Friday 4^th October 2013  

Another grey, misty day with the hills snuggled into the clouds. Yet surprisingly muggy. Five of us today.

As we demolished (very carefully!) a little bit more of the wall  to enable us to work safely  in the trench, we found ourselves stripping off some of our outer layers despite the mizzly air. Caggys came off and went back on again throughout the day.

Plumb bobs at the ready! (c) photo by Jane Lunnon

We laid down the grid to mark out the edges of the trench. Not as easy as laying down the grid for the geophysics – this time we had larger margins of error for our right angles because of the small size of the area being measured, and we had to deal with significant slopes which brought in additional margins of error. Did Pythagoras have to deal with this problem? I don’t think so! We also had to move the tent to give us room to lay down all the straight lines .  Which meant we would no longer be digging under shelter! Still, it gave us somewhere to stand when the rain came down – that wasn’t in the weather forecast this morning!

We received a “state visit” from our colleagues Jill and Helen – and were able to provide them with suitable entertainment as we set about our tasks.  We also received a visit from a local resident and her wonderful dog, Ted, who is the size of a small bear!

Ted  (c) photo by Jane Lunnon 

We had a leisurely lunch, discussing various topics of interest, including the impact of the closure of the majority of academic adult education courses across the country upon community archaeology.

We enjoyed further interesting discussions when James arrived and we had to shelter from the rain in the tent -  he’s on a work placement with the National Park Authority, with a brief to encourage active youth participation in archaeology in the Dales.  It’ll be interesting to see if he can get some young volunteers to join us in our fieldwork over the next year or so.

 

James joins us in the tent during the rain  (c) photo by Jane Lunnon

In the afternoon James joined in with the deturfing. We found this quite arduous on the embankment as stones are of course very near the surface.

James carries on deturfing while Roger valiantly protects Bob from marauding sheep!
(c) photo by Jane Lunnon 

Despite the rain setting in again we managed to finish the deturfing by the end of the afternoon, ready for proper digging to start tomorrow.

Jane Lunnon.