I’m sinking almost imperceptibly into the mud, which means that I’m travelling very very slowly back through time. On Monday, we raced back 6 or 7 centuries in as many hours but now I’m down to perhaps a year every hour as the ground slowly swallows my boots. I’m not helping by gently digging into the ground around me. No this is not an episode of Dr Who, it’s an archaeological dig.
I saw a Tweet about some community Archaeological projects being run in Rhossili by the Gower Landscape Project, Black Mountain Archaeology and ArchaeoDomus and although I’d missed many of them, a dig at the site of the medieval village in Rhossili was yet to happen. Last year I took part in a field walk on ‘The Vile’, part of the medieval field system at Rhossili. The purpose was to try and find evidence of flint working in relation to the near by hill fort. At that event, there was mention of a possible dig at the old village and I was keen to take part. Now was my opportunity. I rushed off an email to express my interest, and I was accepted onto the dig.
I turned up on day one not sure what to expect. The weather was perfect, the location stunning and very soon I was off down to the Warren, the bracken covered dune system just above the beach level. I joined a number of other volunteers from the area, the four professional archaeologists and the National Trust ranger for a safety briefing and overview of the project, it’s aims and objectives.
The basic idea was to involve members of the local community in investigating the extent of the medieval village. In the early 80s, the Glamorgan Gwent Archaeological Trust had excavated in the middle of the village site and uncovered a church and a house. These were recorded and covered over to preserve them and the site scheduled as an ancient monument, meaning it couldn’t be dug. We would be looking outside that area, which was carefully marked out before any digging took place.
The first objective was to clear away the great mass of sand that had accumulated and may well have been the cause of the abandonment of the old village for the new. Archaeologists and volunteers watched as the mechanical digger stripped away the sand, making sure that the digger kept to the line of the plan, and ensuring that no archaeology was accidentally lost to the big metal bucket. This took most of the day and only at the very end were we able to get into the trenches and see what was going on. In the last few minutes we found the medieval land surface in trench 2.
Day two was hotter and now we were in the trenches, as much as 2 metres below surface level, there was no cooling onshore breeze. But I found that I was completely distracted from the conditions by the activities and the fact that we’d just got our first find, a medieval dog or fox jaw bone, complete with teeth. Today, I was using an augur to bore holes beneath the bottom of the trenches to identify what was going on and whether it was worth the time and effort to go deeper. It was tough going, even in sand, to get the augur down more than 50cm but eventually, with people hanging off the handles, twisting and turning the augur, we managed to get a few samples from nearly 2m below the base of the trench, perhaps 3.5m deep in total. These were telling us that we were just beginning to reach the natural medieval layer. The decision was taken to concentrate on just two trenches and the other was filled back in.
On day three and four I was cleaning the edges of our latest trench to provide a clear record of the soil levels, cleaning off the surface of the trench itself and then gently scraping back the sand and earth from a section of stones at one end of the trench. The latter was remarkably calming work, and time went quickly as I slowly lowered the level of the surface of the trench, revealing more of the stones. Next to me, a colleague was picking out bits of pottery and shell but I seemed to be on the wrong side as there was nothing in my bit.
At the end of day four we had found animal bone, cow’s teeth, several large bits of pottery and a deeper level of loam and shell fragments, which was most likely a midden, or rubbish deposit. A large piece of pottery remained within it and as would this need careful work to retrieve it, we decided to leave it until the next day so that it wasn’t rushed. It was protected with a bucket and we headed home.
Day five was a controlled rush to get the pottery, dig carefully but quickly below it to see what was going on, collect samples of the shell-filled loam and to record the trench features accurately for future reference. And all of this was being done in humid conditions which threatened and then did turn into rain, and in clouds of midges. As the rain fell, the clay levels at the bottom of the trench got wetter, supporting an earlier suggestion that there may have been a water course here. With all the recording done, the areas of interest in the trench were protected with plastic and the trench was filled in. It took considerably less time to cover them up that it did to dig them out. At the end of the day, all that was left were patches of sand in the bracken, and these would soon be covered by foliage.
I’ve always been interested in archaeology but I never expected to be able to take part in a dig. For me, the experience was amazing, and a bonus was the involvement of professional archaeologists who were prepared to give time and effort to share knowledge and skills with the volunteers. Not only did I learn what to do, but I was able to understand why it was done that way. I’ve always found that the part of history that interests me most is the stuff that happens to individuals. During this week I was able to handle pottery that was used by real people more than 600 years ago, walk on the land surface they would have trodden on and rummage through their rubbish dump. And all this reasonably close to my own home.
I think I may be hooked on this time travel lark!
franticsmurf 