in the bath house, where the ceramic profile is indicative of a slightly later date. Intriguingly, the evidence from the pottery contrasts with the evidence from the coinage. Our latest coins are are three copper alloy nummi of the House of Theodosius dating to the late 4th century. This may be a real difference or it may simply be due to the fact that Jerry was only able to look at a proportion of our overall assemblage. However one looks at it though one of the key messages we can take from this is that the vicus at Binchester continues in use much later than many of the more northern vici. Our first carbon 14 dates our due back at the end of next week - this should provide some more chronological data to throw into the mix!

BIN11: Day Twenty-Nine

2011-07-21T12:54:00.000-07:00

A far better day today- even saw some blue sky. This meant things were back to normal with a full crew on site. In Trench 1, people were continue to pick away at the interior of the medieval building, although much of the rubble appears to be beneath the gable end. Along the eastern side of the site there was a large group cleaning some of the remaining areas of cobbles. Hilly is still in the big pit, but rather than going deeper she was exploring the relationship between the ditch a possible contemporary gully adjacent to it (and thanks to Hilly's mum for some good cake). Elsewhere there was more planning and recording, with the interior floors in the northern compartment of the barrack looking good; there are at least two phases of surface, with a rough cobble floor overlying a more substantial flagstone floor. In the pits to the west of the barrack, more poking around, which revealed a rather nice, almost complete grey ware pot placed in the edge of the pit immediately adjacent to the barrack wall.

In Trench 2, more work on the street frontage, mainly recording what was uncovered yesterday. The roadside ditch is now looking quite substantial in places. Along the northern edge of the site, to the north of the right-hand side strip building, Dan has beem working on one of the stone-lined pits, revealing yet more limestone on a surface abutting the northern gable end of the structure (or where it would be if it hadn't been robbed out and then knackered by the west-east ditch. In the central open area, there are hints of a new stone wall appearing - will this herald a new building? Difficult to tell at this stage, we shall wait and see. We're still working in the large pits as well- revealing new stone linings in places. SOme nice finds from this trench today, some pleasing ceramics (we lifted a large almost intact grey-ware pot that had been sitting on the surface in the open area) and there was a nice piece of worked bone. It may be a decorative inlay although there are two notches at one end and six at the other (see picture below)- any ideas?

BIN11: Day Twenty-Eight

2011-07-20T12:02:00.000-07:00

A bit of a wet day today. In fact, a very wet day, but despite the rain the team did incredibly well, working through all but the heaviest downpours. Nonetheless, the sheer quantity of water on site did constrain our work programme, as many of the bigger pits were simply too slippy to work in and other areas were very muddy. Nonetheless, some progress was made.

In Trench 2, work moved forward on the roadside ditch, with two stretches being explored. Elsewhere, the weather forced us to concentrate on looking at the road surface, and some more stones were removed. At the far west end of the trench, people quietly worked away, and have revealed what might tentatively be traces of an oven or kiln.

In Trench 1, planning continued. Most significant was continued picking away at the stones around the eastern end of the small medieval building. This confirmed that the dump of cobbles ran under the probably eastern gable wall and are thus earlier- but how early?

BIN11: Day Twenty-Seven

2011-07-19T14:22:00.000-07:00

Another active day on site. Starting in Trench 1, we seem to have bottomed out the possible well, or at least finished removing the rubble fill. It is possible that it may continue going down, but we'll need to ensure we've got the sides properly explored and have a think about the practical health and safety issues too. Lots of work going inside the main barrack building, particularly in the northern compartment, where we are starting to get a better understanding of a series of partly preserved floor surfaces. Along the western side of the building the pits continue to get bigger and deeper; the large pit towards the south end of the building appears to contain a stretch of gully or wall foundation, not clear whether it just sits in the base of the pit or is something the pit cut comes down on to.

In Trench 2, we've made great progress on the roadside ditch/gully, which is coming up very nicely in several locations, although it is less clear towards the west end of the site. In the large building we've started revealing some courses of masonry in the section. The trench edge comes down right on top of a stretch of wall. It's upper sections appear to have had their facing stones robbed out, but we've now reached lower, where the original facing stones survive in situ. More clearing in and around the small extension, revealing wall plaster seemingly surviving on all interior walls. In the middle, less well preserved strip building we seem to have identified its northern gable end. I'd been assuming the building was the same length as its western neighbour. However. it is metre or so shorter; we've just picked up a stump of return wall and the remains of a robber trench which has removed the rest of the wall. This robber trench was itself mostly cut away by the west-east 18th century ditch. The clarification of the building dimensions is interesting. This area has always been the one place where it seemed that the post-Roman stone-lined pits and related surfaces actually cut the Roman wall lines. However, now we're more certain where the wall actually was, it is now clear that the pit and surface were actually outside the structure, and probably just butted up against the exterior north-end of the strip building.

BIN11: Day Twenty-Six

2011-07-18T12:59:00.000-07:00

I wasn't on site today, so the latest despatch from the trenches is courtesy of Jamie "The Hat" Armstrong - the Trench Two Terror!

"Despite gloomy predictions the rain held off, aside from some minor showers. This allowed us yet another full day of work. It was the first day on site for a new contingent of Texas Tech students, as well as a new batch of volunteers comprising a mix of hold hands and new faces. The heavy rain over the weekendu, while not good for the archaeology event at Binchester, was great for freshening the trenches up again, allowing colours to be distinguished more clearly once more.

There were a variety of tasks in trench 2, including the almost obligatory cleaning of the road for the new starters. More work on the robber trenches was carried out, allowing a much clearer outline of the second strip-building: it appears that we have located all four walls for this building. We have also been working on defining what we are confident is the roadside drain along the edge of the street frontage (see pic), and will begin exploring this in the morning. Further work in the stone-lined pits has found what could be another phase of lining in the smaller pit. A large lead O was found in the larger pit by Steve (see pic).

I only got a chance to zoom round trench 1 right at the end of the day, so can say much less about that: excavation of the well continued with the removal of more rubble infill, although by the time I saw it it had been covered and fenced off. The intravallum drain is now very clear. Yet more work was undertaken on the pits, as well as within the barracks block to explore the interior. Initial cleaning of the oven was carried out (see pic) presumably to continue from where it was left off last year. Finally the area of the barracks block that has been found to have a slumping wall has been excavated to a level where a possible drain can be seen (see pic)."

BIN11: Day Twenty-Five

2011-07-15T12:04:00.000-07:00

Today was the last day at Binchester for some of our student, with some of the Texas Tech contingent returning home tomorrow (although they are due to be replaced by some of their compatriots for the next two weeks). Luckliy today saw great progress on site. For one, the best action was in Trench 1. Most excitingly, one of our mysterious features cut into the clay rampart is really looking like its shaping up to be our first well (or at very least a very deep pit). It has dead straight sides and is currently around 1.5m deep with no sign of bottoming out. Its fill of loosely thrown in rubble suggests that it has been deliberately backfilled at some point- this may prove an interesting technical challenge! Nearby, the gulley/gutter which may be connected to the intravallum road is shaping up nicely, and we have now found a number of other lines of stones running off the gully at about 90 degrees.

In Trench 2, much more planning, much more hunting for robber trenches. However, most importantly, we've finally removed the inscription (see picture below). We've sent photos off to various experts and are awaiting their thoughts with interest. If you'd like to see the actual inscription, why not head over to the Binchester Roman fort Open Day being held this weekend.

In other news, we had another school group through today. They were from The Oaks in Spennymoor. They had come over last week, but couldn't see much due to the rain. This week, we were able to give them a site tour and then they helped us with the massive job of getting all our brick and tile washed. THey all seemed to enjoy their visit and will hopefully come back next year.

BIN11: Day Twenty-Four

2011-07-14T12:44:00.000-07:00

A really succesful day today. We've been moving with great speed, particularly in Trench One. Here, the ramparts are coming up really nicely and the roadside gully(?) is extending quite some distance now and is looking quite impressive. Elsewhere, to the west of the building the team has been hacking away in a very large pit, which has seemingly caused subsidence to the building. They've now exposed the foundation stones suggesting they have reached the bottom of the wall if not the pit; they also revealed a rather interesting line of stones (wall?) running parallel to the barrack - how far does this extend?

Inside the barrack, in its northern section, we've started picking away at the interior floor surfaces. We've found the beginnings of new flagstone surface, although have not finished defining it's extent. Otherwise, the main work in this trench has been pits (pits..pits..) and planning the small medieval structure.

In Trench 2, we're starting to really get to grips with defining the robber trenches along some of the wall lines in the strip buildings. We've also detected some nice surfaces, possibly paths or interior floors. The big pits continue to reveal multiple stone linings to no-ones surprise. Elsewhere, it's mostly planning, although there is some removal of stones in the interior of the small extension to the larger building revealing some more in situ wall plaster.

Off site, we finished the coring - not great results, only getting down about 2m, but nonetheless, there is still potential for better understanding the environmental history of the environs of the fort.

BIN11: Day Twenty-three

2011-07-13T13:13:00.000-07:00

Today begun with some of us carrying the coring equipment down to the place that shall henceforth be known as the 'big marshy bit'. After some initial concern that the place was too big and too marshy, we found some more solid ground and Carrie and Charlotte and their merry band of helpers were able to do some useful exploration. Although initial soundings suggested that there was little suitable peat, and the last minute a couple of more substantial deposits were identified and will be properly cored tomorrow.

On site there was great progress in both trenches. In Trench 1, almost the entire interior of the medieval building has been removed, although there is no trace of a convincing floor surface. Some rubble remains on the eastern end and there are hints that the actual eastern gable wall of the structure survives beneath this, and that the row of stone on the embankment we'd always assumed as the end wall is nothing to do with it. Along the ramparts, the roadside gullies are becoming increasingly clear and we've made great progress on two substantial pits cut into the rampart. Otherwise, its been business as usual on the other pits, although Hilly found a nice ring from the big pit.

In Trench 2, we've returned to our big pits and have exposed more stone linings- intriguingly we appear to have also identified a possible gully running between the two largest pits and cutting through the wall of the Roman structure within which they lie. Gary also found a nice piece of carved architectural stone in the eastern-most pit. Some nice finds, including a lovely piece of painted Crambeck ware from Sue and a nice seal box found by Jake. We've also seen the return of the planning frame with lots of planning being carried out. We've also fully exposed the inscription! It didn't go too far into the section- picture tomorrow!

BIN11: Day Twenty-Two

2011-07-12T14:51:00.000-07:00

Just a quick one entry today. In Trench One, we've more or less removed all the stone from the interior of the medieval building, it looks like we may be reaching some kind of floor surface. Nearby, the stones that we thought might represent a revetment to the rampart are now looking more like a gully running along the intra-vallum road. Elsewhere, we continue to work on the pits- our revisitation of the pit inside the main building has paid dividends; it's revealed itself as being deeper than we thought and today Jonathan found two copper alloy rings in deposits near the top. In Trench 2, more work trying to find the edges of the robber trenches, particular in the eastern strip building. We've also been picking away at the surfaces to the south of the large eastern building. In other news, we've got the coring kit on site now. The plan is to carry out some coring for possible peat deposits in an low-lying area to the north of the site- possibly a side-valley of the Bell Burn that runs along the northern edge of the gravel plateau on which the fort and vicus stand.

BIN11: Day Twenty-One

2011-07-11T12:46:00.000-07:00

Despite a busy weekend which involved the joys of the Durham Miner's Gala on Saturday and a visit to Hadrian's Wall (Steel Rigg; Housesteads; Vindolanda) on Sunday, everyone was raring to go this morning. Unusually our find of the day came very early on when Ashley found a small stone household altar in an area of rubble in Trench 2. This may have an inscription on, but it is very eroded and will need closer examination to decrypt it. Other developments in Trench 2 included the discovery of yet another stone socket stone. These big stone socket stones are clearly designed to support large squared timbers. There are also a number of smaller socket stones (mentioned previously), which appear to have supported smaller wooden stakes. Jamie has mentioned that he's seen similar examples in Carlisle, and I've just come across a reference to other similar stones from the late Roman barracks at Halton Chesters.

In Trench 1, the major progress has been on the rampart, where our merry digging crews have revealed further walling. This appears to suggest that much of the rear wall of the rampart was supported by a stone revetment. Otherwise, in this area it was onwards and downwards with our exciting range of pits and further unpicking of cobbled surfaces in the south of the trench

BIN11: Day Twenty

2011-07-08T13:59:00.000-07:00

A good end to the fourth week at Binchester. Despite the rain, we've continued to make great progress. In Trench 2, the street frontage is really falling into shape. We've now got four proper socket stones, indicating that some kind of wooden portico or veranda appears to have run along in front of most of the street-facing buildings. We've also got a number of stones with smaller indentations, possibly either smaller socket stones or intended to act as hinge-stones. The larger socket stones are very similar to those found by Hooppell at Binchester when he excavated in the vicus.

We're also making progress on defining the robber trenches that appear to have removed substantial elements of the walls of the second strip building. Careful cleaning in the area between the strip buildings and the larger structure has also revealed a dense spread of late Roman pottery (mainly East Yorkshire calcite gritted ware)- the fragments are very large and there are the remains of several different pots.

In Trench 1, more progress on the rampart, more progress on the pits and more progress on the medieval structure - and lots of puddles! The stone-lined pit in the main building is definitely revealing evidence for multiple stone linings. We've also got a nice large fragment of millstone from one of the pits on the western side of the building.

BIN: Day Nineteen

2011-07-07T09:45:00.000-07:00

More sunshine and showers - had to down tools for a while before lunch, but otherwise a good day's work. Over the last two days the biggest progress in Trench 1 has been along the east rampart. We've been able to identify a number of cut features intruding into the clay make-up of the main rampart bank, as well as evidence that at least one of the gullies cut into the bank. We've also started clear around one of the probable ovens inserted into the rampart. Meanwhile there has also been lots of progress around the small, medieval building and the area that lies between it and the main structure. It is possible that the smaller building may actually be abutting a revetted stone area, which may have marked the edge of a marked rise in the topography to the area just south of our trench. Further picking away of the stones inside the building has revealed what appears to be a better candidate for the original south wall of the structure. The stone above it does look like it might be running into the revetted stone area to the south-east. Also in Trench 1, more work on the pits (of all sizes!) and a return to an old favourite, the stone lined pit inside the main building which is integrated with the flagstone floor. As so many of the other pits have had multiple stone linings, we've gone back to see if this one also has several layers of stone within it.

In Trench 2, all is back to normal after the excitement of finding the inscription. We've made great progress in a number of areas. For example, we've got far better definition of the south frontage of the western strip building, including two socket stones, which were presumably intended to support a veranda. There are also two other possible socket stones on the same alignment further east along Dere Street. Elsewhere, we are having a really good poke around to identify the edges of possible robber trenches which appear to have removed a number of stretches of walls from both strip buildings. Further along the egde of the road, there are more large flagstones appearing from beneath patches of rubble. Time for a little planning tomorrow, and hopefully we'll get the inscription out of the ground

Post-script
I normally don't mix my own work with this blog, but for those of you interested in the impact of the current financial and social situation on the protection of archaeology in the UK and other aspects of the historic environment might want to have a look at something I've written on my personal blog. These are my personal thoughts, but may give an insight into the world of archaeology outside the relatively rarefied world of a university research excavation.

BIN11: Day Eighteen

2011-07-06T13:01:00.000-07:00

Its been quite a day on site. We've managed to avoid the worst of the weather (apart from a brief shower in late morning), this has allowed us to steam ahead with work in both trenches. I'll fill you in more on the details of this tomorrow. However, we've also had one of our best discoveries from site so far, a fragment of Roman inscription. Inevitably we found this shortly before the end of the day, so we're still working on it, but it's clearly part of a more extensive text; we'll work on the possible translation as soon as possible. It came from Trench 2 and appears to have been re-used in a later (probably post-Roman) surface. It's a great reminder of the extent to which even here in the north of England, we are dealing with a society which placed great emphasis on literacy. As such it contrasts wonderfully with another find made today, a fragment of terra sigillata with incised graffiti

This comes from the other end of the spectrum as far as literacy is concerned. It is small-scale and ephemeral compared with the monumental nature of the inscription, but a nice indicator of the different ways in which texts might be deployed in Roman Binchester - we can also add to the mix a small iron stylus we found yesterday (our second from the site so far).

BIN11: Day Seventeen

2011-07-05T09:32:00.000-07:00

It's great having lots of people on site, we're really making progress. In Trench 1, the dismantling of the cobble surfaces at the southern end of the barracks continues, as does cleaning and picking away at the interior of the medieval structure. I should have mentioned yesterday that this has resulted in the discovery of a nice copper alloy mount of probable medieval date. We've now got at least three teams of people working on the edge of the rampart now, exposing the clay of the rampart bank and picking up a number of interesting features abutting this feature. On the rest of the Trench, there is some planning going on but its mainly back excavating the pits and hollows, including the 'big pit'!.

In Trench 2, nearly all the balks across the road are out now and work is carrying on apace along the street frontage removing the remaining bits of late rubble. Some planning has been completed, finishing off the odds and sods left over from the Durham students. Finds of the day- nice Roman bracelet- see picture!

BIN11: Day Sixteen

2011-07-04T14:07:00.000-07:00

Well, we're back in action at Binchester. Last week was the calm before the storm, as around 60 people started on site this morning. The new team consists mainly of the US team and members of the Durham and Northumberland Arch & Arch (plus a small band of miscellaneous extras and hangers on!). The sheer number of people has allowed us to really crack on with some of the key, labour intensive jobs that still needed to be done. Starting in Trench 2, we've got a series of small teams removing the remaining baulks across Dere Street; this means we should soon have the exposed the Roman road surface across the length of the trench. This has already also started to reveal new areas of street frontage with large flagstoned areas. We also have a team tackling the final remaining large ridge of rubble that runs roughly parallel to the road in the centre of the site, in the area between the strip buildings and the larger structure. This will give us a chance to start recognising any areas of potential activity in this zone, for example, floor surfaces or evidence for further pits.

In Trench One, we've started to dismantle a lot of the cobbles and surfaces around the southern end of the barrack and the associated with the medieval building. Intriguingly, yet more sections of wall (or at least stone structure) are starting to be exposed, confusingly, not on the same alignment as the fort or the later buildings. Typically, most of these appear to disappear under the edge of our trench. Elsewhere, we've been picking out stones from the interior of the small medieval building. Elsewhere, we are renewing our assault on the ramparts, exposing the clay bank and a small stretch of further walling. We've not gone back into the big pit yet, we're saving that for Hilly when she returns. However, we have been picking around its edges, trying to clean up the surrounding surfaces.

Finally, we've started trying to identify possible samples for radiocarbon dating. Although we hope to have a proper campaign of C14 dating in the autumn, we're keen to get one or two dates now, just to confirm the absolute dates of all our 'tannery' features. In costs a lot to get rapid turnaround on dates, so we can only get two done; which means one from each trench. We are currently hoping to get a date from one of the plum stones in the big pit in Trench One and Carrie is hoping to identify a suitable candidate for a date from the environmental samples from one of the large pits in Trench Two.

NB:the photos for today's entry is from the previous week- my camera download cord is knackered :(

BIN11: Down Week

2011-06-27T15:01:00.000-07:00

Just a reminder that we're not on site this week- back next week from Monday 4th July.

BIN11: Day Fifteen

2011-06-24T13:19:00.000-07:00

Today was the last day of our Durham 1st year undergraduates on site, having spent three weeks here learning the basics of archaeological fieldwork. In this time we've made a really good start and got much more done than we were anticipating. Following two days of tv crew, it was back to the grindstone, finishing off all the drawing and recording which was still left. The highlight in Trench 1 was the identification of an articulated deer leg placed in a pit to the east of the barrack block (see picture). This has straight sides and is clay lined, and has the possibility to turn into a well. Elswhere, the remaining stone-lined working hollows were recorded, although there seems to be others ready to be excavated. In Trench 2, amidst all the recording, we were able to continue working on one of the pits and removed more of the fill of a robber trench along the line of a section of the wall of the eastern strip building.

BIN11: Day Fourteen

2011-06-23T13:37:00.000-07:00

Sunshine and showers today. We were badly down on numbers and the site was not in good condition due to the rain, nonetheless, we still got a good day's work done today. The camera crew were out againand a number of us were interviewed about the project (the picture shows Rob Collins being interviewed by Alice Roberts).

There was a lot more basic planning and recording in both trenches, but there was also some excavation. In Trench 2 work continued on one of the robber trenches, whilst we continued to slowly dismantle one of the stone-lined pits. Meanwhile on Trench 1 the big pit continued to be excavated (when I wasn't standing in it being filmed) and a number of the newer pits to the east and north of the barrack were recorded. We also began an area of excavation on the rampart, trying to assess the point where the cobbles and the ramparts met - not easy in the mud. At the south-end of the trench, we were again dismantling cobbles. We have some interesting stratigraphy going on in this area. We have a large stone-lined pit within the barrack, this appears to be overlain by a very small square structure (too small to be a building) which appears to be contemporary to the cobble spread that includes our almost certainly medieval structure. This acts to emphasise the relatively early medieval nature of the pits.

Tomorrow is the last day on site for most of our Durham students- so a final push on the planning and recording and tying up loose ends. We want everything to look good for a visit from members of staff from the Dept. of Archaeology at Durham.

BIN11: Day Thirteen

2011-06-22T12:23:00.001-07:00

We finally lost our run of good luck with the weather today- after a fair morning the rain descended at lunch time and never let up, so we lost the afternoon's work. It was too wet to even do much planning and recording, but it did give the supevisors a chance to catch up with some paperwork and other admin jobs, while I took the students around the commander's house and bath suite in the main fort. In the period of good weather in the morning we continued our push with recording, although we also got cracking with removing the stone lining from some of our pits. which appear to have multiple layers of stones.

The other main highlight was the arrival of the television crew from 360 Productions who were here to film us for the forthcoming series of Digging for Britain. Today this mainly involved filming site shots from the top of a cherry-picker and close up images of some of our finds. Tomorrow, the presenter Alice Roberts is coming to site to do some more recording - just hope the weather holds!

BIN11: Day Eleven

2011-06-21T13:06:00.000-07:00

I was barely on site today due to lots of boring meetings, so thanks to Jamie for todays update: The rain held off so we got another full days work in. We bottomed the smaller stone-lined pit in Trench 2, which doesn't seem to be a contiguous stone surface but rather has a break across the middle which is quite intriguing - further work tomorrow will establish whether there is a real break or whether the stone lining forms some sort of trough at the base. We also started work on the robber trench on the eastern side of the western strip building, and kept on working on other stuff - nothing major really, just more planning, sections and recording.

The environmental processing has made an interesting discovery in the samples from the big pit in Trench 1 - when processed the sample produces a yellowy scum unlike anything from the other samples; the deposit is also quite greasy in places, which is leading to the idea that this may reflect the presence of animal fats (which could be a further link to tanning). Obviously this needs to be checked with further analysis such as looking at lipid content.

BIN11: Day Eleven

2011-06-20T14:18:00.000-07:00

Another day in which the rain stayed away (although it's sheeting it down as I write this). Things are really crystalising as far as our 'tannery hypothesis' goes- we've been able to a little background research and things seem to converging. So let's look at what we've got. First, we have a series of pits of varying depths lined with stones, often set in clay. The sheer number of pits and their design suggests they were deliberately intended for on-going use, rather than simply to act as refuse or cess pits. Some of these pits appear to be associated with gullies and working surfaces (at least one of which has what appears to be limestone).

Associated with these pits, we've found large numbers of animal bones. These are mainly cattle and are largely head and foot bones. The fills of the pits are largely organic (with good preservation, including plum stones in the big pit in Trench 1).

Tanning is a process which has multiple stages, as the hide is progressively cleaned and preserved for later use. This involves soaking the hides in pits with a variety of substances, which may include lime, cattle brains, urine, oak bark, fruit and dog poo (yes, tanning smelt). The hides themselves usually arrived at the tanners with the foot bone and skull parts still attached. As you can see, at Binchester, we have the correct bone assemblage, a good range of appropriately sized pits and some additives (including lime and soft fruit). This all contributes towards a good working hypothesis. But there are still further things we might find that will support our arguement further. For example, it will be interesting to see if the environmental processing reveals oak bark (or dog coprolites!). Another potential field of enquiry is an exploration of the chemical signature left by the processes in the soil. Rather conveniently we were visited today by Dr Jane Entwistle and one of her students. Jane is from the Dept. of Geography and Environment at Northumbria University and a specialist in soil geochemistry. Her student, Emily Parsons, is going to help us look at the chemical signatures that survive in the pits, as part of her undergraduate dissertation. All that is left is the issue of dating!

BIN11: Day Ten

2011-06-17T14:54:00.000-07:00

Despite gloomy prognostications, todays threatened rain never appeared. This meant that we got another full days work done on site. In Trench 1, we saw the large pit to the west of the barrack expand- it is possible to clearly see where the barrack wall has partially subsided into the bid (this has also occurred further along the wall line). Interestingly, this large pit is different from most of the other cut features on site in that it's not obviously stone lined (although there are some stones along one edge). Elsewhere, however, new stone-lined pits are appearing, including yet another one with the inevitable cow skull in the base - and we keep on finding more mandible fragments. In Trench 2 are focus has also been dominated by our pits- the eastern most one has now been drawn and photographed and can be fully excavated, the larger pit in the main building has also now nearly been bottomed out.

Given all our thoughts about the pits and animal bone on site recently, it was really pleasing to be joined on site today by one of my colleagues, Professor Peter Rowly-Conwy. He was at Binchester with a group who have been attending a Mini-Series in Archaeology run by Durham University at Newcastle's Centre for Life who had come for a day's digging. Peter is also a leading expert in the archaeological interpretation of animal bone, so we were able to quiz him about our assemblages. Obviously he could only give an impression based on rooting through muddy bags of bone and looking at the material we were actually uncovering as we worked. Nonetheless, he confirmed our suspicion that the assemblages were dominated by fragments of cattle skulls and feet bones, with far fewer bones associated with eating meat. This supports are tentative hypothesis that all our pits might be associated with tanning leather, as cattle hides often retain the feet and head bones before they are processed into leather. He also noted the presence of a range of other bones, including pig, sheep, red deer and dog. We're certainly planning a more structured analysis of all this material over the next year or so.

I've also been meaning to mention the work of one of our second-year students, Mark Household. Mark has returned to Binchester for a second year running, although this tme he is not just digging. He is also taking the chance to work on his dissertation project, which is an assessment of the utility of taking aerial photographs of archaeological sites using kites. This is not a new technique, but the advent of digital cameras means that it's increasingly easy to get some good photographs. Pleasingly, he is just been awarded some funds from the Derrick Riley Fund to support his work. He's already getting some great results - I'll post some of thedr images on the blog in the next few days.

BIN11: Day Nine

2011-06-16T14:10:00.000-07:00

We are now heading towards the end of our second week on site. In Trench 1, there is activity happening in four main areas. In the space between the buildings we've unpicked more cobbles, almost certainly medieval as we found a long-cross penny (so probably 13th/14th century in date -see picture below). The new walls are more clearly defined, but still on resolutely peculiar alignments. We're now back exploring the area to the west of the barrack; we've uncovered a large pit immediately adjacent to an area of the barrack wall. This is different in character to our stone-lined pits - it's substantial (several metres across) and appears to have caused subsidence causing the wall to partially collapse outwards. Further northwards, we're clearing an area of stone that may be the partial remains of some stone-lined pits, although this is not certain. Elsewhere in the trench, the 'big pit' continues to go down! Finally, there are a few other stone lined pits being excavated- one inside the barrack structure. In Trench 2, the large pits within the eastern building have been further explored- they sit neatly within the rooms, implying that the foundations at least were in place when the pits were dug. From the limited processing of the environmental samples taken from them so far, there does appear to be good organic preservation. We are now at a stage where all the way along the northern edge of Trench 2 we have a series of stone-lined pits/hollows. These appear to get smaller and shallower as they get nearer the fort. This may be a real phenomenon or something to do with differential preservation. Several of them (as well as some in Trench 1) may have some kind of gully or channel leading to them. We really need to start thinking about the nature of these features. Although there is some variation in size, there are some linking features, particularly their stone-lining (often bedded in clay) and the frequent appearance of butchered animal bone. This bone superfically appears to consist mainly of cattle heads and feet, although we need more formal analysis to confirm this. One hypothesis we have is that they may be somehow linked to tanning; although we are having difficulty finding archaeological evidence for Roman or early medieval tanning that we can compare our features with. Of course, there may be other reasons for their construction- anyone out there have some ideas?

BIN11: Day Eight

2011-06-15T14:50:00.001-07:00

A slightly abbreviated overview of site today as I spent most of the morning at the top end of Weardale (of which more below) and most of the afternoon trying to get my car nailed back together again, so I wasn't on site much. In brief, however, Trench 1 saw more work on the new walls between the two buildings, more work on the big pit and the identification of yet more stone-lined working hollows. In Trench 2, the large pits in the eastern building saw more work (we're still going down) and the final definition of some stretches of wall.

The main aim of my trip to the top end of Weardale (Westgate to be precise) was to visit another excavation. Archaeological Services Durham University is working with the North Pennines AONB on a community archaeology project (Altogether Archaeology)on the 13th century castle that stood at the 'west gate' the Bishop of Durham's great deer park of Stanhope, and acted as the headquarters for the Bishop's extensive estate in upper Weardale. This work has revealed some substantial traces of the original building including thick walls, splayed windows, and most impressively, part of a spiral staircase (see picture below).

Heading up Weardale is also a useful reminder of the importance of the location of Binchester. We tend to focus on its position on a key north-south route, linking York with the Wall and Stanegate. However, it is also situated to control lateral movement along the dale, which opens out from being a relatively narrow valley close to Binchester. Although seemingly bleak and under-populated, Weardale and Teesdale have long been home to an important lead mining industry. This was almost certainly active in the Roman period - the remote Roman fort of Whitley Castle, near Alston was probably built to control the lead mines. It is also likely that, as in the medieval period, the moors were also used for grazing cattle, possibly using a system of transhumance. As such, the Dales, which lead right into the heart of the Pennine uplands would have acted as important coridors allowing access to the moorlands. Excavations by colleagues at Newcastle university at Bollihope Common , which lies on a tributary of the Wear, has produced evidence for Iron Age and Roman period native settlement. It is also salutory to remember that the upper dales could also have been a landscape of leisure. In the same way that the medieval Bishops of Durham had a hunting park in the area, we know that Roman army officers were also hunting in the area a thousand years earlier. Two Roman altars dedicated to Silvanus, a god often associated with hunting, have been found in Weardale , both indicating they were related to hunting trips from the fort at Lanchester.

BIN11: Day Seven

2011-06-14T13:04:00.000-07:00

Down on numbers a little today, as six of out students were back in Durham doing an introductory session on Environmental Archaeology alongside some members of the Durham Arch & Arch. Environmental archaeology is a key element of the project, particularly as we are beginning to encounter some good dark deposits, which look like they might have good organic preservation (let's not forget our plumstones from the big pit!). This year, for the first time, we are doing some environmental processing on site; our environmental archaeologist Carrie Drew is supervising our students doing some flotation of some of the samples we've taken. This involves washing the samples in running water, the heavier silt sinks to the bottom, whilst the lighter organic remains (such as charcoal, grain and seeds) floats to the top and can be skimmed off and kept for later analysis. Our flotation kit is a clever set up which allows us to recycle the water we use and has an impressive range of silt traps (aka dustbins!). Work is going well on this front and we're certainly recovering some interesting material

On site, in Trench 1, George has nearly finishe his stone-lined pit, and we are continuing to pick away at the stones between the barrack and the small structure- this is revealing some walls, but on very odd alignments! We are also now moving on with excavating the big pit, which produced a fragment of copper with what appears to be gilding surviving on it. In Trench 2, work is still focusing on the larger building at the east end of the site. Nearly all the walls are defined now. Importantly, our two areas of darkish earth are turninng into what appear to be more stone lined pits (on quite an impressive scale)- however, these don't seem to contain as much bone as some of those in Trench 1- they also have much darker fills which should have good organic preservation. Tomorrow, we start planning and recording Trench 2 with a vengeance

BIN11: Day Six

2011-06-13T13:54:00.000-07:00

We have had lots of rain over the weekend, which has done wonders for the site, which was far too dry. In Trench 1, it was a fairly quiet day. Hilary finished recording the current stages of the big pit, and we're ready to make real movement with it tomorrow. Elsewhere, George and Hugh continued looking at one our stone-lined working hollows. The small building was photographed to allow us to continue the job of unpicking the associated cobbles and there was more clearing and cleaning in and around the south end of the barrack building. In Trench 2, things moved quickly, particularly around the big building at the east of the trench (dare I call it the 'bath' building?). Lots of progress on picking out more of the walls. The major development was in the areas of dark soil mentioned previously. In at least one case this appears to be the fill of yet another stone-lined pit/hollow. In the adjacent area, we've made quick progress removing the dark soil- for once we're able to get cracking with mattocks and shovels. It's one of the few large areas of deposit we've had so far that hasn't been full of stone and rock. Its dark colour suggests that it may have good organic preservation, so we'll ensure that we take plenty of samples. Leanne, Steph and Lizzie are busy on the area of the building to the east of the post-med ditch, carefully picking and cleaning around the interior walls. It's clear that multiple courses of stone wall survive. In general, it is becoming increasingly clear, that although we don't have the dense concentration of cobbled stone surfaces we saw in Trench 1, Trench 2 is producing a similar range of stone-lined pits/working areas associated with butchery debris. But what is the date?

Coinage from Binchester

2011-06-11T01:22:00.000-07:00

A few weeks ago our coin specialist, Dr Philippa Walton, came to have a look at the coins from last year's exvations. These are her initial comments

Preliminary report on the coins recovered from the Binchester excavations 2010
Philippa Walton

Introduction

Around 900 coins were recovered the excavations undertaken by the University of Durham and Stanford University at Binchester County Durham in 2010. In May 2010, I examined 420 of these coins, equating to approximately half of the assemblage. Of these, 418 coins date to the Roman period.

The majority of coins recorded were recovered from unstratified or post Roman contexts and therefore the coins are not suitable for stratigraphic analyses. However, following the Applied Numismatic principles pioneered by Richard Reece and John Casey, they are useful for obtaining a better understanding of the broad chronology of the site and periods of intense activity.

The chronological distribution of coins

270 of the Roman coins were identifiable to the extent that they could be assigned to Reece periods as summarised by Table 1. A further 148 coins were recognisable in date but were either too corroded or dirty to assign to a particular Reece period. However, it was possible to assign them to a century or range of centuries by size and composition as summarized in Table 2.

The 2010 assemblage has a similar chronological range to that recovered in 2009, with coins dating from Reece period 5 (AD 96-117) through to Reece Period 21 (AD 388-402) recorded (See Figure 1). However, more second and early third century coins are represented in the 2010 assemblage and there are small peaks in the Antonine (Period 7) and Severan (Period 10) periods. This is likely to be a reflection of the earlier stratigraphic levels reached during the excavations in 2010.

However, it would not be sensible to read too much into the 2010 coin assemblage in isolation. Indeed, until the earliest stratigraphic layers have been excavated, only tentative comments on the composition of the assemblage can be offered. For this reason, the 2009 and 2010 assemblages have been combined and analysed as a single group (See Figure 2). As noted in my previous report, coin loss at Binchester is strongest in the late third and fourth centuries AD (see Figure 1) with far greater coin loss than average between Periods 14 (AD 275-285) and 18 (AD 348-363). It is not possible at present to account for this prolonged peak in coin loss. However, the peak in Period 17 is also present in the assemblage recovered from previous excavations at Binchester, as are peaks in Period 16 and 18 to a lesser extent (Reece 1991). It may indicate significant activity at the site during this period. A brief survey of other published coin assemblages from the North East (South Shields, Piercebridge, Chester-le-Street, Greta Bridge, Corbridge, Carrawburgh, Housesteads) demonstrates that a period 17 peak is not characteristic of the region although Corbridge (Reece 1991) does possess similar per mill (coins per 1000) values for the period AD 260 to 348 (Periods 13-17). Overall, this profile has far more in common with southern rural sites, although this is to be expected as only late levels have been excavated thus far. The latest coins from the site are three copper alloy nummi of the House of Theodosius. Two possess legible reverses. One is a VICTORIA AVGG issue dating to AD 388-395 whilst the other is a SALVS REPVBLICAE issue dating to the AD 388-395/402. These issues are among the latest copper alloy coins to be supplied to Britain and attests to the continued use of money at Binchester even in the very late fourth century AD.

BIN11: Day Five

2011-06-11T00:37:00.000-07:00

The first week on site finished with a downpour, not a bad thing as the site is dry. It was impressive how much the moisture made the contrasts in soil colour come through more clearly. Progress continues to be good. In Trench 1, the big pit looks like its going to have good organic preservation - indeed we had five plum stones out of it! We (ie Hilary and Mark) have taken it down to the level of the smaller clay pit and got it drawn and photographed. To the west of the barrack, we've more or less got everything to the same level. George is working on another of our shallow stone-lined pits whilst others have been finishing off at the south end of the building. We have now reached the stage where almost all of Trench 1 (except the small building) is at the same stratigraphic level- this means that we can look forward to some serious stone removal soon! We're already carefully unpicking the deposits of stone at the east end of the small building, with a focus on establishing the relationship between the building and the rubble bank. We're just wondering whether the wall at the east end of the building is actually the gable end; it's quite high, could it instead be related to a feature dug into the rampart? The final job in this trench has been working on the cobbles between the small building and the barrack where some other walls appear to be emerging (on some very odd alignments).

In Trench 2, the focus today was on the large eastern structure - David Mason has suggested it might be related to the nearby bath complex. Crucially across the site we now seem to have a layer of 'late' activity that is looking increasingly like what we've found in Trench 1 (ie shallow stone-lined pits/hollows) containing butchery remains. We also have what looks like two large dark areas (pits or dumps of material) in the large building- largely devoid of stones, is this a post-Roman dark earth?

Overall, looking at the last week, we've made real progress. Things are likely to slow down a little in the coming week as we have to focus on doing some planning and recording, nonetheless, we fully expect to continue at a rate of knots.

BIN11: Day Four

2011-06-09T12:58:00.000-07:00

Lots of movement today, and happily no rain. In Trench 2 we completed taking out the post-medieval ditch. Some people then got to work cleaning our trench sections- not very glamorous, more gardening than archaeology, but an important job. Others got cracking with today's main task which was to move on with the removal of the blueish cobbles that made up the small track alongside Dere Street. This has revealed some more large flagstones, but not everywhere. Elsewhere, other, different surfaces are emerging, and in one place a large socketed stone- perhaps a support for a colonade or loggia? Despite the varying nature of this street frontage, it does look like we've got most of the front area of the structures along the road now, although there is a notable lack of substantial front walls. In the east end of the trench we've been able to start clearing and defining the large structure which we started looking at last year. We've given the interior a good clean. In the small extension, we identified a couple of small features cut into what looked like burnt clay. One produced a small piece of what appeared to be Calcite Gritted Ware, although of a buff colour rather than the more common grey (perhaps a sign of burning?). We've also found what, at the moment, appears to be a further small annexe to the extension, although with far less substantial walls. It may turn out to be something else entirely. In Trench 1, the hugely satisfying task of removing layers of cobbles continues. We are really getting a much better sense of the small building's context- it's still looking very medieval (something supported by the discovery of a nice medieval looking buckle from near the door). Currently, we are particularly focusing on removing rubble from the east end of the building to clarify the relationship between the building's gable end and the rubble bank that runs behind the embankment. At the big pit, the students have defined a large internal clay feature or lining, so we're still not at the bottom of it yet. They've also started to outline the edges of another large pit immediately next to it, which is intriguing. Finds from the site today included a beautiful decorated jet spindle whorl and a nice piece of decorated glass, probably a rim fragment of a late Roman bowl.

BIN11:Day Three

2011-06-08T14:26:00.001-07:00

Another really constructive day today- we're making real progress already this season. In Trench 1, the most important development was the identification of a new stretch of wall that lies to the east of the barrack block. Pleasingly, this appears to line up with another stretch of wall which has emerged due to the weathering of a previously excavated area. This wall seems to run parallel to the existing structure. I just wonder whether we've actually got a second tier of rooms with the eastern wall of our current structure actually being a central spine wall to a much wider building. This would make our barrack much more like the kind of cavalry barracks known elsewhere on the wall, such as at Wallsend. It is possible that the western half survived better as it was subsequently re-used in the sub-Roman period, whereas the eastern section fell into disuse. This is still only a hypothesis, but it would explain why our barrack structure appeared so idiosyncratically narrow. Elsewhere in this trench, the big pit still looks like its bottoming out, but intriguingly, we may have another similar feature almost immediately adjacent it. We are also working hard to define the precise stratigraphy of the second, smaller building- does it lie over a patch of cobbles that might be a Roman road surface or are they just part of its foundations?

In Trench 2, the post-medieval ditch is all but completely excavated. This has revealed a number of pieces of wall in section. This, combined with the realisation that a large west-east aligned pit excavated last year was in fact a robber trench, has allowed us to confidentally identify a second strip building, lying just to the north of our existing one. It appears to house the large oven/kiln structure. We've also made great progress in locating the street frontage. We've more or less got the front of the strip buildings and areas of large flagstone paving, which is appearing from beneath later road surfaces. There are still lots of questions though; is there another building between our new strip building and the large structure at the north of the trench? - there appears to be enough room. Also, what is happening in the southern edge of our trench? - more structures or are we too close to the fort ditch?

BIN11: Day Two

2011-06-07T12:34:00.000-07:00

Getting into the swing of things now- the students know their way round and are able to get on well with their work. We got lots of work done today even though we had repeated showers of rain over the day. In Trench 1, we've been working well on defining the features to the west of the barrack. On the smaller building, we're really starting to get some better definition, as we continue to carefully pick away at the edges of the walls. We've now got a really clearly defined doorway, complete with a socket hole marking the position of the door (apparently we'd found this at the end of last year, but I must have missed it). Also more work on the big pit, which looks like it might be bottoming out. In Trench 2, we've nearly finished emptying out the 18th century ditch- we've been able to pick up at least one probable wall line, as the ditch gives a cross-section of the Roman layers it cuts through. There has also been splendid progress on the road, with a new, and well-defined, road surface being uncovered in several places. Plenty of finds, including more jet and fragments of at least two bone pins; the metal detectorists also got a silver denarius from the spoilheap.

Other developments include the succesful construction of our wet-sieving apparatus, which appears to work. This will allow us to carry out more environmental processing on site. Sadly, I left my camera at home, so I'll put a picture up tomorrow.

BIN11: Day One

2011-06-06T14:37:00.001-07:00

First day on site in season three (BIN11). We had around 55 Durham 1st year undergraduates out this morning for the first day of their three week field school. Unlike the previous two seasons, we had no new trench to open. This meant that we were able to get going immediately with some serious excavation. In Trench 1, we have a number of key tasks. First, we want to try and get a better understanding of how the shallow pits containing evidence for substantial butchery which lie on the west side of the main building relate to the cobbled surfaces on the other side. This means we are putting a lot of effort on to defining the pits (and other possible features) a bit more clearly. We are also finally trying to get a better sense of the chronology of our small rectangular building in the south east of the trench. This again involves trying to understand how it relates to the surrounding cobbles, so lots of careful removal of stones to look forward to. On the northern edge of the trench some students were working on the final vestiges of topsoil from the rampart, whilst work also continued in the large pit (still of uncertain date).

In Trench 2, the majority of work was focused in two areas. On Dere Street itself, we are removing a series of sections of road to try and located the underlying Roman street frontage, although we are also leaving substantial balks in place. We also allowed the students to get some experience in digging features removing the remaining fills from the unexcavated sections of the 18th century roadside ditch.

Already the finds are appearing; not surprisingly we've had plenty of bone and pot. We've also already got a number of coins, two small blue glass beads and a fragment of a jet or shale bracelet. All in all, a great start to the season (but lots to do over the coming weeks).

Count down to BIN11

2011-06-02T04:15:00.000-07:00

We're nearly there- work starts on site this coming Monday (June 6th) when about 60 eager (?) Durham students will descend upon Binchester for their three-week archaeology fieldschool. The covers are already off the trenches; the site may look a little green (blame the hard winter we've had), but it won't take long before it starts looking like a proper archaeological site again. From Monday I'll resume daily blog posts outlining our progress.

Volunteer at Binchester

2011-04-29T02:05:00.000-07:00

Bookings are now being taken for the annual dig at Binchester Roman Fort, which will run from July 4th - August 12th 2011

Further information is available on the 'Archaeology' page of Durham County Council's website, you should be able to access the page via the following link

Please ignore this notification if you have already been in touch with us about signing up for the dig!

Binchester Interim Report

2011-04-28T04:09:00.000-07:00

Good news- we've finally completed the interim report from last year's excavations. It is available for download from our website. Lots more news about this year's season coming soon.

Trench 2

2011-02-23T08:30:00.000-08:00

Trench 2
Trench 2 (c. 43m by 20m) was a new area of excavation positioned within the vicus to the immediate east of the eastern entrance to the fort, along Dere Street. The trench examines the northern side of Dere Street and part of the street frontage. Excavation was preceded by geomagnetic and electrical resistance surveys.

Towards the western end of the trench, a stone rectangular building was present on a north‐south alignment, approximately 4m wide and at least 12m long [23]. To the immediate north of here, elements of a small stone structure were also revealed [24]. Only the top course of the walls of these structures was revealed during this stage of the excavation.

A further stone rectangular structure was partially recorded towards the eastern end of the trench [25]. An ancillary building had been constructed onto the southern side of this [26]. A partially‐robbed wall [27] also ran along the eastern section of the excavation, the eastern face of which was obscured by the section. The lower courses of these structures were obscured by a thick dark deposit over the northeastern part of the trench, and later surfaces and rubble to the south. However, excavation of a later ditch cutting through the western wall of structure 25 revealed at least five courses surviving (0.6mhigh). Breaks in the upper course of the southern wall of structure 25 and the western wall of structure 26 may be indicative of the base of the windows. Plaster survives in situ on the wall faces of structure
26.

Contiguous with the top of these walls, spreading across much of the northern part of the trench, were surfaces comprising various elements, including cobbles, paving slabs, mortar and rubble. These may be indicative of the use of the area at this level, perhaps in conjunction with several stone‐lined pits and sunken areas, two of which are shown on the plan. These features include flat slabs in their construction, and are similar to those identified in Trench 1. Over these surfaces and covering much of the northern part of the trench was a dark deposit of soil in which large quantities of animal bone, including significant quantities of cattle skulls, was present – as in Trench 1.

Across the southern part of the trench road surfaces were present, comprising cobbles and gravels, reflecting different surfacing episodes. These were over the line of Dere Street and are likely to reflect a later use of the street as a surface in the post‐medieval period. This was demarcated on the northern side by a smaller sunken track, curving across the trench, in which wheel ruts were visible. Parallel with the line of Dere Street and further to the north, a ditch ran across the trench. The northern edge of the trench cut into the edge of a soil bank running parallel with this ditch. It is likely that all these features relate to the medieval and post‐medieval landscaping of the area, the bank marking the edge of the ploughed area to the north. Other features in the trench currently under investigation may also relate to this phase and to the robbing of earlier stone walls.

Interim Report: Trench 1

2011-02-23T08:25:00.000-08:00

We are making good progress with compiling the interim report from our 2010 excavation series. We should have this completed by Easter. In the mean time here is the site description of Trench 1 and the associated plan

Trench 1
This was c. 37m by 26m and located in the north‐east corner of the fort. The excavation was begun in 2009, and continued in 2010, when a 15m by 5m hand‐dug extension was added to the south‐western corner.

Along the south‐eastern edge of the excavation, the interior of the earlier fort rampart was exposed [1]. A stone and clay oven was partially excavated, which had been constructed into the rampart [2]. Built over this oven and against the early rampart was a second rampart, running along the northern edge of the excavation trench, and forming the northern edge of the later fort [3]. This incorporated a wider corner area [4], within which a corner tower had been constructed [5]. Of similar construction to the later rampart, and perhaps constructed at the same time, a large raised area was built against the early rampart in the south‐eastern corner of the trench, sloping down towards the centre of the fort [6]. Stone walling on both ramparts may have supported angle towers [7, 8].

A long narrow rectangular building ran parallel with the south‐east rampart, set back c. 14m from the rampart edge, and c. 6m from the north‐east rampart. The building, as exposed, is c. 30m long, and c.6m wide internally. The stone walls [c. 0.6m wide] are generally faced on both sides, with a narrow rubble core, although there are variations in construction which may indicate different phases of building, and their association with exterior stone surfaces. Up to three courses of wall were visible in places, including wider foundation courses: at the southern end of the western wall in particular, larger stone blocks set in clay may indicate an earlier building on the same alignment, reused as a foundation for the later building. The wall foundation appears to have been extended further south in this area through the construction of a bank of clay and stone [9].

Possible post holes were identified within the upper surfaces on the walls which may be indicative of a timber superstructure. Elements of internal stone walls were present within the structure. Across the centre of the building was a surface of large paving stones [10], into which a deep stone and clay‐lined pit had been incorporated [11]: a cattle skull had been placed in the base of this pit. A hollow way [12] led towards this from a probable entrance in the north wall of the building. This cut through a clay floor, over which elements of paving and gravel surfaces survived. A drain, lined with stone roof tiles, had been constructed across this floor [13].

To the south of the paved surface was a sunken area [14], up to 0.5m deep, demarcated by the walls of the building, internal paving, and an internal wall. Further paving was present in discrete areas within the building to the south of here. Elements of clay floor also survived within this area.

Built against the eastern wall of the building were stone and cobbled surfaces (15), stretching towards the eastern rampart. These surfaces appeared contiguous with the upper surface of the wall, but did not extend within the building. They extended over the raised area in the south‐eastern corner of the trench, and around the southern end of the building, demarcating the extent of the building in this direction in this phase of use. Elements of stone surfaces were recorded to the north of the building, but the surface was not contiguous in this area. The surfaces spread over and incorporated the remains
of a second rectangular stone building (16) positioned over the raised area, which was off‐alignment with the fort ramparts.

Incorporated within the surfaces were two linear gullies [17], which may be associated with crudely constructed low stone banks [18]. Stone banks were also present along the top of the northern rampart and along the edge of the south‐eastern raised area (partially remove in 2009). Stone‐lined pits were present within the surfaces; two of the larger of these are marked on the plan [19]. These are partially lined with flat stone slabs. Further similar features may be present at the eastern edge of the cobbled area.

The cobbled surfaces were not identified on the western side of the building. Here, a clay and stone path led up over the wall of the building [20]. Elements of two stone‐lined pits with associated stone spreads and low banks were recorded in this area [21]. Large quantities of cattle bone were recovered from this area of the site in particular.

An antiquarian trench was identified through the angle tower [22]; some of the facing stones for the walls had been removed. Deposits identified across the trench that related to post‐medieval landscaping activity and ploughing were excavated in 2009.

Roman kilns

2011-02-02T06:31:00.000-08:00

A post from Melissa Chatfield on our plans for this summer at Binchester

"One of the ongoing research agendas with the Stanford group is Binchester Kiln Project. Initially funded by the Stanford President’s Fund for Innovation in the Humanities, the project set out to make a replica Romano-British kiln on campus as a practice run for a similar kiln to be built on site in England. Ideally, we will make a pottery kiln that is an exact duplicate of one that we find at Binchester. Based on the results of the geophysical survey, it is likely we will find one this summer. In the meantime, we constructed a kiln on campus that is a composite of several key features found in Late Iron Age and early Roman kilns of Britain.

In mid-January, we fired our Stanford Binchester Kiln for 19.5 hours to bake about 40 pots, which were made by the Ceramics Club and the student-run Ceramics studio on campus. Over this period, we weighed wood in a bucket suspended from a ladder and took temperature readings using a digital data logger with 3 thermocouples: two positioned in the ware chamber and one between the layers of sod over the fire tunnel.

Using a mixture of hard woods and wood from fruit trees, we sustained a high temperature of about 950º Celsius that was achieved about 15 hours after ignition. Students and volunteers stayed late into the night, and a few into the early morning as the dew began to settle on our grassy kiln

We let the kiln cool for about 30 hours before opening it up. The sod covering the ware chamber cracked and crumbled in our hands. All of the 40 pots survived, although some had experienced some heat warping. The wall of the kiln, with no clay lining other than the clay matrix of the mound, sustained some cracking but no spalling, which was good for the pots. However, these cracks might need to be repaired before our next firing.

A few of the pots in the mix, such as the orange one in the foreground of the photo on the right, were made with clay we shipped back from a clay mine near Binchester. As luck would have it, the world’s largest brick manufacturer, Wienerberger, has a brick factory about a mile from the site and has been an enthusiastic supporter of the kiln project. Taking the lessons we learned from our experience at Stanford, we will design and build our Durham Binchester Kiln over the next few field seasons. With access to all the geologic strata of clay in the region, including the clay available in prehistory, we will continue our experimental work in the acquisition and transmission of craft knowledge.

For more information about the construction process of this kiln and continuing research, please visit the Burnt Earth Blog .

Binchester finds washing

2011-01-21T06:21:00.001-08:00

I am setting up the finds washing/marking sessions for Binchester pot/bone again. They will be Tuesday's and Thursdays (2pm-4pm) in the Dept. of Archaeology at Durham beginning Tuesday February 1st and continuing until we've finished it all! Drop me a line if you are interested

New Year at Binchester

2011-01-04T06:18:00.000-08:00

Happy New Year from all of us at the Binchester Research Project. We've had some great news to kick things off, as we look forward to Season Three of the excavation this summer. The nice folks at the Roman Research Trust have granted us £2000 to fund two small evaluation trenches intended to investigate some interesting anomalies on the geophysical survey that they funded last year. One area of interest is a possible inhumation cemetery situated within an enclosure to the north of the site towards the Bell Burn; the other is a zone of what may be industrial activity nearer the north entrance of the fort. These trenches are not intended to fully excavate the features, but to evaluate the nature, extent and condition of the potential archaeology. This information will feed into the long-term plans for the project and enhance our understanding of the areas around the fort and vicus.

New light on the end of Roman Binchester

2010-11-22T06:29:00.000-08:00

We're working away on the post-excavation phase of this year's fieldwork, and some interesting fragments of metalwork are coming up which shed light on the important transition from late Roman into the early medieval. Dr Rob Collins (Portable Antiquity Scheme), our finds advisor writes

"Two objects found in the 2010 excavation at Binchester have been tentatively identified as belonging to occupation of the site in the 5th century. The ring-headed pin (top photo)was an object of the Scottish Iron Age that continued to develop and see use into the Early Medieval period. The example found at Binchester is of a simple form, cast integral, and does not display any of the more elaborate decoration of the handpins more commonly dated to the Early Medieval period. The form of the Binchester pin may date to the Roman period, but ring-headed pins are not commonly found at Roman fort sites.

The second object can be more confidently dated to the 5th century. This is the terminal fragment of a Fowler class E penannular brooch (Bottom photo). The terminal itself is a stylized zoomorphic head, and the hoop of the brooch is decorated with moulded rings. In the northern frontier, these appear in the last quarter of the 4th century at the earliest and found at a number of Roman fort sites, notably those with known stratigraphic sequences dating to the 5th century."

The ring-headed pin was found in Trench 2 in the vicus, frustratingly, however, it came from the post-medieval linear that cut across the site and is thus out of context. The brooch fragment was found in Trench 1 in a rubble spread that lay between the barrack structure and the rampart.

The Beautiful Rooms are Empty

2010-11-16T03:04:00.000-08:00

We are pleased to report that the full excavation report from the important campaign of work carried out at Binchester in the late 1970s and 1980s by Iain Ferris and Rik Jones is now available. This splendid two-volume publication includes full analysis of these excavations as well as substantial wider contextual material about the fort and the history of research there. This is going to be essential reading for those interested in the fort (including ourselves) and will certainly help redefine our research priorities in future seasons. The report is available from Durham County Council for £35 + £8 p+p.

Aerial-cam shots of Binchester

2010-11-01T14:01:00.001-07:00

I've not yet had a chance to post some of the fantastic vertical and oblique shots taken of the site in September by Adam from Aerial-Cam. Using a digital camera on an extendable low mast attached to a Land Rover, he is able to take what are essentially low-level aerial photos. This has given us some excellent shots of Trench 1 (the fort) and Trench 2 (the vicus).

Binchester on Radio 3

2010-10-22T11:48:00.000-07:00

Apologies for the short notice, but I've just found out that you'll get a chance to hear about Binchester on Radio 3 this Sunday evening (9.30pm-10.15pm). During the summer, Bettany Hughes and her radio producer came to Binchester to talk to us about the site for part of a larger programme about Roman Britain. The blurb from the BBC website describes the programme "Historian Bettany Hughes looks at our first contacts with the Romans and how people loved or resented their new overlords. Our relationship with the Romans used to be a cosy one - once we saw them as our fellow imperialists who civilised 'us natives', and a jolly good thing too. Even now that some of that 'special relationship' has persisted. We love discoveries of forts and towns and baths, and we're lot less impressed by a nice British round house. Yet perhaps 97% of our ancestors would have been living in those roundhouses, many of them turning up their noses at Roman culture beyond the odd bit of bracelet or pottery.

Where we do pay attention to the native British, it's to the freedom fighters like Boudicca and Caractacus, but we rarely think about ordinary life under occupation or the culture shock of suddenly finding yourself living in a Roman town. Roman towns would have looked as alien to our ancestors as the dizzying streetscapes of Bladerunner with their tall rectangular stone buildings, cacophony of languages and intimidatingly foreign way of life.

Nor do we think about the most important woman in early Roman Britain, the dazzling ruler of most of Yorkshire - the pro-Roman Cartimandua, queen of the Brigantes who built one of our largest iron age settlements at Stanwick and who caused an international incident when she ditched her husband for his armour bearer. Her canny but failed experiment in client state-building would set the future for the whole of the North of England. She was a much bigger player than Boudicca. It's up in the North that we see occupation in shockingly modern terms, as those enormous Roman armies set up permanent home, sucking the local areas almost dry and becoming the law of the land. Up here, occupation bites."

Next week at the same time, you'll get a chance to hear myself, Alex Woolf and others talking about the end of Roman Britain. Enjoy!

New images of artefacts

2010-10-21T03:37:00.000-07:00

Just a quick note to say that I've uploaded some new images of some of this year's finds to the Binchester Picasa web album - scroll down to the bottom of the page to see the pics. I hope to shortly upload some of the fabulous aerial shots taken for us by Aerial-Cam, and hopefully some of the early versions of the site plans from this year's excavations.

Literacy at Binchester

2010-10-11T01:32:00.000-07:00

As term starts, we are getting back on course with the post-excavation work on the proejct. This includes tackling the huge amount of finds work that needs dealing with. Recently, Jenny Jones has been X-raying some of the ironwork recovered from site, which has thrown up some interesting results. What we thought was rather a nice knife blade has turned out to be a pierced iron bar, but another object (see picture) has turned out to be a simple iron stylus, probably used for writing on wax or wooden tablets- a nice indicator of literacy at the site.

Durham and Stanford

2010-10-06T08:27:00.001-07:00

Great news from both the Durham and Stanford teams. The Department of Archaeology at Durham University, has recently been ranked second in our subject in the Times Good University Guide 2011 and in the 2011 Complete University Guide. We are already ranked as the leading research department in the Research Assessment Exercise in 2008This is testimony to the Department's success in all aspects of the university experience. Meanwhile, the graduate program of the Department of Classics at Stanford ranks at the top of 31 Classics programs in the United States rated by the National Research Council (the main university ranking system in the US).

Binchester latest

2010-10-05T03:54:00.000-07:00

Catching up with Binchester. Apologies for the lull in activity with this blog since the end of the excavation. However, things have not been quiet with the project. Although the Stanford team headed back at the end of July, we kept the excavation open over the rest of the summer so visitors to the fort could see the fruits of our labours. We were also able to get some overhead shots of the two trenches taken by Aerial-Cam; they really show the site to its best. I’ll post some of these wonderful images in upcoming days. We finally got the site covered over last week (thanks to help from members of the Durham Archaeological and Architectural Society. Still much to do though. The major job is to crack on with the finds processing, particularly washing and marking up all the ceramics and bone recovered this year. This will be done by members of the Durham Arch and Arch and students from the Dept. of Archaeology at Durham University- it should keep them busy!

Season Two: Day Forty-five

2010-08-14T11:35:00.000-07:00

Final dispatch from Dave Mien "So that’s it for another year with the excavation coming to an end. On a day when the weather was absolutely foul, with rain, wind and a very moderate temperature, it would have been no surprise if no volunteers had turned up, but about a dozen arrived to work. Levelling, planning and very limited trowelling took place, though unfortunately no memorable finds were made, only small amounts of pottery, mostly Roman. Today was quite a sad occasion with the weather reflecting this and the final photograph shows the fort in dismal mode.However, the next season will soon be here and this scene will be transformed with the fort bathed in warm sunshine and lots of excavators unlocking the secrets of Binchester."

And finally, from me, its now the end of a great second season for the project- I'll review the year's progress next week!

Season Two: Day Forty-Four

2010-08-12T13:47:00.000-07:00

Nearly the end of the excavation and there are enough volunteers, together with Janice and Jamie, to ensure that the planning will be completed on time. Some volunteers are still trowelling in the fort but Matty is careful not to disturb the areas that have been carefully planned. However, the site still had a little of the Time Team Theatricals, because late yesterday afternoon a great find was uncovered. It was a knife, about 10 inches in length and although found in the higher levels of the site, it is thought that it is Roman in origin. Obviously this has still to be confirmed after conservation, but it may well be one of the finds of the season.
Since the find may be so important it is worth considering where it was discovered. In the second photograph the indentation can be seen near bottom centre, where the knife was excavated at an angle of 45 degrees, very close to the surface. Interestingly in the background lies the “pit”, which makes one wonder what will be discovered here and indeed throughout the site next season. Today there were a few finds, mainly pottery, and a very small bead, so the excavation gives up its’ goodies right up until the end.

Season Two: Day Forty-Three

2010-08-11T12:25:00.000-07:00

More from David M. "A fresh batch of volunteers arrived, so the number of workers was greatly increased and showed the popularity of the excavations amongst the local community. Only the fort was open and the vicus looked a sad prospect with no-one actually there, after so many weeks in which it was a hive of activity. Matty ensured that the volunteers had plenty to explore and it was in the eastern section, that had previously provided a number of hob nails, in which the largest number of volunteers were deployed. At long last the “mystery pit” was planned and it is hoped that when all the data is collated the actual feature will be identified and put into the context of the site. Again more visitors arrived on a day in which the weather was extremely mixed."

Season Two: Day Forty-Two

2010-08-10T11:36:00.000-07:00

Latest news from the front via Dave Mien "Work again continues, but purely in the fort. The vicus does not now require any volunteers with Janice just checking the plans. Here we can see, somewhat roughly, how the plans come together and find another use for the site office! In the fort the volunteers trowelled in several areas. Of course “the pit” was investigated and 6 volunteers trowelled in the eastern region. Matty found several people willing to plan, however, there is still a large amount of planning to be completed. Happily there was a steady stream of visitors, so interest from the locals, and general public in still extremely strong. As for finds, there was a good amount of Roman pottery found together with several nails. Importantly a purple Roman intaglio was discovered, again in the proximity of the pit feature, and it is hoped to identify the details later. Rain arrived about lunch time and the showers became more regular with the clouds more threatening but the volunteers, as normal, worked on."

Season Two: Day Forty-One

2010-08-10T11:28:00.001-07:00

From Dave Mien "Now reaching the end of the season, “All is quiet on the Binchester front”. There are still a number of volunteers working, but they are mainly in the fort. The vicus is very much into “closure status”, with Janice tidying up the plans and ensuring that all is in order. However, the volunteers still trowel in the fort mainly in pairs dotted around the trench. No finds of note have been made and the mysterious pit still has workers trying to unlock its’ secrets. Matty is frantically trying to persuade the volunteers to do some planning, because, as the photo shows there are plenty of plans to finish off! Nevertheless work continues and I have no doubt by the end of the week the site will be completely up to date and another successful season taken place."

Season Two: Day Forty

2010-08-06T11:10:00.000-07:00

Another missive from David M.
"It would seem that the American students have taken the sunshine with them, so hurry back! Today was windy, cool with rain showers and the number of workers on the site reflected this. There were very few and one visitor from New Zealand, who expressed an interest yesterday, came and was enlisted to help plan within minutes of arriving. The four workers in the vicus continued to plan so no discoveries were made. However in the fort many of the volunteers were trowelling and hob nails were “the order of the day”. A sizeable number were discovered close to the large pit and everything pointed to them being Roman. I was also informed that the Samian pot mentioned earlier in the week had been removed and was a pretty patterned example of Samian ware. The photograph today shows Peter Carne examining the pit which has been a mystery throughout the excavation. It was also a chance for Peter to demonstrate his skills, though unfortunately to a very limited audience and for Matty to show that cold weather doesn’t affect a professional archaeologist!"

Season Two: Day Thirty-Nine

2010-08-05T11:49:00.000-07:00

Under threatening skies the volunteers continued to work on both trenches, again largely planning. As the excavation reaches a conclusion for this year, priority lies in ensuring that the dig has been fully recorded. Due to good housekeeping and hard work from all involved, this aspect is well under control and should be completed in time. We received more visitors including the American student Miriam, who is shown on an earlier blog page, together with her family, who thoroughly enjoyed their visit to Binchester. In the small amount of actual digging that took place more pottery was found in the fort and this may be connected to the pottery vessels discovered earlier in the week. The vicus revealed an interesting example of recycling. This is a possible Roman quernstone which, as can be seen, was broken in two and one section used as a part of a relatively recent wall. The photograph also indicates the amount of planning taking place with trowelling being carried carefully, so as not to upset the strings and tapes strewn across the site. Adding to the sense of finality, two of the stalwart volunteers, Terry and Pauline, have now left the site after five weeks, but work will continue until next week.

Season Two: Day Thirty-Eight

2010-08-04T11:16:00.000-07:00

Courtesy of David Mien

"There is a definite “end of season” feel about the excavation, with numbers of volunteers down and a desire to ensure that all planning has been completed. However this does not mean that excavation work has eased and indeed there has been an interesting find made in the fort. This caused some excitement amongst the volunteers, who all made an effort to see it in situ where it will possibly remain until next year. The find is a Samian pottery inside a larger calcified grey ware bowl and is situated in a channel close to some large cattle bones.

In the vicus the majority of the volunteers were engaged in planning, but the site of a Roman altar was identified and some continued the search for more features and goodies. It was mentioned earlier about the number of visitors the site has received and this trend was seen again today. As well as a steady flow of public visitors, groups arrived from the Archaeology Department of Durham University, Northern Archaeology amongst others, all of whom showed a great interest in the excavations."

Season Two: Day Thirty-Seven

2010-08-04T01:08:00.000-07:00

The second day with only the Community volunteers excavating continued steadily. The weather again was good, amazingly no rain, and the twenty workers completed work uninterrupted. Interestingly for the second day running another twelve groups of visitors were shown round the site by the supervisors, so their day was more hectic.

In the fort, and indeed the vicus, the volunteers combined planning and excavating, with the planning aspect becoming more important as the season ends. The fort saw more features being developed, and the large pit identified much earlier in the excavation, now having a smaller pit within it. Two other pits have been excavated, one containing a number of nails and perhaps carved stones. We are still in the later phases of the site and will now have to wait until next season before going deeper. The workers in the vicus were busily planning and excavating the features in the northern area and more information should soon be available about them.

Season Two: Day Thirty-Six

2010-08-03T11:38:00.000-07:00

I'm off site for a while, so over to one of our volunteers David Mien for an overview of today's work

"This was the first day without the American students, so the trenches were sparsely
populated. However the twenty or so community volunteers continued the good work under what was a leaden sky, though happily the rain held off.

In the fort trowelling was the order of the day, with no planning taking place, a complete reversal from Friday when ten students and volunteers were doing this. There was, in true Time Team fashion, near the end of the day the discovery of a stone lined circular feature, which bore similarities to a feature already excavated. Hopefully tomorrow some further details will emerge which I will pass on. Some large cattle bones were also found and they may have some relationship with the large skull excavated a week ago.

The vicus trench contained only five volunteers, who again largely trowelled, and one of whom made the best find of the day. This was a large coin, which may be similar to an earlier coin find, and although some aspects were faintly discernable, careful cleaning in the laboratory will be required. The excavators mainly concentrated on an 18th Century gully and the day here ended in some planning and no further discoveries."

Season Two: Day Thirty-five

2010-08-03T11:26:00.000-07:00

Today was hectic as we tried to tie up loose ends before the departure of the Stanford crew. Lots of last minute planning and recording to ensure that the site was in a good position to be handed over to the community group for the final haul towards the end of the project. Looking over the site we've achieved a lot in the last month. In Trench 1 we've defined the southern end of the structure and started to unpick the complex sequence of cobbled surfaces and rubble spreads in the southern half of the trench. In the northern half of the site, perhaps the major development was the discovery of the large pit in the north-east corner. This has proved to be a complex feature and is clearly far from fully excavated. It is clear that the larger pit was cut into by a later clay-lined feature. We're still not certain how deep the original pit was. It is possible that we are seeing the pragmatic re-use of an area of subsidence formed by the original pit for some form of craft-working. Today we cleaned up the stone feature that we thought might have been a stone window-head; in fact it is has turned out to be a large fragment of a stone mortar (date uncertain)- we had another smaller example from the south end of the main building last year. In Trench 2 it turns out we've now got a date for the linear feature that cuts through all the buildings to the norht of the wall (or at least a tpq for its infill), as we've found a coin dating to 1752 in its main fill. Work over the last few days has confirmed the presence of a number of shallow stone-lined scoops/depressions containing lots of animal bones (mainly cattle skulls and foot bones). These circular features appear to be a feature of both trenches. In both areas they appear to be broadly late/post-Roman in date, but we are lacking good dating evidence. I suspect we're going to need to use C14 dating to resolve this conundrum. After a long day and a final site tour our US partners headed off (at least as far as Ustinov College for a goodbye party!). They've been a really important part of the Binchester experience over the last month. We've enjoyed having them in Durham and are looking forward to their return next year!

Season Two: Day Thirty-Four

2010-07-29T14:06:00.001-07:00

Apologies for the lack of an entry for yesterday- I was away from site all day discussing things medieval with English Heritage. Thankfully nothing wildly exciting occurred in my absence. Today, there has been a lot of plannning and levelling going on. We need to catch up with a lot of these jobs as the Stanford team finish tomorrow. Meanwhile, we've begun working on Steer's 1936 slot through the corner tower again, and continued cleaning up the south end of the barrack. The mysterious pit in the north-east corner continues to be confusing, we are now taking out the baulk to try and find out the extent of the clay-lining of the smaller recut of the larger pit. More recording and planning in Trench 2, with excavation continuing on the post-Roman linear feature. I've not mentioned one of the more interesting features of the eastern stone building in this trench. We have identified the base of at least three openings within the wall. These are unlikely to be doors; we know from elsewhere that they are not at ground level, and they are also splayed. One is also too narrow to be a convincing entrance feature. We are presuming that these are windows. In my limited spare time I've not had much luck in identifying other examples of surviving Romano-British windows in the published literature. Presumably because its relatively rare to get Roman walls surviving much above foundation level. I'd imagine there must be some from the Wall forts, I've just not had much of chance to work my way through all the site reports. Any observations or parallels appreciated. I've posted an image of one of these splayed windows above so you can see what I mean. The outside of the building is to the right, with windows splayed towards the interior on the left. There is another 'window' almost immediately adjacent (another reason why they are unlikely to be entrances). It looks like it was subsequently blocked.

Season Two: Day Thirty-two

2010-07-28T13:49:00.000-07:00

Lots going on today. In Trench One we've begun to pick off some of rubble within the smaller rectangular structure. Hopefully this will enable us to work out its precise relationship with the surrounding cobbled features (and maybe even get some kind of date for it). The big pit in the north-east gets ever more confusing; more cattle bones and now its clear that it had a recut which was clay-lined. Purpose? No idea at this stage... We are also starting to explore one of the probable ovens built int the eastern rampart. In Trench Two the main focus of work is on the linear feature that cuts across the site. Although we've broadly defined it, we're trying to clarify its precise limits. Obviously this is easy where its cut straight through stone walls, but less clear elsewhere. In the small structure to the south-east of the second strip building (with some surviving wall plaster) we are starting to get to grips with what looked like a stone lining. It is now clear that there were at least two 'layers' of the pitched stone- so currently looking more like rubble collapse than a proper stone-lined feature.

Season Two: Day Thirty One

2010-07-27T06:07:00.000-07:00

Not much to report on site today, so a brief consideration of the weekends field trip. We headed up to Segedunum at Wallsend then up to Corbridge (another Dere Street site) and then along to Vindolanda finishing up with Milecastle 42. Some rather random observations...

Going up the viewing tower at Wallsend it was clear how much bigger Binchester is compared to Segedunum. Even though they are both cavalry forts Binchester is noticeably larger and more elaborate. For example, the praetoria at Segedunum lacks the elaborate bath-house found associated with the Commander's House at Binchester. The barracks are also aligned in a different direction. However, it was noticeable how much larger the barracks at Segedunum were. Our 'barrack' in Trench 1 at Binchester is appreciably shorter and narrower. Its important to remember though that we are looking at what is presumably the latest iteration of a sequence of barrack constructional phases, and the earlier versions may well have been much larger. Our Binchester barrack also lacks the traditional arrangement of cavalry barracks with the stables placed next to the soldier's quarters (with the stables all having drains). Again, the late date of what we can currently see at Binchester probably expains this.

It was great to visit Vindolanda; another major dig. A very different kind of site though, with multiple forts. At Binchester we just have the two forts, the earlier one visible on the geophysics and the main fort we are currently working on. COnsequently the area of the vicus they are exploring at the moment starts relatively late and finished relatively early (probably late 3rd century AD). At Binchester the vicus continues in use until at least the late 4th century and possible later.

Season Two: Day Thirty

2010-07-27T06:02:00.001-07:00

Quiet day today- everything humming along nicely. Quite a lot of planning going on at the moment; although work on the big pit in the north-east corner of Trench 1 continues apace as it gets bigger and more confusing. Photos have been taken of the stone lined area in the main building and the cow skull has been removed. We hope to start excavating the other half of the feature early next week once recording has been completed. We're also increasing the level of work in the eastern area of the trench which has seen little action so far this season. Members of the Arch and Arch are working to define the stone banks and related features and clarify the sequences here. In Trench 2 lots more work on the large ditch that seems to cut through all the strip buildings to the north of Dere Street. Clearly later than Roman activity, but otherwise lacking a date; my hunch is that its related to the medieval or post-medieval use of Dere Street. Elsewhere, we've begun investigating the area of stone slabs within the little extension to the building at the eastern end of the trench. Current interpretations include stone cist, slab-lined working area and building collapse!

Season Two: Day Twenty-Nine

2010-07-23T00:53:00.001-07:00

A busy day on site as the Stanford Continuing Education students return for their second day with us. We are really making great progress at the moment. A series of features, probably shallow stone-lined scoops or working hollows are becoming increasingly clear along the western side of the barrack block; they contain substantial quantities of cattle bone, particularly skull and foot bones. More generally in Trench 1, work continues in the large pit in the north-east corner; this is almost certainly not later medieval in date, and is probably late Roman or early medieval. Its function is unclear, possibly a water hole or even top of a well? Elsewhere, we are really untangling the features in the southern end of the building, including getting to grips with the recently uncovered southern gable wall. Work in this area has uncovered a small hoard of mid-4th century coins, which is pleasing.

Meanwhile in Trench 2, all the buildings are looking really nice. The work around the end of the larger strip building where there appears to be a midden dump has uncovered a large fragment of a rather nice dressed millstone, seemingly made of Rhineland lava. We have also confirmed that a possible linear feature that ran parallel to the road and seemed to cut through some of the stone buildings really is a significant feature. It clearly cuts straight through the stone walls of some of the structures: its date, however, is entirely uncertain. Finally, in this area, during work on some of the structures at the eastern end of the trench, we've uncovered a rather nice fragment of worked architectural stone (see picture above).

Season Two: Day Twenty-Eight

2010-07-23T00:31:00.000-07:00

I was unable to get to site today, as I was visiting another excavation. Melissa Chatfield from Stanford and myself were in York visiting the site of the University of York's excavations at Heslington. Their dig is on the site of an area of Iron Age and Roman activity on top of the glacial morrain to the south of the city. It's an area I know well having done a little community archaeology in the village about five years ago. In recent year, due to the expansion of the University campus, there has been extensive development in the area revealing a wide range of archaeology, including a small Roman villa and the recovery of an Iron Age skull still containing a brain! We visited the site as the York project excavated a small Roman pottery kiln this year, and worked with Graham Taylor of Potted History and a local school to reconstruct it. Next year at Binchester we are hoping to do reconstruct something similar. This is of particular interest to Melissa who is a specialist in prehistoric pottery technology and is hoping to find out more about the relationship between Iron Age and Roman pottery techniques. We were shown round the site by Cath Neal, the director of the project, who gave us a real sense of the range of features found this year. This is clearly an important site, particularly as it lies in the immediate hinterland of the major Roman city and legionary fort in York. Many thanks to Cath for giving us a chance to visit.

Season Two: Day Twenty-Seven

2010-07-20T08:59:00.001-07:00

We welcome 28 students from the Stanford Continuing Education programme onto site today. Following a site tour, they've been set to work in Trench 1 to define the intravallum road and some of the related rubble dumps close to the rampart. The weather deteriorated distinctly in the afternoon, although we were able to work most of the day. The most interesting feature being worked on today is the building at the eastern end of Trench 2 in the vicus. We have evidence for a stone strip building with a possible extension to the south, potentially overlying part of the road. One of the interior walls of the extension still retains some of its original wall plaster (undecorated as far as we can see). Within this structure area a series of pitched stones; these may either be an intentionally lined stone 'cist' quite similar to the features within the barrack block in Trench 1, or they may simply be traces of collapse within the building. More generally the interior and walls of the this building are becoming better defined, includng a number of possible entrances, at least one which has been subsequently blocked.

Season Two: Day Twenty-Six

2010-07-20T08:53:00.000-07:00

After the excitement of the weekend its back to the grindstone on site today. Things are moving really well at the moment, with plenty of features appearing across the site. One of the most interesting areas today is the large feature in the north-east corner of Trench 1 which has been producing some medieval pottery. Initially it appeared to be simply essentially a thin layer of material overlying earlier features. However, it is increasingly clear that it is actually a substantial pit. It appears to be stone lined. Its fill is mixed and contains a number of pitched stones which seem to be suggesting tip-lines. In the south-east quadrant we've uncovered a cow skull covered by a large stone, we may also have at least one more skull in the pit. In the north-east quadrant we have a big piece of shaped stone that may be part of a window - we'll know more once its been removed. It is not entirely clear whether the pit itself is medieval date; it has proved difficult to define its edges in places, and it is possible that the medieval material comes from a layer overlying the pit itself. It could conceivably be as early as late-/sub-Roman.

Season Two: the weekend!

2010-07-19T09:07:00.002-07:00

On Saturday we went on a fieldtrip to Bamburgh Castle and Holy Island. This gave the students to get a better understanding of Northumbria in the early medieval period. The castle at Bamburgh is very impressive despite extensive 18th and 19th century remodelling. However, the most exciting thing is the on-going archaeological excavation. Following on from earlier work by Brian Hope-Taylor in the 1960s, recent investigations by the Bamburgh Research Project have been uncovering traces of Anglo-Saxon activity on the site (with more stratigraphy still to get through). Graeme Young, the project director,kindly gave us a site tour. It was a salutory reminder of how different in character the more ephemeral archaeology of the early medieval period can be when compared with the Roman period. We then headed out to Holy Island to visit the site of the monastery founded on the island by Aidan and King Oswald in the 7th century. No standing traces of this foundation now survive, although the ruins of the 12th century priory refounded on the site still stand. Some of us made it as far as Lindisfarne Castle; again, the current remains are relatively late (16th century). However, the site is precisely the kind of topographical location used for secular power centres in early medieval period (such as Dumbarton and Dunadd); a little archaeological investigation of this site would certainly pay dividends.

Season Two: Day Twenty-Five

2010-07-16T13:48:00.001-07:00

Another busy day on site- largely avoiding the rain that menaced for most of the day. Rather low on numbers for various reasons, but we still got plenty of work done. Lots of planning in Trench B- nearly have all the road planned now. Also the buildings and the areas between them becoming better defined; there clearly appear to be substantial areas of rubbish dumping, including lots of bone and pottery. In Trench A, work finding the edges of the new large medieval feature continues apace. Alongside the barrack it appears that there may also be some possible pits- date unknown. Taking the students from Stanford up to Bamburgh and Lindisfarne tomorrow for a little early medieval archaeology as an antidote to all the Roman sites they’ve seen so far!

Season Two: Day Twenty Four

2010-07-15T13:21:00.000-07:00

Finally, I’ve found a moment to update the blog. Apologies for the delay in catching up with this- I’ve been away on paternity leave and only just got back. Pleasingly a lot has been going on in my absence. The arrival of the teams from Stanford and Texas, as well as the presence of around 20 members of the local community means that we’ve been able to really keep up the progress we were making earlier in the season with the Durham students.

In Trench 1, we have extended the trench to the south to allow us to locate the southern end of the barrack block. In turned out that this gable end to the structure was literally just sitting in the edge of the baulk. By making the trench a little larger we’ve been able to ascertain that like the northern end wall it is of relatively light build – very different to the more substantial side walls. We’ve also got what looks like a doorway. Like the northern entrance this is not situated in the centre of the end wall, but is offset to one side. Cleaning of this area has shown that we’ve got a probable small porch structure associated with the entrance and, rather pleasingly, a stone with a probable socket hole for the door. We’ve also got a nice fragment of painted Crambeck ware from this area (see picture below- thanks to Chris Breedon for the image).

Elsewhere in the building we’ve continued to be defining and excavating the two cut features; these are increasingly complex- we have been making sure we’ve been taking plenty of soil samples. This will hopefully allow us to identify any potential plant macrofossils and industrial residues, which may help us clarify the purpose of these features. The northern feature in particular appears to have been a substantial stone lined scoop or hollow, with the stone lining contiguous with the flagstone floor of the central compartment. To the north of this feature there appears to be an area of wear on the barrack floor leading to the door in the northern gable wall. The real challenge with this entire sequence is trying to date it- it all seems post-Roman, and at least some of the features parallel the sub-Roman activity from the commander’s house; however, much of the other activity is still lacking any absolute dating. We’ll really need to ensure we develop a good programme of scientific dating to make up for the lack of diagnostic material culture, potentially including C14, archaeomagnetic and thermo-luminescence dating.

Elsewhere in this trench, the main development has been the identification of large pit or dump of medieval material in the north-east corner of the trench, just to the south of the corner tower. This amorphous feature is well-defined in some places, but we’ve yet to identify with certainty all the edges. It includes certain medieval pottery, but we also retrieved a very nice decorated jet ring and a blue glass bead of probable Roman date from it.

In Trench 2 we’ve also extended the trench slightly to better understand the northern end of the stone strip-building. This has revealed a probable midden area abutting the structure; it seems to contain substantial quantities of cattle bones, mainly jaws and other skull fragments; seemingly indicative of butchery here. Further east, the new workforce has cleaned and clarified the structural remains, including evidence for a number of other stone buildings (again seemingly associated with animal remains including jaw bones and antler fragments. One of these structures also appears to still retain wall plaster, although it is not clear whether this was on an interior or exterior face. Perhaps the biggest development in the trench, however, has been a much better understanding of the road. The roadside gully that I’d previously mentioned now appears to have a metalled base. It is not clear whether this metalling is limited to this exposed area or whether it runs under the main ‘road’. It is possible that this gully is a narrow road or path in its own right with the main rubble ‘road’ actually being a dump of stone to form a work or activity surface. Personally I think we will find that the metalling in the gully runs under the main rubble area and its part of an earlier, larger, road surface. Intriguingly, the gully also makes a distinctive curve to the south as it runs westwards across the site.

In addition to the excavation we’ve had plenty of other activity on site. We’ve had a visit from our academic advisory group who seemed excited about progress, particularly emphasising the importance of the post-Roman activity within the fort. They were more sanguine about the 4th century date of the activity in the vicus, pointing out that Binchester could probably better be grouped with the forts and towns of Yorkshire where this might be expected, rather than being placed alongside the Wall forts, where vicus activity does decline earlier. We’ve also had plenty of other visitors, including school groups. We were particularly pleased to welcome a group from Tudhoe Grange School. I’d been into visit them previously to help them learn about archaeology and the Romans in County Durham. When they came out I gave them a tour of the fort and our excavation, and they helped us with the pot washing. Finally, yesterday, we were visited by Radio 3, with the popular history broadcaster, Bettany Hughes, who came along to find out about Binchester in the Roman period and the transition to the early medieval period in northern England for a forthcoming series.

The metalled gully; note the distinct bend!

Fragment of painted Crambeck ware (4th century AD) (Photo by Chris Breedon)

Season Two: Day Sixteen

2010-07-05T11:31:00.000-07:00

After a fallow week, during which site was quiet (apart from a passing visit by Mick Aston) activity recommenced with a vengeance today. We had a large number of people out today - 45 from the Dept. of Classics at Stanford, around 20 from Texas Tech and 20 members of the local community. This number of people can be a blessing, allowing us to crack on with a number of tasks. These include expanding both trenches. As noted earlier, Trench A is being expanded slightly to the south to allow us to include the southern end of the barrack building, whilst in Trench B we are expanding the trench slightly to the north to allow us a better understanding of the northern end of the strip building. The large workforce has also allowed us to make a real start on some of the basic post-excavation work, including the all important finds washing and processing. More to report soon

Season Two: Day Fifteen

2010-06-25T13:11:00.000-07:00

Today was the end of the Durham first year's time on site. We mainly spent the day getting all the loose ends wrapped up. Next week we are having a quiet week- there will be no work on site, although we are being visited by Mick Aston (of Time Team fame, as well as being well-regarded academic in his own right) - he is being awarded an Honorary Degree by Durham University next week. The key job now is to get every thing ready for the arrival of lots of new excavators in the week beginning July 5th- we have around 40 from Stanford and 20 from Texas Tech, as well as 20 members of the local community, so there will be no shortage of hands. This means we can get on with a couple of major jobs, particularly the initial clean of the rest of Trench B and removing the final areas of topsoil in Trench A. Having completed the latest stage of planning we will also be ready to really get stuck into some of the key areas in both trenches...just hope the weather holds.

Season Two: Day Fourteen

2010-06-24T13:34:00.001-07:00

Nearly the end of the three week stay of our Durham first year undergraduates. Lots of little jobs to finish off - context sheets needing completion and drawings and plans to get sorted. Work was rather slow today as lots of people had to complete various pieces of university paperwork and some people were back in the labs doing environmental processing. In Trench A we've really defined the floor surfaces within the southern end of the barrack block; we've been considering the possibility of extending the trench slightly to get the southern end of the building, although we'll need to talk to other members of the project team and our academic advisory group before we do this. The key thing is we've reached a stage where the layers of rubble that overlapped the building have now been removed and we can now clearly define the features that lie within the walls and those outside. This means that we can shortly proceed with getting stuck into the features within the barracks. We've also found at least one post-hole clearly cut into the walls. Is this a nice early medieval feature like the post-pads in a similar position at Birdoswald or something later? More importantly, are there any more? We can also now clearly see that the clay layer that is beneath the flagstones and can be found elsewhere within the building post-dates the cruder wall and is contemporary or later than the later walls. This clay later itself is then covered by flagstones in places. It does appear currently that the walls were at their current level by the time that the flagstones were laid; possibly our single post-hole may represent a later superstructure over the floor (and its associated clearly defined hollows containing probable industrial activity). So, we're starting to really define the relative chronology- all we need now are some hard dates. Given the lack of a diagnostic early medieval material culture suite for the 5th-6th centuries AD in this part of the country and the high degree of residuality of Roman material we may have to seek a series of C14 dates to tie this sequence down a little; close comparison with the sequences in the the forthcoming publication of the excavations in the commander's house will also be useful.

In Trench B, the planning is almost completed. More work on the strip building is revealing evidence of some internal surfaces and other probable features. Whilst outside work on the roadside gullies has revealed at least one small pit (which inevitably contained nothing...). Lots to do in the forthcoming weeks.

Season Two: Day Thirteen

2010-06-23T05:24:00.000-07:00

Another slow hot day. We knocked off early today for the football, but worked through lunch to ensure as little time as possible was lost (it looks like we are now, officially, 'not as bad as France'). More planning, but some interesting things appearing - we are getting more of the walls from the strip building in Trench B. In the same trench we've also noticed a small building seemingly running at a 45 degree angle to the other structures and the road.

We were also visited by a school group. We get a lot of members of the public visiting the site, as the excavations are open to anyone who comes to look at the fort. I have encouraged the students to take turns showing people around. Pleasingly, many of them have taken to it like a duck to water, showing hitherto unknown histrionic ability.

Season Two: Day Twelve

2010-06-23T05:11:00.000-07:00

Work is slow on site as we do lots of planning, so I though it be worth flagging up some of the other things going on with the project. One key aspect that will become increasingly important is the environmental aspect of the site. To date we've mainly been working on the highest layers cleaning and planning so we've been taking relatively few samples. However, as we start digging more features we are increasingly taking samples of soil for more detailed analysis to look for plant macrofossils, small animal bones etc back in our labs in Durham. In general, preservation does not appear to be great; we have quite acid soils and the site is very well drained as we sit on a gravel plateau. This means that we don't have many moist an-aerobic deposits which preserve organic remains. Sadly, this means we are unlikely to every find the "Binchester Tablets"- nonetheless, the large ditch may well preserve organic remains better and it is always possible we might find some wells (the whole issue of water supply is a vexed one). To prepare the students for future work on environmental archaeology, today we had a number of our BSc students in the labs having an introduction to environmental archaeology from Jacqui Huntley, the English Heritage Regional Science Advisor. We were also joined by members of our partner, the Archaeological and Architectural Society of Durham and Northumberland, who will get the chance to spend the next few days working wiht our students in the labs.

Season Two: Day Eleven

2010-06-21T13:09:00.000-07:00

Another scorching hot day. We're continue to plan in Trench B, but we're also continuing to explore the gully along the north side of the road. Its probably of quite a late date, but contains some interesting furrows/ruts. Their relationship to some of the walls we've been assuming were Roman is unclear as they don't appear to cut them. Are the walls much later than we think? Elsewhere, having finished planning parts of the trench we're beginning to go back and investigate some of the previously identified features, including the large stone strip building. As ever, plenty of finds. In Trench A it is becoming clear that there appears to be some chronological implication in the different types of masonry construction in the main barrack building. It seems that the nice wall with stone facing and rubble core may sit on an earlier phase of less sophisticated walling; we don't think these are foundations, but are more likely an earlier wall fabric. Elsewhere, flagging is emerging to the south of the area of post-medieval activity cutting the barrack. It now appears that the flagging may have covered much of the southern half of the building, but was cut by a later (post-medieval feature). We can also see a probable earlier clay floor beneath the flagstones, which appear to sat on, rather than embedded in it.

Season Two: Day Ten

2010-06-20T12:33:00.001-07:00

Well, it’s the end of week two and things are really progressing on site, helped by a spell of really good weather. In Trench A within the fort, we’re starting to get a much more detailed understanding of the sheer complexity of the late activity on the barrack block. We’re starting to show the variations in the basic build of the wall in more places than we had last year, and its looks increasingly, as we expected, that we are very much looking at the last phase of a complex and long-lived building. It appears that the flag-stone floor is one of the very latest stages of activity within the building; it doesn’t seem to have been part of the main late Roman occupation layer. We are also starting to look at the features cut into the floor of the compartment at the north end of the building – we’ve already found that the stone-lined channel gets significantly deeper as it heads east and appears to be overlain by an area of later paving.

In Trench B I think the main story of the last fortnight, and perhaps the most important conclusion so far, is that activity in the vicus goes on well into the later 4th century. It is generally assumed that vici fell out of use in the late 3rd century or early 4th century. However, here at Binchester, we are getting plenty of good evidence, particularly coinage and plenty of late pottery (such as Crambeck Ware and calcite-gritted ware) that the vicus was still in use well into the mid/late 4th century. The big question of course is, how late did it go? Into the 5th century?

Season Two: Day Nine

2010-06-17T15:12:00.000-07:00

Another hot day on site; wilting spirits were improved by shameless bribery with some of Asda's finest cheap ice lollies... More slow work planning and recording. The removal of the balk in Trench A has been completed with (surprise surprise) more rubble surfaces revealed. In this Trench the most exciting progress has been in the re-excavation of the previous trench in the corner turret, with the first hints of surviving coursed masonry beginning to appear (see picture). More drawing and recording in Trench B, although some more cleaning and excavation has been going on. In an area to the west of the patch of large flagstones, the edge of another stone appears to have been tipped up and is clearly disappearing under the later road surface (don't forget these high layers of Dere Street are probably post-medieval in date - the Roman levels of the road are probably a good metre below our current level).

Season Two: Day Eight

2010-06-16T09:54:00.000-07:00

Just a short one as I've been off site for most of the day. Lots of planning going on today, with the students honing their archaeological recording skills. Once this phase of recording is completed, we'll be in a position to start moving forward again. I'm particularly excited about getting a better understanding of the floors and other features at the south of the barrack. Meanwhile, in the north-east corner of the site we are still grappling with Steer's trench. In Trench B we've also unncovered a surface comprising a number of very large flagstones. which seem to be overlapped by the later road surfaces of Dere Street. More cleaning is needed to reveal its full extent.

Season Two: Day Seven

2010-06-15T10:16:00.001-07:00

Work on site was fairly humming along today- good weather and plenty of people made for a busy excavation. In Trench A we are still unpicking the sequence associated with the post-medieval activity area and also trying to get a handle on the flag-stone floor in the central compartment of the structure, which now looks like it might be quite late. There are also clearly a number of features associated with the floor itself and the two probable sub-Roman scoops/pits. Its going to take a lot of careful work to work out the precise sequence of events here. Elsewhere, the excavation of the earlier trench associated with the corner turret continues; but is it Steer’s trench or possibly a feature cut by Hooppell – we need to go back and look at some of the earlier reports in more detail. In Trench B its mainly a case of planning uncovered areas and cleaning back to identify features, particularly along the edge of the road and in the main building. Some nice finds, including a red glass bead and some copper alloy pins.

Season Two: Day Six

2010-06-14T09:47:00.001-07:00

Back to the grindstone after the weekend; as it was raining the students spent some of the morning learning how to fill in context sheets. The weather then cleared and we were able to get on with some constructive work on site. In Trench A, the area of post-medieval disturbance in the south-east corner of the barrack building appears to be resolving itself into some kind of smaller building building inside or over the late Roman structure. It may have been associated with the metal working as we found slag and other industrial residue in the area last year. Elsewhere the re-excavation of Steer's trench revealed what appeared to be a drill bit, possibly used by the pre-War archaeologists ('the archaeology of archaeology...'). More generally, Trench A has seen the continued excavation and recording of late features. The stone lined gulley within the main building has been further uncovered showing that it appears to be dipping down to the east; it is possible it may even go under the external barrack wall (although this will need further work to clarify). It also produced a rather nice little bone disc, possibly a gaming counter. In Trench B in the vicus there has been more cleaning and planning. The range of material coming from this area is very interesting - plenty of coins, but also more signs of craft and industry to compliment the possible glass working reported last week. Most notably we may have evidence for the working of jet and shale. One of the bracelets found last week appeared to be unfinished, whilst we found several small tablets of shale of a type used for working today (clearly different from the natural stones found on site). The image at the top of the page is of a nice little copper alloy head; intriguingly it weights almost excactly one ounce. Could it have been used as a weight?

Season Two: Day Five

2010-06-11T11:56:00.000-07:00

Well, we've got to the end of the first week. The weather was far kinder today, even a bit of proper sun in the afternoon. In Trench A, we've ceased cleaning and are now focussing on excavating features. We're tackling some of the gullies and other features that cut into the intra-vallum roadway in an attempt to clarify their sequence. Meanwhile, we're also looking at the area to the west of the main barrack, we never really addressed properly last year. After a good titivate over the last couple of days we'll be ready to plan it next week. In the corner curret we also think we've identified the trench dug by Kenneth Steer in the 1930s and we've begun to re-excavate it. This will allow us to see some interesting stratigraphy in section. In Trench B we have made the decision not to take the entire area down at the same level; instead we are focussing on a number of sub-areas within it. This is partly to enable us to get a sense of stratigraphy as we crack on into the key features quickly and avoids having to spend excessive amounts of time cleaning. It will also give the students a chance to experience all aspects of excavation in their three weeks with us. The relationship of some of the structures to the roadway is becoming clearer now. It is clear that the Roman street frontage is further towards Dere Street than I thought earlier on in the week, and in places the later layers of the road run over the top of the Roman walls. We've got at least one nicely preserved stone walled strip building runnning back from Dere Street with evidence for a hearth inside it and another possible hearth or industrial oven next to it. Excitingly, we recovered a blob of molten white glass from this structure today- are we going to find evidence for Roman glass working?

Season Two: Day Four

2010-06-10T09:49:00.000-07:00

Better weather today- no rain, but a stiff wind particularly in the morning (at least it will help people to dry out). On Trench A we have been doing more cleaning, but also starting to excavate features identified last years. This includes tackling one of the large scoops within the main barrack block, as well as trying to better understand some of the cut gullies that cross the cobbled area. Interestingly the layer of stones that looked like it was part of the fort defences is now more compllicated. Rather than running the entire length of the northern edge of the trench it is smaller and has a fragment of north-south wall at the east end; its looking more like a feature built into the rampart than an integral part of the defence.

In Trench B we've been cleaning back; we've marked out a series of sub-areas which we are focusing on, including one of the structures and parts of the road surface. The students did great work cleaning these up and hopefully planning should start tomorrow. Plenty of good finds- more coins, bangles (glass and jet/shale) and a lovely piece of 4th century Crambeck Ware mortaria with a painted decoration.

Season Two: Day Three

2010-06-09T09:18:00.000-07:00

Another rainy day- generally ok in the morning, but it set in heavy in mid-afternoon. Nonetheless, the students showed real application in working through most of the bad weather. The site is certainly looking better for some moisture, and the combination of dampness and a good clean is really bringing up the features quite nicely. No major development- cleaning continued apace (as did the discovery of small finds). The surface of Dere Street in Trench B is being given a good going over and the top layers are coming up very nicely. Elsewhere the extent of walls are becoming clearer, although worryingly more cobbles are appearing...On Trench A more is being taken off the northern edge of the trench, where stones associated with the rampart are becoming very clear. Elsewhere, we are going back in cleaning areas exposed last year to get a better insight on what needs to be done in the weeks ahead.

Season Two: Day Two

2010-06-08T13:27:00.000-07:00

A bit wetter today, which actually helped with the cleaning. The students did a stirling job working through the County Durham drizzle. In Trench A there was more cleaning back of the northern side of the area. Although there is still more to take off, real progress is being made. The clay floor of the probable turret is looking really nice- a rare opportunity to actually have the floor level of a feature like this. As we reach the northern edge of the trench we now also appear to be reaching a stoney strip which is presumably part of the rampart and wall.

In Trench B, we completed the first complete clean and got ready for some photographs. Small finds include a nice jet(?) bead, a glass gaming counter and a trumpet brooch, as well as several coins. It appears as if we have two zones of building: some probable post-pads and some relatively light walls which seem to intrude into the road surface (which is probably medieval/post-medieval in date), whilst further north there appear to be a number of features, including one structure and a probable oven which may comprise the Roman street frontage. Of course, this may all turn out to be incorrect, time will tell.