{"id":91,"date":"2011-07-31T22:11:02","date_gmt":"2011-07-31T21:11:02","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.kmatthews.org.uk\/?p=91"},"modified":"2011-07-31T22:22:39","modified_gmt":"2011-07-31T21:22:39","slug":"end-of-the-first-week","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.kmatthews.org.uk\/?p=91","title":{"rendered":"End of the first week"},"content":{"rendered":"

Sunday 31 July 2011<\/p>\n

On site: Keith Fitzpatrick-Matthews, Caoimh\u00edn \u00d3 Coile\u00e1in, Si\u00e2n O’Neil, Greg Ford, Ernie Ford, Martin Jupp, Philip Dean, Mark Perks, Tony Driscoll, Christina Farley, Oscar Farley<\/p>\n

Weather: hot and sunny; a few light clouds initially, clouding over by noon with the wind picking up strength over lunchtime but dropping back later<\/p>\n

Oh dear! Having berated people yesterday for being late, today it was my turn\u2026 And Tony had emailed people yesterday to explain that he wouldn\u2019t be in but no-one had picked it up in time. So apologies all round! Nick couldn\u2019t be here as he\u2019s got to go to Bournemouth to have a meeting with his exam board.<\/p>\n

\"A<\/a><\/p>\n

A sherd of Impressed Ware (formerly known as Peterborough Type Ware)<\/p>\n

We have two teams of three working on the subsoil material over the outer ditch. Caoimh\u00edn discovered yesterday that the context description for (35) refers to a subsoil visible in section, whereas the deposit that\u2019s being removed actually underlies it; it appears to be an earlier subsoil horizon and has been assigned context number (59). Christina has found our first sherd of stratified Impressed Ware, which will be contemporary with the formative henge phase.<\/p>\n

I\u2019ve written a list of priorities:<\/p>\n

    \n
  1. Continue excavation of (59) to identify the outer ditch.<\/li>\n
  2. Excavate one section of the inner ditch (aim to complete within the week).<\/li>\n
  3. Establish the value of the TBM.<\/li>\n
  4. Re-investigate the 20th-century ditch at the east end of Tr I (fill (22), cut [40]); consider a section across it in Tr IV north.<\/li>\n
  5. I will give a 15 minute briefing on why excavators must<\/strong> record stratigraphic relationships on their context sheets and why they need to cross-reference everything to the context record.<\/li>\n
  6. Begin the investigation of the bank structure in Tr IV north.<\/li>\n
  7. Begin the investigation of the subsoil in Tr IV south (but only after points 2 and 4 are complete).<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

    I think that it\u2019s achievable, weather permitting. Setting targets like this may be inviting trouble but at the same time, it gives us a clear idea of where we\u2019re going and something to aim for.<\/p>\n