Report: 13th-14th September - Open Days

Today (16th Sept)  it's rainy, windy and just a bit chilly, but 13th & 14th September were site Open Days.  We were lucky, as both days had fine weather!  The Friday Open Day focussed on local societies, plus the Portable Antiquities Scheme Officer for Cumbria was available to identify finds from the area. He brought some finds from Ribchester Roman Fort with him, including glass beads, a silver ear-ring, coins and finger rings:

Also present were the Lake District Archaeologists, with Holly helping to meet and greet, as well as doing site tours:

Mervyn (background in hi-vis jacket) was the mainstay at the gate, along with Janice and other helpers potwashing and fielding initial questions:

A full range of other site activities were underway including digging in all three trenches, and working on environmental samples:

It was Supervisor Clark's last day on the Ravenglass samples, so time for one last photograph - his nifty wet weather headwear was much admired on previous rainy days:

Saturday was specifically a Family Fun Day, so a Outreach Officer Lisa brought along a sandpit available for kids to dig up their very own finds:

It was also busy at the Lake District tent, and Brian helped out, including doing site tours:

It was a much busier day than Friday, but it was still easy to pick out the diggers in their hi-vis jackets as they returned to their trenches after a well earned tea break:

The Finds Officer was pleased as she was able to let the finds trays out of the confines of the Finds Hut so they could get a bit of sun and (hopefully) get dried out enough to bag up:

 

Also enjoying the sun, were the diggers, especially when they got time to have a break from digging:

During the two Open Days, over 300 people came to visit the site to see what the commmunity had found in the three trenches at Ravenglass. We're recording where our visitors come from and its interesting to see that as well as local people, people are also coming from Lancashire, Yorkshire, Herefordshire, Scotland, Germany, and Australia!