The Museum at Sidmouth Folk Week, More photographs here

“It is … a surprising fact that there exists no properly funded centre in Britain to research and celebrate our native traditions and vernacular arts.

It is my aim, that over the next few years, such an institution will exist, which will address this situation”

Simon Costin

You can read more about Simon Costin’s plan to celebrate and educate British folklore and heritage and the current Museum Tour on the website, http://museumofbritishfolklore.com.

Avebury Megameet 2009

My Design to promote or otherwise furnish information about this year’s Avebury Megameet.

Sadly I didn’t make it. Next year I hope.

Having now covered excavation, identification, the recording system for trenches, finds, contexts, photographs, basic observations and interpretation, today I set about my first graphic site recordings.

I was given a new section to examine in Trench XVIA that had yet to be recorded visually. After giving the section a clean with a trowel and removing an overhang from an upper soil layer I began to set up the section for recording under the supervisor’s guidance.

Two nails are driven into the section, and string is drawn between them. The line is wound tight and levelled using a hanging spirit-level. This provides a baseline from which measurements down to the current excavation level and up to the top of the section can be taken.

Section drawings are made using a hard (6H) pencil on tracing paper over squared paper with 1mm intervals. Sections are recorded at a 1:10 ratio. The section to record was 2.30 metres South-North and up to .3 metres deep.

Taking measurements every 5cm, points are recorded on the sketch sheet to assist in accurately representing the features when drawn, such as how the section’s top and base rise and fall along its length and details of large inclusions and breaks. The same is done for features and known contexts within it, providing a visual record of the position of features, in this case a number of apparent cuts, fills and iron-panning contexts are seen to begin West and continue East of this section.

Later in the day I switched to plan recording and was instructed to record similarly. Plan drawings are at 1:20 ratio and the recorder can benefit from a 1m by 1m grid comprising 20cm divisions. The grid was checked for its accurate positioning using a 30 metre tape before I began drawing the positions of large and small stones, existing tree roots, clay and sand contexts and their boundaries. I was adding the final Southern most features to the existing plan drawing for the rest of the trench to the North.

As with the other recording methods used, section drawings are logged in registers. As many section drawings are added to a single sheet the section numbers need to be logged against their sheets with the date, name of the recorder, scale and coordinates of the section. Plan drawings are similarly logged.

Today I resumed my trench section recording. As before, the section is tidied up. Having not had the chance to write up my test sheet from the 31st I started afresh to do sheets for contexts 2917, 2918, 2947 and 2948.

For each context I had to produce a drawing of the section, both in plan and in section. The plan drawing I placed leftmost and marked the position of the site grid, direction of North as related to the plan, and the edges of the trench. This is simply to locate the section in the trench for the benefit of the post-excavation examiner.

The Section drawings mark the positions of the features, includind adjacent contexts, text descriptions of the features such as stones, sand, gravel, the position of the surface and the current level of the trench floor, orientation N-S, and dimensions of the features.

Measurements over 9cm are recorded as metres (0.10m for example), below that they’re recorded in millimetres.

One of the last things to do on each sheet was to record the matrix information. The matrix often refers to the material of a fill but in this instance refers to the most likely chronology of a context and its surrounding contexts.

Similar to a family tree, the matrix is recorded as boxes connected by lines with the context numbers within them. In my section, the fills are marked highest (first) on the sheet, beneath which they are both connected to the cut, as that preceded them. The iron rich context 2918 was difficult to place, firstly because it is not a conventional fill but an area with an appearance altered due to other contexts. Its appearance would be the result of the cut (in that water rushed through the cut, depositing iron), and could be contemporary with or long after the fills.

Finally, the few cleanings the section had had revealed the possibility that it linked to an adjacent feature. The supervisor advised me to note the observation that they could have a relationship, whereby the cut of one appears to cut into the other – a drain cut across a drain perhaps. All of this information will be collated in the post-excavation stage to try and understand the site as much as possible.

Recording of a trench section on context recording sheets, and some interpretation.

This was an afternoon stint from around 13:30 to 16:40. From where I’d left off on day three, I tidied up the face of the section I was to record by gently removing weathered and loose earth from the surface. This is to ensure that a smooth section is visible so that differences in light fall across the section are minimised.

Care needs to be taken to ensure the feature itself – which may be very thin – is not destroyed as a result. As the weather had prevented previous recording of the section on the previous attempt, more of the stone/gravel feature had become apparent with subsequent cleaning, but no features had been harmed or lost.

I had some instruction in following the matrix identification flowchart. This guides the examination of the colour, texture and consistency of to determine how the earth sample should be defined. A small sample of soil is harvested from the matrix in a moist state on the end of a trowel. It is then tested by rolling it between the fingers to determine how gritty it is, and how easily it will lose its shape to arrive at a distinct definition. In my case, the fine gritty consistency and inability to forma ball when rolled defines the matrix as sand, this is consistent with much of the site.

The main stone/gravel feature, and the iron-rich soil beneath it had been given context numbers already, that had been used on the section drawings. The supervisor’s latest examination of the cleaned section suggested to him that another area ought to the given a new context number as it differed from the rest of the fill. The context numbers assigned are:(Trench XVI) Fill [2917] (Stone/Gravel sub-circular feature),Fill [2918] (Iron-rich red sand below cut [2947]).

As the ‘cut’ of the possible drain was visibly defined by the fill areas, this is given it’s own context number. The additional fill area got it’s number too.

Cut [2947],Fill [2948] (grey brown sand with small gravel area). The numbers are recorded on the context sheet as before.

There are different sections to fill in on the context sheet depending on whether a fill or a cut is being recorded. Most parts of the sheet require specific terminology, but interpretation and observations are of high importance and a reminder that information recorded can be discarded after interpretation, while information not recorded can never be interpreted.

The small scale plan and section drawings required also bear some of these observations, noting the fact that the iron-rich fill ’2918′ is not a fill in the sense of matter thay occupies an area previously opened or cut through, but defines a discoloration of the soil as a result of water passing through the probable drain depositing iron. The other fills are bounded by the cut, so are fills in the usual sense.

By the end of the day I had roughly completed a single context sheet, and decided to take it home to copy out anew having made further notes of dimensions and locations.

Afternoon of Saturday18th October 2008. Weather -A sunny afternoon that turned wet and windy.

Today I was to build on the reading I’d done from Philip Barker’s book and the Liverpool Museums site recording guide and begin to put the theory into practice.

I was allocated an area of a trench to examine and record appropriately on context sheets. The sheets form detailed textual descriptions of the contexts (a layer of sand for example, or feature within it) apparent in a trench along with descriptive diagrams.

Today I learned of a new importance for the balks between trenches. In addition to providing safe access (for excavator and the archaeology) across the site, leaving a near complete depth of the trench undisturbed allows features not previously noted (for example, if the weather or daylight precluded them from notice) to remain and be recorded.

In this instance, the trench section had some intrigue – beneath a layer of sandy soil already recorded, lay a circular section of small and larger stones, finer gravels within, surrounded by grey sand. Beneath this, the section had areas of orangey iron panning. These and other features of the trench lead us to believe this is a (Mediæval) ditch – the stones seem to form a line across the site indicating they were posited to allow water flow. The gravels and iron deposits beneath, add to the notion that water once flowed along the lines of stones.

My job was to record in detail on the context sheets a description of each context ( the circular stoney area and its surroundings, and the iron layer beneath). On a third sheet, the ‘cut’ of the section – the perceived edges of the ditch as they’d been originally cut – was to be recorded, although it was thought that this would be done on another day as the feature was difficult to discern.

Before that I had to clean up the section, removing areas that had been slightly weathered by rain by careful removal of material to give a crisp edge that reveals the colour of the earth and aids identification of the different contexts.

The little cleaning I did revealed a second small cluster of gravel adjacent to the larger cluster of stones and an upward curve in the underlying layer that could influence a decision on where the cut of the ditch might lie.

The finer details of the section are difficult to see and require some adjustment of the eye to discern. For this reason repeated discussion of what is apparent in the section can help to determine what features are present. The clear layering of the contexts was disturbed only by runs of light grey sand which are thought to be evidence of animal burrowing. Nevertheless care must be taken to ensure that what the eye sees is not recorded without thought.

The supervisor showed me a drawing of the section I was to further record. These use a 1-to-10 ratio of measurement as opposed to the 1-to-20 ratio used on plan drawings. Recorded in the section drawing were the outlines of the contexts I was to further examine along with outlines for the larger rock features. As with every other aspect of the site, sections have unique numbers of their own for later cross-reference with site, trench, context and find numbers. The drawings also record their orientation so a section may be recorded for all sides of a trench.

I also learned today that another numbering scheme exists for excavation – view numbers – numbers (preceded by a letter ‘V’) given to photographed areas. These are (as ever) retrieved sequentially from pre-printed sheets as required and written on a small blackboard placed in shot.

The recording reference manual contains guidance on the format of all the information that needs to be recorded in each section of the context sheet. The methods range from the ordered to the anecdotal in order to allow as many facets of the context to be recorded, but also allow for quick understanding later on. For example to describe a cut a recorder details a numbered list of predefined features:

1. Shape in plan
2. Shape in Section
3. Dimensions
4. …

For a section, these elements are denoted by letters:

1. Consistency
2. Texture
3. Colour
4. …

An example Munsell Soil Colour chart from dgcolour.co.uk

I was also introduced to Munsell soil colour charts today. A flipbook of punched card pages with printed colour indicators of different soil colours. Each lozenge of colour is bounded by punched holes so that a sample of earth may be dampened and placed on a finger or trowel beneath the page in order to match it to a colour. On the facing page to these punched pages are divided spaces that show the chroma and value definitions (for example 5/4, along with a brief description such as ‘weak red’) for the sample which may then be recorded on the context sheets. Each page has it’s own identifier too – for example 10 YR for a degree of Yellow-Red.

Sadly the weather changed for the worse before I could begin recording and the day’s work was drawn to a premature close.

Before leaving the site I walked towards the farm where the site owners are constructing what will probably be the only Iron Age roundhouses you’ll find (standing!) in this region.

The first is being built to the same dimensions as the roundhouse found in the same field in previous excavations, and will be one of six arranged for the purpose of providing an educative environment for this under-examined period in the North West’s history.

Monday 13th October 2008. Weather – Morning overcast, cold. sunnier in the afternoon, wind speed increased.


My second day on site and a week since the site was re-opened. The site has changed considerably as trenches have been re-opened and excavation has continued.

We were given a brief tour of the trenches re-opened with details of their content. Two Mediæval ditches running through two trenches and off to the North are noticeable by darker patches and rounded stones. I the intervening week a metal detectorist was called in and a number of metal finds including coins and an item of jewellery were uncovered.

The context of Trench XVIA that I worked on a week ago – 2892 – has now been worked down to a new context of grey sand, known as 2897.

Today we began working towards the Northern end of XVIA near the barrow ramp at the entrance to the site from the road. Our task was to carefully work through the sand to identify new contexts and finds.

I found two sherds of Mediæval pot, one with a (rare for period?) iridescent purple glaze. Most examples of Mediæval pot we find are grey on one side and earthy red-brown on the other. The finds were recorded as per the guidance we had on day one and in the recording guidebook.

While working today lots of small stones were uncovered and left in place for them to be recorded on the site plans. Thick clay deposits were also noted, and these were excavated around, as were orange-coloured areas of soil. Leaving these features prominent allows for their recording and gives a little insight into their meaning as the removal of the grey sand continues.

After lunch and some consultation with the supervisor, it was decided that the site needed to be recorded before features of the context (such as rocks) could be removed. We continued to remove the grey sand to see if more stones were revealed in between those that were apparent. I replaced my trowel with a smaller leaf one so as to work carefully around the stones, using the trowel to transfer spoil to a shovel then to a bucket.

As the day progressed the Easterly wind picked up a little, making some recording tasks troublesome. The supervisor made a number of sketches of the site features, mainly in plan, as an aide memoire for thinking about their use in the overall understanding of the site.

Careful trowel excavation continued until near the day’s close, at which point distance and trench markers were placed and a number of film and digital photographs were taken by the supervisor. Small stones casting shadows from the low sun made for good recording conditions for these kind of features, whereas the differences in colour and areas of clay may be less discernible, but will be recorded on the site plan in due course.

Our final task was to cover up some of the exposed trenches that may be vulnerable to the weather that had been forecast for the next few days with geotextile cloth. The very next day was probably going to be too wet to work, and leaving the trenches currently under investigation open might harm the exposed surfaces and require more remedial work in following days to make them easily readable and recordable.

The next time I am on site I hope to be carrying out some site plan drawing.

Monday 6th October 2008. Weather – Morning sunny with a light mist visible over distance. Overcast in the afternoon.


This was the first day the site had been opened since the Summer. Arriving at the farm at 0920, arrangements were made to get both people and kit down to the South-Eastern corner of the field where the current excavations are taking place. Wet weather in the previous week had prevented the potato harvest from taking place, a week’s dry weather being required before this can begin.

People and kit were loaded and moved by road to a roadside opposite the field corner, with access via a gap in the hedge beside the river.

Following a brief reiteration of health and safety procedures, we were given some additional safety and courtesy guidance for the site – such as taking care with tools when working closely together, walking clear of the edges of the balks between trenches, and the need to take notice of where we choose to dump spoil from barrows and buckets to ensure access and continued ease of site use.

We were then introduced to the site with a tour of the areas under investigation, those areas previously excavated and the features and finds they yielded. We were given the latest understanding of the site’s usage from Prehistory to Mediæval times and into the Twentieth Century and its relations to the landscape, nearby towns and halls.

Other areas of the field – where previous excavation had uncovered evidence of Iron Age settlement and a Roman trackway – were shown to us. The site’s popularity for periodic settlement may be explained by its proximity to the river and the presence of a spring.

The Western end of the site was notable for its mesolithic flint knapping waste through to examples of neolithic pottery – rare for this region. Moving down the slope East towards the river evidence of Mediæval settlement (possible structures, drainage ditches, pot sherds) had been uncovered, and it is at this end of the site that we were to begin our work.

Our first task was to reclaim the area we were to work on by clearing weeds and grasses that had grown since the last work was done. The balks around the South-Eastern corner of the site were cleared of surrounding weeds to faciliate access on all but the roadside. The sides of the trench were re-cut to give a clean edge. Plastic and geotextile coverings were removed from the immediate areas we would work on. As this work was done, any finds were placed in a tray marked with the trench number – in Roman numerals (Trench XVIA) . Such finds could come to lie in or around the open trenches and are recorded as ‘unstratified’.

The freshly cut trench edges were then used to demonstrate the site’s stratigraphy from modern farm layers down to the ‘blown sands’ of the Mediæval layers that had been discussed in the classroom. We were shown the subtle differences in colour, texture (and sound) when touched or trowelled. We were shown how to use sun and shade to help us to distinguish between the layers visually and to determine the layers as they appear in different trenches.

The site grid

The site plans shown to us are drawn onto tracing paper over gridded paper. Similar to the Ordnance Survey system, The site is given an origin in the South-West from which all measurements begin, and the Eastings and Northings from that point are marked permanently on waxed paper attached to nails periodically positioned across the site. Normally nails mark 5 metre divisions in each direction, with other being added as excavation progresses and plans are drawn. Sometimes the excavation topography will not allow regular intervals for grid nails, so they are placed and marked appropriately at the next nearest metre interval.

Plans

The plans we were shown of a previously opened trench show a portion of the whole site, marked with its origin co-ordinates. Thick grid lines denote single metre intervals, while their feint subdivisions count for 200mm intervals therein. Site features such as rocks had been marked on the plan, along with finds numbers and context numbers, which we were introduced to next.

Before commencing any trowel work within a trench, we were shown how the site was being recorded in terms of its depth and contents as opposed to its plan position. The whole site has a shorthand name and numeric code, trenches on the plan have their own numbering scheme, and context numbers are allocated to the features of a trench – this may be to describe a stratum uncovered or to describe the context of a post-hole, backfill or negative feature. Given their many uses, context numbers are allocated according to their features from a pre-printed sequentially numbered context sheet, allowing fast allocation on site. As the same stratum could be found across a whole site and in many trenches, the trench number is also recorded with the context number and details of the feature on the context sheet. A single feature may then have many context numbers. During the post-excavation stage, all of the trench-context information is combined to give a greater understanding of the site.

Finds recording

Using these recording schemes we were shown the finds recording sheet and the methods used to record our finds. Finds may be recorded individually or in groups – a single, large pot sherd may be recorded individually while a number of far smaller pieces found in proximity to each other may be treated as a single find. Each find or group of finds is recorded in three places: On the finds sheet, on the site with a finds marker and nail, and on its find bag.

On turning up a find, its plan position in the trench according to the grid square (and easting/northing within it) are noted. The metre grid square is recorded as a whole number and more exact detail following a decimal point (*for example 2899.32E/ 1004.22N would represent 320mm East and 220mm North of the origin point of the grid square 2899E/1004N).

On the finds sheet a short description of the find (‘Med Pot’ for example), the trench and context numbers in which it was found, the initials of the excavator and the date are recorded along with the exact Easting/Northing of the find alongside a pre-printed sequential finds number.

The trench number, find number, context number (and sometimes the E/N) are then recorded on waxed-paper using permanent marker and attached using a short finds nail to the point in the trench where it was found. This practice enables a planner to record on a site plan details of finds in the trench according to the context and other features of the site.

Finally, the same details are written onto a finds bag. The find is then placed in the finds bag and may be stored in a finds tray or at the point in the trench it was found to be collected at the end of the day. Leaving markers and finds in place makes them available for photographing in situ before work ceases.

On both the finds markers and bags, the find number is recorded within a triangle, and conventions exist for the position of the trench, context and co-ordinate numbers.

Commencing work

Each excavator was allocated a portion of Trench XVIA to work. Moving from the edge of the trench we had recut back towards the West, instructed to remove a small amount of material depth of the context we were working (number 2892). As the site had not been worked in some time this was to some degree to remedy the effects of animal disturbance and weathering, taking the context back to the state it had when last worked.

The context was described as a ginger sand layer, containing small pebbles and largely smoothed rocks. We could see the point at which this layer had culminated in the clean trench edge we had cut.

The area I worked contained darker patches of earth, which I was told could indicate organic material. While apparently regular and forming a rough rectangular shape the context still showed evidence of plough damage. This meant that further excavation – following recording – would be needed to show the extent of the feature before any sense could be made of it.

Bright orange patches in the context indicated the iron pans that had been discussed in class. These features could indicate water flow, and could add to the understanding of the other indicators of drainage ditches that appear to run across the site and this trench marked by discolourations, rock and pebble dispersions.

The day did yield some pottery finds, though not from my area. As the day drew to a close I followed the darker areas of the context, and the supervisor noticed a triangular terminal to one of them that could prove more interesting (possibly indicating a posthole) as excavation continued.

Dr Josh Pollard, of Bristol University, who is co-director of the dig, said: ‘The construction must have taken a lot of manpower … The palisade is an open structure which would not have been defensive and was too high to be practical for controlling livestock … It certainly wasn’t for hunting herded animals and so, like everything else in this ceremonial landscape, we have to believe it must have had a religious significance.’

‘The most plausible explanation is that it was built at huge cost to the community to screen the environs of Stonehenge from view. Basically, we think it was to keep the lower classes from seeing what exactly their rulers and the priestly class were doing.’

Read this news Courtesy of Moss on TMA

That morning we’d arrived in Avebury hoping to locate those few stones that showed areas of tool polishing from before they were dragged to their current location. We found two examples, one from reading and the other by examination. Before long however we were being shown an even older aspect of the circle’s history – one of our party was a geologist, and guided us to a stone within the monument that displayed evidence of its formation, an area of petrified wood clearly visible in the upright sarsen.

Taking advantage of the weather a clutch (or is that a scatter?) of us headed off up the Herepath to seek out a circle previously unseen by most of us but known to our guide Moth. More accurately the remnants of a Bell Barrow known as Penning or Avebury Down Stone Circle.

We had brought a copy of Pollard and Reynolds’ book Avebury, Biography of a Landscape to help us locate the polisher marked stones, and the cover of the book shows a map of the area as drawn by the Reverend A.C. Smith in 1844, which has many areas marked as ‘Penning’ (The Pennings, Penning, Waydens Penning) which I assume goes some way to explaining this barrow’s modern name. Sadly its location isn’t on the cover.

Overall a day of discoveries, renewed friendship and new acquaintance which ought to be repeated more often.