SHARP's pre-Easter week
Rather than undertaking our usual field walking exercise this Easter, we spent the time on a number of mini projects. To give us a more comfortable working environment we used the New Village Hall as our base which was lovely and warm!
We had Ian continuing his analysis of the daub from the ovens in Trench 23; Mark, Janice, Perry and Min identified and carried out an analysis of the pottery finds from the field walking exercises undertaken in 2015, 2016 and 2017, plotting the density of finds on maps.
A number of meetings took place, including one of several Committee meetings that occur outside the summer season. Brian continued with his wide range of tasks from dealing with new bookings, to ordering the temporary cabins for the site in the summer. The Medieval team were out and about in the village looking at some of the buildings prior to their new course. They also looked at the ‘graffiti’ in the Church – see earlier blog.
The Geophys team, got out into the fields when it wasn’t raining to continue their magnetrometry survey of Chalkpit and Boneyard Fields. They managed to complete a further 30, 40x40m grids which equates to approx. 15miles of surveying, this distance can probably be at least doubled when taking into account the walking required in laying out the grids and moving tapes etc. Although the results are still being processed, it is clear that underneath all the grass and crops is a wealth of features which are dominated by a fantastic glimpse of the impacts of glaciation on the landscape, and the odd bit of previously unknown archaeology!
All in all, it was a very productive few days.
Melinda Barham
(See here for more information on the range of SHARP's research periods and activities.)
