Month: May 2019

Post Excavation: Finds

Today is gonna be a quick one because I ended up missing half the day due to not feeling great when I woke up. Made it in for the afternoon though!

Post-excavation finds processing involves a lot of different elements such as working out what kind of artefact it is, sorting everything by context and working out how best to preserve it. However, by far the most time consuming task is washing. This is where the finds from each context bag (that are filled on site) are washed with water and a toothbrush. They are then labelled (as a group, in this case we kept them in labelled trays, see the photos below) and taken away for further processing and storage.

  • Washing some pottery.
  • The trays of clean finds.

Although this seems like a straightforward task there is some things that can complicate the process. For example you need to make sure that the item you’re looking at is suitable for water cleaning. Things like metal, wood and charcoal need to be cleaned in a specialised manor specific to their makeup. Most of what gets cleaned (especially from a Roman dig) is pot sherds but you will also get some CBM (ceramic building material), bone and other items. You will also come across the occasional stone that has been added by accident.

That’s all I have for finds processing. If you’re interested in this kind of thing you can see the video I made with Caitlin our finds officer in a previous post (it’s worth checking out she’s great).

See you next time,

~Amy 🙂

Post Excavation: Environmental

As anyone who has worked in archaeology will know: the real work takes place after the excavation. All the samples, records, finds, photos, drawings ect. all need to be sorted, information extracted from them, and turned into a useful form that can later be published. This week I will be taking part in three days where I join in some of the post-excavation work that is necessary when you’ve done digging. This is just a tiny glimpse into the work that is done so please remember that this can take years!

We started off the day by sorting environmental samples. When on site samples of the soil are taken from different areas (known as contexts) and back at the lab (in our case this is King’s Manor in York) they are processed. One of the later stages of the process is looking at some of the stone, seed, charcoal, fossil, plant ect. remains that are from these samples. To do that you sieve your sample and a few different grains and then take whatever comes out at each grain and then sort it by type. You do this by looking down a microscope to identify it and then sorting it into petri-dishes. These are then weighed and the finds recorded. It is extremely close work, breathing too hard can mess it all up, it takes a lot of time and patience but can be important to work out what kind of environment the context was and therefore what might have happened there.

  • The soil under a microscope ready to be sorted.
  • Some of the star-shaped plant fossils. The darker one is burned.

The afternoon we spent doing one of the earlier stages of environmental processing which is essential cleaning mud (stick with me). All of our samples that were taken from the site in Malton are first floated. This means that we take a large tub of water (it’s more specialised than that but that’s the basics of it) and add in a large sheet of fabric that acts like a filter (think of it like a teabag or coffee filter). The sample is then added to the water and, with the help of hands mixing it up a bit, the debris inside the soil is floated to the top and the soil itself sinks through the fabric sieve. The stuff that floats off the top (snail shell, roots, charcoal) is collected, whatever remains in the sieve (sand, gravel) is collected and all the soil that falls through is discarded. This is all done by hand so is very wet and muddy! It didn’t help that the heavens opened half way through us doing this. I didn’t manage to get many photos because my hands were too muddy (there’s still dirt under my fingernails as I type this) but this is the best I can do!

  • Draining some of the water our to be discarded.
  • Rinsing the fabric sieve down for use again.

So that’s the basics of what we did on our environmental day. The next day will be ‘finds’ so stay tuned for more info when that comes out!

~Amy 🙂

What happens to all the finds?

This week I’m talking to Caitlin our finds officer about what happens to everything we find. From when we find it in the ground to what happens to it back at the University. She also shows us some of the cool stuff we’ve found and tells us a little about it!

Big shout out to Caitlin for helping me make this video, I think it might be my favourite one so far!

Thanks for watching!

~Amy 🙂

Days 16-20

It’s the last week so here’s my final wrap up! There will still be things on this blog so don’t back out just yet but it is the end of the Malton excavation unfortunately. It’s been gorgeous weather all week (almost too good, it’s hard to work in this heat!) so enjoy some sunny shots. It’s such a contrast to the storm in week 2!

Day 16

I had a great time on Monday. We did some site tours all morning and it was so great to share the amazing work we’ve been doing with some of the local people. Everyone was really nice and enthusiastic and I love seeing the general public getting excited about archaeology!

In the afternoon we went into Malton to distribute the newsletter we’ve been working on. I also took some photos of the posters we put up last week.

  • ‘Look over there a bird!’
  • Caitlin giving us a finds talk.
  • Pretending I know what I’m talking about.
  • It’s only official if you have high-vis.
  • Am an archaeologist yet?
  • My guests were great at posing.
  • Archaeologists venture outside the trench.
  • Spot the poster!
  • The most aesthetic place to put the poster.

Day 17

I spent the morning being a ‘real’ archaeologist troweling some rocks then I went off to film with Caitlin the finds officer (thanks again Caitlin!) I also took a huge horse mandible (jaw) out which was fun. Video feat Caitlin coming soon!

The trench was so hot and dry that a tiny shadow cast by a wall was inhabited by some burrowing bees. I hope they vacate before friday or they have a soily surprise coming their way!

  • The horse manible.
  • Our buzzy trench.

Day 18

We had the day off today. Rather than editing videos all day like I planned to I ended up having to go into town to get a new pair of prescription sunglasses because mine broke on Monday! I also ended up buying an everyday pair as well because specsavers had an offer on. Turns out I won’t be able to pick up my sunglasses till Monday so I bought ANOTHER emergency pair from Tiger. Came out to get one pair and I came back with three! Got some Ice Cream as well so all in all it was a great day. Enjoy these photos of me trying on my glasses via photos so I could send them to my mum.

  • Emergency Tiger glasses feat Ice Cream
  • Spot the broken sunglasses on my shirt.
  • I hope they don’t come with this green sticker.

Day 19

In the morning we had a lovely visit from the local montessori nursery. It was great to see the kids so enthusiastic, we’ll make archaeologists of them yet! In the afternoon I was giving tours to some people who came a long to say hello, we had a meeting about what us heritage lot are going to do once we’ve finished the excavation and then I was filming student interviews for this blog! I was very very busy all day so no photos I’m afraid.

Day 20

Last day! It was a weird day on site, everyone trying to get everything finished on time and we were rushing about trying to get the last little bit of content for heritage (thanks to everyone who took time out their very busy to talk to us, much appreciated) and Steve Roskams (site manager) was giving tours and we had quite a few members of the public coming a long asking what we were doing. All in all it was very busy. It was a little sad seeing everything being put away from the last time and knowing that in a few days all our hard work will be covered up again. Even trench-cat came along to say bye! We’ll miss you Malton!

  • Bye trench cat you’ll be missed.
  • Some of the heritage gang.
  • Day Twenty.
  • A dice found at the very last minute!
  • Day one.

Although that might be the end of the excavation the work is nowhere near done! As far as this blog goes I have a bunch of other videos and posts I want to make. As a year group we had post-excavation processing days to go to and as a department there is still so much sorting and processing that needs doing, it could take months! Stay tuned on here to hear about what we’re doing because there is still more to come!

Thanks for sticking with me this far.

~Amy 🙂

Excavation Timelapse

This week the video is a fun one. Not much in terms of education and heritage but visually I think it’s pretty informative about how we do things on an everyday basis. Though please bare in mind that this is just an hour and halfs work in a dig that’s taking roughly 200 hours. Also this is just one team out of nine. I think it really does demonstrate how long excavation can take and how much hard works goes into archaeology in the field! So next time you think ‘wow that’s all they did in four weeks?!’ take a second to think about this video.

That’s all for today I hope you enjoyed and I’ll see you on friday!

~Amy 🙂

Interpretation in Trench 9

Although we’ve had three full weeks on site so far we’re only just finishing the second week of looking at the archaeology of the trench that I’m working in at the moment. That means that we finally have an idea of what’s going on, this is gonna be a long one so without further ado this is what we have in Trench 9:

(however if you want ‘further ado’ you can check out my post called ‘Introduction to the Site’ which talks a little more about the context we’re working in).

As a geordie lass I think it’s appropriate that we start in the north.

We have a pile of rubble (it’s a ROMAN pile of rubble if that makes it more exciting). I jest, it’s actually pretty interesting. We think it’s something that has collapsed during the last phase of occupation (rubble is marked out in red). The lines marked in yellow are not a feature but rather the marks from last years excavation. The area in blue at the back where the two women are working is currently very interesting because it is producing a lot of finds such as nails, glass, bones and teeth. There is also some long scratch marks over the whole thing and these are caused by medieval ploughing.

Interpretation: there is a couple of things that this could mean. The rubble is most likely from something collapsed: maybe a building, could this have collapsed after it was abandoned? Did it happen while it was in use? Could there have been anyone in the building when it collapsed? Another idea is that it could have been a surface that might have been used to walk on as a yard or the floor of a building.

You can see the depth of the rubble here.

Moving a bit further south we have the antiquarian trench (marked in red). This was a trench made from an excavation in 1927 than runs through the fort and into the vicus (check out my post ‘Introduction to the Site’ for more info on what a vicus is). It pretty much cuts straight through our rubble pile. Although this might appear to be a negative thing is simply adds another layer to the history of our trench and it also leaves the opportunity to look at some of the beautiful stratigraphy. Stratigraphy is the different layers that are laid on top of each other over the years: think of it like lasagna, which has lots of different layers that you can see when you cut it. In order to get a better look at this strat (as it’s known it’s the business) a box trench was cut into the side last year (marked in yellow). The blue is a great example of some simple strat: the darker stuff is topsoil that was used to fill the trench when they finished the dig last year, then there’s a black tarp separating that from the archaeology underneath.

Let’s talk about this strat for a second. So the layers we’re looking at are:

  • Rubble: possibly caused by a collapsed building
  • Thin Red: stone can turn red in two ways. The first is just by wear and tear, people walking on it, exposed to the elements ect. The second way is by heating/burning.
  • Yellow: this is most likely a layer or mortar from brickwork
  • Black: unclear on what has caused this but it looks like it might be charcoal from a fire or a natural deposit that has turned to charcoal over time
  • Thicker Red: see above
  • Yellow: see above

Below the antiquarian trench we have something a little exciting! The main feature you can see is a wall which ends a lot earlier on than expected (marked in blue) and where it starts to disappear there is some sort of soil deposit (marked in yellow) along with a mysterious pit (green). On the other side of the trench there is a stone structure that is producing a lot of red burned stone (marked in red).

Interpretation: the wall deposit and pit is thought to be a robber’s trench. This is what happens when someone digs through a wall to get to whatever is inside. This is most likely to steal the stone for use in their own buildings but this could also be someone looting the items inside the building. This probably happened after the end of occupation on the site. The stone structure is thought to have been a kiln as there is burned stone and no sign of metal work.

If there’s a kiln that means that there would have been fire and heat. Is this what caused the red and black layer in the strat? Maybe that’s how the building collapsed? Could a fire have destroyed these buildings?Was anyone hurt? Was it done on purpose?

Beyond this is just a sheet of rubble that we believe is on top of a cobbled surface. It leads into trench 8.

What do you think we have going on here: let me know your interpretations in the comments. If we find out anything new and exciting that might influence these interpretations I’ll make a new post so keep an eye out for that in the next couple weeks. See you next time,

~Amy 🙂

Days 11-15

It’s the end of week 3 of excavation which means it’s time for another update!

Day 11

This was a bank holiday monday so not much happened today. I wrote some blog posts and edited a video: all of which should be out by now so go check them out!

The thumbnail for my video: check out my previous post to watch it.

Day 12

We’re back in the trench! Though it has poured with rain all day which is a downside. In the morning we were mainly just cleaning off the rubble (still) but things are starting to get moving and hopefully we should be able to see all the features soon. In the morning the weather wasn’t too bad but in the afternoon the heavens opened and we all had to hide for a little until it passed. We had a meeting about heritage plans and I spoke to my trench supervisor (Ian) about what we’re seeing at the moment. They’ll be a full post about current interpretation of Trench 9 sometime next week.

  • Huddling Archaeologists.
  • Trench 9 Progress.
  • A Roman gaming counter: maybe made of Jet?
  • The trench plan from trench 9 last year.
  • A large animal bone about to be removed.
  • Bryony and her counter.
  • A lovely piece of Roman pottery with a rim.

Day 13

Excavation was called off today due to the weather! Usually Wednesday is an optional day anyway and doesn’t contribute towards assessment (most of the Archaeology course has the excavation as their assessment but us Heritage lot don’t) so it hasn’t made too much of a difference in terms of schedule. I spent my day working on blog posts, society stuff and I had an interview! Wish me luck!

Heritage in action! Isn’t this meta?

Day 14

Back in the muddy trench today. Started planning a feature in the trench which is difficult in the rain as it’s done with pencil and paper but then I got whisked away for some heritage tasks so luckily I didn’t have to struggle for too long! We worked on a booklet for children potentially visiting the site next week and poster for the public site tours. In the afternoon we got some filming done and took this majestic photo of me and Rose on the spoil heap (you can check out Rose’s blog at
https://horribleheritage.home.blog/ ). You can view the activity sheet below but I will make a post with all available resources closer to the end of our course.

  • Surveying our trench like true archaeologists.
  • Enjoying a Costa break to make the booklet.
  • Some onsite filming.
  • Watching over my domain.
  • Details for the upcoming site tours.

Day 15

I had a great time today! Spend the morning trowelling and interviewing Caitlin the finds officer. Some of the stuff we’ve found is really amazing and I wish I could talk about it here but there’s rules about sharing things while it’s still on site so I might have to wait! We then spent the afternoon at the library planning and deciding what we’re doing for the public tours over the next week. A great end to the week. Shout out to Malton Library for letting us take over the corner of your floor.

  • Our heritage gang!

That marks the end of week three! See you on monday for an exciting site interpretation post,

~Amy 🙂

Archaeology Student Q + A

I asked some of you guys on Instagram what questions you have for an Archaeology student and here are your answers! I hope you enjoy the video and if you have any other questions then please let me know. If I get enough I might make a part two. During the video I am playing with the Tiger ‘excavation kit’ which lets you pretend to excavate a dinosaur (yes I address archaeology vs paleontology in the video). It was fun at first but then I got bored and my hand started to bleed so I gave up with the small tools you get and used a hammer instead. The small one was fun though! This is in no way connected to Tiger I just thought it was a nice idea and if you want to buy one you can get it at your local ‘Flying Tiger Copenhagen’ shop.

So I take you’ve watched the video now? Great! In it I mentioned a question from Jay that went like this: ‘I’m starting next year doing Cultural Heritage Management! What’s the department like? Any hints and tips?’ and I thought this was an interesting question that needed a more in depth answer. As far as ‘hints and tips’ go I think this interactive YouTube game I made for the department last year will be helpful. You can check it out here:
https://blogs.york.ac.uk/student-voices/2019/01/20/day-life-archaeology-student/ and you can also check out my article about things to look forward to as an archaeology student here:
https://blogs.york.ac.uk/student-voices/2019/02/25/3-things-to-look-forward-to-archaeology/

I asked some of my fellow students what they think in response to this question and I got a few replies! Here a some of them:

  • ‘Get books quickly they’re gobbled up fast!’
  • ‘Your lecturers are your friends!! Get involved with what they’re up to and you’ll definitely have a great time.’
  • ‘It’s hard work, a lot of fun, go to the pub trips after lectures they’re really informative. Quite hands on. Very interesting.’
  • ‘Studying archaeology at York is one of the best things I ever chose to do. It’s not like other universities, studying at King’s Manor is so unique and refreshing to learn in.’

This is the link to the article about the hand that I mentioned in the video:
https://www.vindolanda.com/news/bronze-hand-discovery and here are the links to the reports on the Archaeology industry:
https://www.prospects.ac.uk/job-profiles/archaeologist
https://www.archaeologists.net/sites/default/files/Archaeological%20Market%20Survey%202017-18.pdf
https://www.archaeology.co.uk/advice/careers-in-archaeology/getting-started/how-much-do-archaeologists-earn.htm

That’s all for today. I hope you enjoyed I had a great time making this video, please leave any feedback down in the comments! See you next time,

~Amy 🙂

Introduction to the Site

So I’ve talked a little about me and about what it’s like to work on the site so I guess it’s about time to talk about the site itself!

All the information for this post came from the University of York and if you wish to find out more then come along to Steve Roskam’s site tour on the 13th. Disclaimer: the excavation at Malton is ongoing and therefore anything that is said here it to the best of the departments knowledge and it may, in time, change due to new information.

Let’s start with the basics: where is Malton?

Malton is a small town on the river Derwent outside York. Most children in area will visit it at least once on a school trip because it is also home to ‘Eden Camp’: a prisoner of war camp turned interactive museum.

The red pin is Malton and the blue dot is the University.

The site we are working on is known as ‘Orchard Fields’ and it is next door to the old lodge. The lodge is a 17th century tudor mansion that was once the gatehouse for larger building that stood behind it that doesn’t exist anymore. The story goes that the two sisters who inherited the building couldn’t agree on who got to own it and it was decided that they would split the building: literally. However what is more likely is that the sister’s sold the house because they had no use for it: either way the gatehouse is currently all that survives. You can find out more about the lodge here:
http://www.theoldlodgemalton.co.uk/

Image of the lodge house taken from
http://www.maltoncastlegarden.org.uk/history

Next door to the lodge is the large field known as ‘Orchard Fields’ which is the home of a Roman fort. If you know anything about Roman forts you will know that often what arises around them is a small town or village called a ‘vicus’ which would house all the non-military folk associated with the fort. This could be the wives and children of the soldiers, the merchants who made their clothes or even the retired military-men. These vicus exist around many major Roman forts across the UK. This is site that we are currently excavating on. You can learn more about that here:
https://www.archaeology.co.uk/tag/roman-vicus

995344_958800934205322_6775897609911619406_n.jpg
Image of the fort taken from
http://www.maltoncastlegarden.org.uk/history

Our excavations focus is around the Roman road that led from the north into the fort as this seems to be where the vicus is centralised. We have trenches open on both sides of the road with the aim being to work out how the settlement changed as it got further away from that central point. Currently we’re not 100% sure what the time of occupation was but there seems to be some evidence that it was occupied during the 2nd century and possibly was still in use after the end of Roman occupation of Britain. You can find out more here:
http://www.maltoncastlegarden.org.uk/history

Red: our trench. Blue: the fort. Yellow: the lodge. Image taken from
https://www.webbaviation.co.uk/aerial/picture.php?/25381/tags/10-photo

Unfortunately, the site is under a farm and therefore has a lot of ploughing damage which is making it hard to diagnose so features at the moment. However by the end of this excavation period we should have a better idea of what some of them are and some interesting questions are already being raised about the nature of the site.

That’s about all we know for now. I would highly recommend coming along to the site tour next Monday if you can make it because it will go into the features we’ve found in much more depth. If you have any specific questions then please let me know and I’ll do my best to answer them,

~Amy 🙂

Days 1-10

So we’ve reached the end of week two so now seems like a great time to update you all with what’s been going on!

First off: for a quick introduction I’m working on the very top trench. We’re not 100% sure what we’re looking at just yet but we do know we have some sort of rubble surface or collapsed building (aka an unarticulated pile of rocks) with a wall running to the south that may or may not be linked to something further down. We also have an old trench from the 1930s cutting through everything which has left us with excellent access to the stratigraphy (the layers in the soil which can be used to see how different aspects of the site build on top of each other) and from this we can see a red layer and black layer, though we’ve not 100% sure what caused them yet.

Day 1-3

Monday was a bank holiday so we had a late start but the first couple of days were largely similar. We spent most of the time removing topsoil which involves loosening it with a mattock and then shovelling it away to the soilheap. It’s very labour intensive work but it has to be done!

  • Our trench at the beginning of day one.
  • An oyster shell, could a Roman have eaten this?
  • One of the many clay pipes.
  • A bone of some sort (I’m not an expert sorry).
  • Our finds tray from the day one topsoil.
  • Mattacking injuries.
  • Archaeology isn’t all dusty books and brushing rocks!

Day 4

Things start to get interesting. The morning was spent trowelling but then the heavens opened. Cue 100 archaeologists standing around dodging the lightning. Now I love a good storm from a window but from a field it’s an entirely different experience…

  • Troweling is hard in the rain.
  • A damp trench.
  • Rain selfie.

Day 5

Friday was a little more sunny. Our supervisor brought rocket lollies which was great! Mainly we were troweling, still not many great finds to speak of but the features are starting to emerge which is exciting!

Archaeology is better with lollies.

Day 7-8

Not much to report from these days. Monday I took off, tuesday we were in Kings Manor (the home of the Archaeology department) and wednesday I was doing heritage work from home.

Tuesday was the highlight of these days. We had some lovely talks by lecturers in the department about the nature of heritage and good outreach practices. I left the day motivated and with a couple of new blog post ideas so watch this space!

Day 9

We spent the morning in Malton Museum which was so lovely. We got to meet some of the volunteers who work there and spent some time looking at some of their outreach programmes such as the boxes they send out to schools. The highlight for me was being able to see the stores. They kindly showed us some of the items they had and we spoke about the logistics of keeping these items, how they’re catalogued and how they’re used. If you’re in the area I would highly recommend going down the museum and having a chat with one of the volunteers, they’re super friendly and really know their stuff. You can find more information here:
https://www.maltonmuseum.co.uk/

Also my parents came to visit and were given an extensive site tour. No pictures from that though you’ll just have to take my word for it!

  • A Roman brooch from the Malton Museum collection.
  • A map of Malton made by one of the volunteers. We’re excavating just above the line of the trees on the far right.
  • One of the boxes Malton Museum sends out to schools.
  • A 3D printed pot replica the museum uses for outreach.
  • A key on a ring from the museum collection.
  • A Roman brooch from the collection.
  • A Roman brooch from the collection.
  • A Roman brooch from the collection.
  • A Roman brooch from the collection.
  • The Malton Museum store room.
  • A child’s footprint in a Roman roof tile from the Museum collection.

Day 10

The start of the day brought some bad news: someone had come in the night and pulled out a number of grid-pegs. These are very important for working out the exact location of finds in the trench as well as plotting the features and they are time consuming to install as they need to be in the exact right location. This is great example of why heritage outreach is important. We need to teach the community to respect these sites as to avoid things like this happening.

In the morning we had a talk from James Taylor about stratigraphy: how it can be useful and how to record it. In the afternoon we had a man from Digging for Britain come and talk to us. BBC 4 have left us a camera to film our dig as the footage may be used by them in an upcoming episode. I’ve been interested in videography for years so this is something that I’m particularly excited about (regardless of if they use the footage or not, but obviously I hope they do). I might make a whole post about this later down the line so let me know if that would be something you’re interested in. Later we had a talk from our site director Steve Roskams about everything we’ve learned so far. If you want to learn more about the site he’s doing a public site tour on the 13th that anyone is welcome to comealong to.

We also had an appearance from our trench-cat! She appeared in week one and we named her Deventia (after the Roman name for Malton) but after some debate she was renamed Minerva. She’s super friendly and if you find yourself on site keep an eye out for her because she’s always happy to say hello.

  • Minerva’s first appearance.
  • Sitting in the nettles.
  • Coming over to say hello!
  • The progress we’ve made on our trench.
  • One of the destroyed grid-pegs: clearly no accident.
  • This is where our archaeologists are stored overnight.
  • A line of disturbed grid-pegs.
  • Minerva looking majestic in the nettles.
  • Steve giving his site tour.

Thanks for sticking with me I know this was a long one! If you’ve made it this far then comment down below any questions or feedback so I know you’re still paying attention! See you next time

~Amy 🙂