Super Seven and The Sifters... Week Two

Hey everyone.

I'm Matt and I'm here to share what Super Seven has been up to in squares C5 & B5 in the TARDIS.

While we've been largely absent from this blog so far, our quadrant brothers and sisters from The Sifters haven't been. Make sure you check out their latest entry, which is all fancy with moving pictures and sounds. While I'll be mentioning some of their activities in this blog, you'll have to make do with just words from me.

First up I'll tell you about our second week in the TARDIS

9/9/2010: Back in the TARDIS

We were back into the TARDIS on Thursday. Firstly we needed to re-do the levels after some discrepancies were discovered from the weekend.

We quickly jumped into our jobs, with Phil re-doing the levels before helping Sureyya excavate B5, Katherine was recording, Lynne sieving and Stephanie doing Munsell soil testing while I was back into the lab, dealing with our artifacts from Saturday. Because of this, most of the notes on Thursdays activities are from Phil and Lynne, for which I am grateful.

While the sun shone intermittently through the clouds on Thursday, the warm days earlier in the week had dried out B5. While this removed the muddiness of Saturday, it did harden the clay layer of Context 308 and dried out the gravelly soil of Context 309.

Phil excavated Context 309, exposing another possible context beneath. According to Phil's notes, Sureyya "cleaned the whole lot up" after he was reprimanded for "brushing and creating false levels", which Phil seems to love so to do.

Regardless of Phil's love for false level creating, Context 309 was removed, leaving Context 308 for Saturday's dig.

Lynne was sieving, and was able to find two nails in Context 309. One was clearly from the construction of the TARDIS, being very new, while the other nail was slightly shorter and encrusted in dirt and rust. More pieces of concrete were found, as was a small piece of glass.

Back in the lab, I was cleaning, drying, bagging, labeling and cataloguing our finds from Saturday, as well as doing the same to the new finds. Not much to report there.

The Sifters

As in the first week, The Sifters excavated in contexts.

On Thursday, The Sifters scraped away the last of Context 011. As they finished doing this, Context 014 was identified underneath it.

Context 014 was defined as being a hard clay surface which across the northern boundaries of A4, as well as into the centre

11/9/10: Second Saturday

After some brain storming, come 11am on Saturday, The Super Sevens were back in the TARDIS.

While not mentioned in the last blog, we had uncovered a marble. We decided to leave it in situ until Saturday, we could record it properly. We decided to continue excavating in another part of Context 308 before doing this.

First up the plate were Lynne and Stephanie, who were excavating Context 308 from opposite sides. Stephanie's vigour for digging saw her get through her half very quickly, uncovering a large fragment of dark green bottle glass in the process. However, Lynne was able to uncover another Context underneath the clay of 308.

Sureyya, Katherine and myself joined in the excavating after lunch, removing a large amount of soil, uncovering another nail. As the day continued, we finally recorded in situ the marble, nail and glass. We continued to sieve, but began using a larger gauge sieve as the finds dried up.

We finally removed all the remainder of the square, with Sureyya using a small pick to do so. Sureyya and David then did some stratigraphic layer recording. The day ended soon after.

The Sifters:

(Thanks again to Caroline for some notes on The Sifters activities)

Another context was identified along the western wall of A4 which was labelled as context 012 and contained a lighter, more sandy soil. As with the other contexts, Context 012 was excavated using a trowel. Despite sieving 100% of excavated material, very few artifacts were found. A marble and another small round unidentified object were also recovered from this context.

Along the southern boundary of A4 another context was identified. This context was labelled as context 013 and was identified as a sterile layer containing a thin lens of red soil which was used to separate the historical period from the Mesoamerican.

After clearing context 012, context 014 was excavated using a trowel and small handpick. 100% sieving resulted in very no artefacts but a great deal of cement and building debris. This context was identified as fill.

Finally at the end of the day, another context was identified as belonging to the post which stands in the corner of the south west boundary of squares A4 and A5. This context (015) will be excavated next Thursday and results recorded.

Thanks again to everyone in the Super Seven, and Caroline for her notes.