News 19.10.23 Testpits
After a week of heavy rain today it was foggy to start with and gradually cleared throughout the day until by mid afternoon the sun finally appeared. But this was too late for our team who came to finish off the testpits started a few weeks back and who found the clayish soil now rather sticky to trowel. Test pit 011below had a sondage dug into it after the featureless clay level was hit. Several contexts down the excavators working on that pit came a cross some land drains (seen in corner of photo below) and it was agreed the extend it further in an southerly direction.
HO-19 TP11
A trench was then dug to expose even more of these drains, which were in short sections with their joints supported on a tile. Some of the drains were stamped, but most of them were in the sorry state as seen below.
HO-19 TP11A
HO-19 TP11B
A third, smaller test pit was also dug slightly further south where these land drains are seen to continued.After this last testpit was completed all three were recorded and drawn by Sam and Margaret and then backfilled.
Testpit 12 nearby (with the rabbit hole) was also competed by Noelle, Tina and Terry which included finally removing the mole trap. What looked like several nice flagstones and a large red tile with patterning on it were also removed. This testpit was then also recorded and back-filled, which was not easy with the clay sticking to all of our boots!