Environmental Science of the 2025 Season

3 days ago
2 min read

It was an excellent year for Enviro. This was the first season in a brand-new home, the wooden Enviro cabin with a special sign above the door. The cabin had been built specially for us in the closed season and it was greatly appreciated having this good working environment. There was a ready stream of willing volunteers and they cleared a record amount of samples.

In the 2024 season, we had 246 litres of samples come in. This year, we received over 1,000 and kept the work up-to-date. The diggers brought down over 300 litres from the crouch burial context alone. There was always a pleasant atmosphere in Enviro, but they worked hard to clear a lot and were very conscientious.

In the old days, before a grid system was set up around the malting kilns, it used to take a week and a half to fill up the floatation tank. This year it needed emptying twice in a single day!

There were fundamental differences in the samples received from trenches 24 and 25. The former is where the malting kilns were and still produces large numbers of seeds and daub. The level of magnetic material was far higher too, indicating burning had taken place.

The trench 25 samples were more barren, but some interesting man-made finds came up: a small piece of iron that was identified as part of a horse shoe; a tiny shard of probably Iron Age pot; a piece of flint-tempered pot from the Neolithic/Bronze Age. These latter two came from the crouch burial sample, along with a few small human bones / bone fragments which the Human Remains team were pleased to receive.

We had lots of visitors during the season, including children’s groups, Friends of SHARP and general members of the public. They always displayed an enthusiasm for what was being shown.

I continued my policy of liaising with the diggers and their supervisors as to what their samples contained. I made frequent visits to the trench to discuss our findings. They certainly seemed to appreciate this information. I like to think that some of the unnecessary mystique surrounding enviro has gone away and the diggers are less worried about being “told off” when I appear trench-side! I feel it is vital to make the whole exercise as seamless as possible and help everyone understand what is going on. I felt fully supported by Ellie, Steve, and the trench supervisors throughout the season.

Written by Tom Cross, Environmental Archaeology supervisor