Dig Diary - Day Three
Rachel isn’t writing this for a change, she will be back on Friday to keep you entertained though. For today you will have to make do with my writing. The weather this morning seemed to promise the most beautiful of days. That is until everyone started working; drizzle began and got heavier until everyone ran for waterproofs, at which point the weather decided that it had had its fun and got down to the aforementioned good weather.
Work has begun on trench 9 today. But the most impressive finds were in trench 8: A “Nuremberg Jetton”, imported from Germany sometime between the fourteenth and seventeenth centuries, a sixteenth or seventeenth century pipe-bowl which is in rather good condition and two cast balls; either pistol balls or quite small musket balls. The “Jetton” was a copper token used in small areas, this was due to the fact that the currency of the time consisted of gold and silver coinage. Landlords or someone locally would mint or import such tokens to be used for small transactions. These transactions would normally have been with his own tenants or at least very local. Other than these more interesting finds, more pieces of bone, glazed pottery, unglazed pottery and glass slag have been found. Also, I personally found two pieces of what appears to be a very recent, unglazed flowerpot.
As time goes on and more is uncovered, we are slowly building a more comprehensive picture of where the walls and drains are located.
Also, for those people who checked the web-cam over the last two days; you can look again as the camera has been moved to beside trench 8 instead of in the window of the hall. This means that the view has changed from a long line of behinds to people digging in a trench. I believe this will make a very large difference to your viewing pleasure.
Remember that anyone is free to come and volunteer for a few days on the dig. Good evening and good luck,
Dominic.
