Report: Relentless sun (we're not complaining)

Unhindered by the weather so far this year (though some of the staff say the ground has dried out too much ...) exciting events are unfolding.

Thursday 18^th saw James Gerrard of Newcastle University visiting the Roman Baths standing remains to record them using a laser scanner. It was very much a test session for James, but the results already look very promising – more on that at a later date. He was very happy to give a talk about the work to both our diggers and the school party who were also visiting that day.

Scanner, diggers & James at the Ravenglass Roman Baths

From Friday 19th to Sunday 21^st Nicola Reid from Northlight Heritage of Glasgow, was on site showing diggers how to process environmental samples using a flotation tank and sieves. As well as finding small fragments of pottery, iron, charcoal and slag, some seeds have also come to light.

Nicola (Northlight Heritage), diggers and tank

On Saturday 20th, Steve Malone came up from Trent & Peak Archaeology of Nottingham to take high level pictures of the trenches and some of the buildings. This involved putting a camera on a very long pole – the results will appear later!

Polecam in action (thanks to Rosalie M for the photo)

Also on Saturday, the local Young Archaeologists' Club visited to dig in trench 4 and found out more about the site.

Lisa (Outreach Co-ordinator) and members of YAC visiting trench 4 (thanks to Rosalie M for the photo)

So another packed five days, and we're onto our final week of digging. If you're in the area, don't forget it's our special celebration open day on Saturday 27th September, complete with a Roman soldier visiting to inspect us and meet lucky visitors!

Report: 10th-11th September

Trench 1 is now getting into some serious digging, with Director Kurt finally getting down to a bit of supervising. They've probably located a Roman street which is crossing the site. Supervisor Bryan's Trench 2 has a probably Roman stone wall footing, with a path adjacent. This path, which has shown up on Geophys, leads directly to the bath house. Trench 2 also has industrial activity going on, with plenty of slag in the finds trays. Supervisor Rowan's Trench 3 probably has stone footings for timber buildings, and burning suggests industrial or domestic activity.

Clark, the Environmentalist, has now set up on site, and will be looking for plants and seeds with the help of the volunteers.

The weather continues to be a little unkind, with enough rain to make it a tad muddy site - for example, this is Director Kurt looking up the fencing yesterday evening.  Note, that with typical digger cunning, he's standing on one of the fence blocks so as not to get his feet any wetter!

 Meanwhile, we've taken delivery of two banners:

 Just in time for the Open Day on Friday!