Final full day of digging today, we were a small but perfectly formed crew, and the sun continued to shine upon the righteous. Before we started digging I took some photos (header image & below) of some of the artificial looking shapes that the sandstone off the site splits into naturally.
Trench 2 was left to its own devices today. It got some attention at the end of the day when we took some pictures of it – see below. The ‘butterflies’ are marking the interfaces of the different contexts.
Trench 1 received the same attention – see below. All the digging took part in T1. We took the sondage down to 1300mm and its still deposited material. At about 1100mm and below there was some gritty water washed material & thin lenses of grey clay. These continued down for another 150mm then voids started appearing again. At this lowest level we are getting small bits of burnt material. From about 800mm the stones started becoming more massive too. Two of the three oddly shaped stones in the images at the start are from this level.
Meanwhile in Pet Sematary, the dog burials continued to be excavated & finally Find of the Day went to some not on their first day. The dog bones have been an ideal opportunity to teach some of our excellent new recruits a few of the more technical points about lifting soft bone. The Find of the Day (see below) was the also the final find of the day and it was a team effort to lift it. As you can see – the dogs back!
Most of the bone has been reinterred where it was found. We will hold the skulls for a short while but if we cannot get funds to preserve them they will go back too.
Final day tomorrow & its backfilling – good therapeutic stuff & much easier when shared so please come along in the morning to help if you can. Trench 2 will be the last to be backfilled so you can have a last minute dig if you want. I predict Find Of The Day will come from the spoil. Anyone who helps with the backfilling can take a small memento of the dig home with them.
Heartfelt thanks to all of you who came and joined us – we hope you enjoyed it & possibly even learned a little about the secrets of Pendle’s Hidden Valley.
I really enjoyed seeing the dig .Arriving at the last part on the last day it gave me such a buzz …Great work and you certainly have got me interested …Thanks
Well done Alex. Even if the finds were limited you’ve certainly helped to make people more aware of archaeology in general and Pendle Heritage in particular but how you managed to organise such perfect weather I’ve no idea!