End of week 2

End of week 2! This week has been harder than last week, not least because of the weather. The key task for the latter end of the week has been cracking on with the planning of the site. As much of the site consists of spreads of rubble and cobble surfaces, often intermingled, this process has taken some time. Also, as this is a training excavation, each student has had to be taught the principles behind planning. However, excavation has continued elsewhere on site. Today we commenced to half-section the second of the large dark features that lay inside the barrack block. The first of these features has, so far, only produced late medieval ceramics. So far this has not been repeated in the newly excavated feature, which is, however, producing reasonably large quantities of animal bone, including the sawn-off tip of a deer antler. Significantly, this feature has produced no medieval material, only Roman pottery and a 4th century coin, so it seems likely to be late or sub-Roman.

Binchester Day 9

Unfortunately, as I had to spend most of the day in meetings I spent a grand total of about 15 minutes on site today, and that was more or less first thing this morning. As a consequence I'm not able to blog about today's progress in the field (although I'll do a catch up tomorrow). Instead I thought I'd mention some of the progress we're starting to make on the archival/historical research for the project. The current Binchester Hall was built in 1835 replacing an earlier structure which lay slightly to the east. It was probably demolished as it was getting perilously close to the edge of the slope leading down to the Wear, which we know was actively suffering landslips in the 19th century. Although we've always been aware of the earlier Binchester Hall, we've not known anything about its appearance. However, I've now come across an image of the Hall drawn in the 18th century (see above) on the excellent Pictures in Print website. It comes from an engraving of Auckland Castle made by Samuel Buck in 1728. Binchester can be seen lying in the background of an image of Auckland Castle, the palace of the Bishops of Durham. It shows the hall as having a central range and two gable-ended wings at either side, and a separate structure (chapel? farm house?) lying to the east. Other things to note are the lack of tree cover on the hill slope and the fact that the Wear runs tight by the base of the hill. These probably explain the problems with landslips. The fact that the slopes now have a cover of thick woodland and the river has changed course slightly help explain why the hillside has stabilised.

Binchester Day Eight

Unfortunately another rather wet day on site. However, the team have coped brilliantly and perservered with the rain throughout the day, although progress has not been as fast as we'd hoped. Inevitably the site was a little muddy today, but this has not stopped planning beginning. We've now reached the stage where much of the site needs to be drawn before we can commence removing further layers.

Binchester day Seven

I didn’t get to spend as much time on site as I’d hoped today due to the demands of getting my car repaired and the joys of paperwork. However, when I did get out my first reaction was relief; despite the ridiculous amount of rain we had yesterday the site had not turned into a quagmire. The advantage of digging a site on the top of gravel plateau is that it drains well; though if we get a sustained period of hot and dry weather it’s going to become a dustbowl.

Work continued apace. Personally I feel the most confusing feature is the large dark feature in the middle of the barrack block. We’d been optimistically hoping it was an early medieval sunken-featured building/grübenhaus. However, so far its only revealing late medieval green glazed pottery If this was just in tiny fragments I think we’d be happy that they were simply related to medieval manuring. However, they are appearing in large chunks and at depths below the level of the walls of the presumed Roman barrack. How did this material arrive here? Was the feature actually of late or post-medieval date. It is conceivable that it was cut from a high level but the top of the feature had been destroyed by post-medieval ploughing meaning that we only picked it up at the level it cut the late/sub-Roman deposits; I think we need to revisit the topographic survey and see whether there is any evidence for a large feature cut through the ridge and furrow which appeared to seal the site.

Binchester Day Six

Now we've concluded that the rubble layer over some of the site is a natural feature, much of today was spent removing it to allow us to better understand the layers beneath it. In the course of this a number of nice finds came up, including a fragment of painted glass (I'm not sure of the date; it didn't 'feel' Roman to me, perhaps med or post-med, but I'm not a glass expert) and more excitingly a headless pipeclay figurine of Venus (I'll put an image up as soon as I can, but you can see very similar example from Canterbury- only with a head- here.

I can't give much more detail about today's progress as I spent much of the day taking a group of students around the local area exploring the wider archaeological context of the fort and its surroundings. The day ended early due to a thunder storm accompanied by ferocious rain and hail- I've been working in the north east for a long time now and I'd never seen rain that heavy. The big question is whether the site will be waterlogged tomorrow or will it have drained away.

Finds update

We've just had some photos done f some of the finds from the first stages of the excavation, so this is just a quick review of the some of the best discoveries so far.


Roman enamelled stud


Fragment of snake thread vessel - luxury c2nd C glass (id by J Price)


Enamelled brooch or seal box lid


Samian with later scratched decoration/doodle


Rim frag of late 2nd/ early 3rd C painted glass cup, may have part of fish design below red/yellow twisted band (J Price)


Coins (obverse)

Coins (reverse)

And some notes on the coin courtesy of our coin specialist Philippa Walton
"From top left coin going clockwise they are:

1) a copy of an VRBS ROMA nummus, AD 330-335 (House of Constantine)
2) a nummus of the House of Constantine, 2 soldiers 2 standards reverse, AD 330-335, Trier mint
3) A denarius of Otho, AD 69. This is an interesting coin. It's a variant on an aureus type (RIC 20 var) and is only the third one known, the others being a example from France (BN III, 25) and a PAS record BH-F5BD67!
4) A nummus of the House of Constantine, Victories with wreath on altar, AD 318-324, Trier mint"

Binchester Day 5

Its the end of the first week and a good chance to review the weeks progress. The first thing to say is that the site is much more complicated now than when we started, though this is a good thing. What appeared to be a relatively simple rectangular stone building has proved to be complex and hard to understand. Although we are still cleaning back and defining it, it is clear that there are many phases of surfaces associated with it. It has also been robbed out in places. There also seem to be places where possible post pads have been cut into the walls. Are these real? They certainly bear a passing resemblance to similar features associated with the post-Roman re-use of the Roman granaries at Birdoswald. However, dating them will be a challenge; the early medieval period in the North is a-ceramic and lacking coins, so these features are likely to only contain residual Roman material.

The structure we initially thought was a ballista platform is also far more complex; we now have a hypothesis that the layer of cobbles that covers this area is actually an artefact of ploughing causing the natural sorting of rocks within the soil. Beneath this cobbled layer, however, is at least one structure of uncertain date.

The real work is still to come- although we've come a long way in cleaning, refining and defining the features beneath the topsoil, we've made very little progress in starting to excavated these features. Even in the centre of the barrack block we're still recovering large fragments of late medieval pottery which shows we are still removing the base of the topsoil (though I'm not sure we've resolved the issue of where the pot is ultimately coming from).