Metal finds are few and far between on the site but a small broken bronze clip and a section of bronze bracelet were found. These could have been grave goods but, due to the apparently low status of the burials, are more likely to have been casual losses by visitors to the site or to have been brought in from another site at the same time as the window glass.

One nice find during this rather unproductive period was the pebble that Stuart found which had a hole bored through it and must have been used as a pendant or small (?loom?) weight. Dating is needed on this item as it was found in a level that had the Roman window glass and Mesolithic flints as well as the odd bit of clay pipe!

This photograph, taken in June before the area in the foreground had been excavated to what we felt was ‘natural’ (about a further 400mm) shows the section that we used as an access path to the excavation – the bucket is laying on this walkway. The depression to the east of the bucket is where P.C. Dave and Ed had found Burial 14 in 2007.

Having decided that we had exhausted the possibility of finding a boundary in the southern end of the site and feeling that at this stage in the season it was too late to top strip and extend the site even further south….we would also have had to needed to move a spoil heap and the MAHG trailer… it was decided that we would tidy the site by excavating the path area thereby making the whole of the western half of the area level. Ed had been away in France for the summer and she maintains that it was her return to the site that acted as the catalyst and she claims full responsibility for what happened once this decision had been taken!  

Burial 16 was found by P.C. Dave about 1.5m SW of burial 14. (Photograph taken looking east).

Burial 17 was “un-urned” but had an accessory vessel  placed with the bone.

Burial 18 was just cremated bone with no pots of any description.

Burials 27 (badly crushed) and 28 (un-urned but with a few sherds and a nail associated with it so it may have been in a wooden box) were claimed by Dave P and Ed.

All the time this excitement had been going on Terry B had diligently been excavating the strange pit above and then a colour change noted near Burial 18 and found….nothing! Better luck next season Terry – although you did find the only coin. What was it now? Oh yes I remember – a 1964 penny from Jersey !

Burial 22 after conservation.

The main vessel and the smaller pot, (which was found inverted inside the burial urn) had both been damaged in antiquity by ploughing.  

The accessory vessel from Burial  26 with its proud Father ..............

..... and after conservation.

The composite photograph below shows the proximity of the burials in the ‘cluster’. When taking the photographs Ed was standing on the area that will be excavated in 2010.

As we finished tidying the site a colour change and a sherd of pot were noticed in the north wall of the trench so watch this space….  

Burial 30 is half done as Mike wanted to drool over the ?Samian? bowl. There is a section of the side and rim missing but the rest goes together nicely. You may know that the main vessel was collapsing before it was lifted but Ed’s doing her best to hold it together while excavating it. The ?Samian? bowl was definitely a lid as the shoulder of the main vessel had been crushed underneath it....but strangely at the moment Ed seems to be minus rim sherds....they may be deeper in the layers yet to be attacked. The big excitement is that at about 11.00pm last night Ed managed to remove, intact, a lovely little flask from under the collapsed shoulder section. It had been tipped on its side, probably when the dish was crushed in the burial, and the rim is chipped so it's worth sieving the soil contents to see if any fragments come to light.... Ed'll bring what she can to the site on Saturday for everyone to gloat over.  

On the last day of April 2010 Tollesbury was the scene of the world's heaviest rainfall in living memory....well that's what it felt like. As a consequence the site this morning was a quagmire....it also had an innovative new feature that went well with the tyres that had been dumped in the western trench extension last week (forgot to mention those in the last diary entry in my excitement about the pots). We had a visitation during the week and our visitors had helpfully excavated chunks of soil from Heidi's billiard table area. It now looks like a very badly ploughed field. It was probably bored Tollesbury youth looking for something to enliven their dull existence so let's hope they felt that it was more hard work that it was worth.

The team were carrying on the excavation near Burials 29 and 30 but it was VERY sticky. An area of bone fragments was located and then, fairly close to it, a few rim sherds. If the bone is an un-urned burial it would have been very difficult to lift adequately given the horrendous digging conditions and so the area was covered with polythene and lightly backfilled. Hopefully next week will be a bit drier. Digging then concentrated on removing the next section of plough soil in order to expose a wider, more 'open area' at the Roman level.

Update on Burial 30: The lid of the Burial is a Dragendorff 18. Only a smallish section of the rim and side is missing and I hope that it may turn out to be the bit we found last season.....Colin may have it somewhere in the archives.....The dish is very badly abraded and although you can see that there was a makers mark you cannot read it! The little accessory vessel (vase or flask) has cleaned up beautifully but there are a few bits of the rim missing. Talking of  pot rim....Ed didn't find any rim at all for the main vessel. That is odd as the Dag 18 was still covering at least half of the urn. The conundrum: Was the pot devoid of rim (i.e. badly broken) before being used as a container for the ashes? If so it seems a strange idea to then include a high status Samian lid and a fine ware vase as grave goods doesn't it?

There are more sherds of the main vessel ...Ed put these few bits of the base together for the 'group photo'.

Ed spent this week dismantling and rebuilding the main vessel from burial 30. The base is so wafty that you cannot align the 'ankle'...is it can be described as such...very accurately at all and a small mistake there flung the whole thing out. Ed has a very few very small bits that she's still trying to find a home for....she's going to persevere! Still no rim though. In the photo below it is still only 'tacked' together and the joints still have to be sealed to hold it firm....at the moment it cannot travel or it would drop to bits! Hopefully Ed will have time to do that next week.

Burial 26 contents, including glass, is shown in the two pictures below.

Having spent last week getting the next section north nice and level we proceeded to remove the final layer of soil 'above burial depth'. It was nice that Doug (the landowner) made it on to site in his golf buggy just as we had confirmed Burial 31 (Ed) and Burial 32 (P.C. Dave) and he was able to see them in situ, albeit from a bit of a distance. Just after he left Heidi increased her tally by finding number 33. The first two were encased in plaster and lifted as great lumps but Heidi's was so badly 'ploughed' that only the bottom section of the burial was still there so the remaining contents were removed and bagged before the base of the vessel was lifted. The sherds etc were sent back to the hut for washing and reconstruction. 31 was lifted with about 2 tons of soil around it as it was really scattered by the plough and we were unsure of how much of the pot was left intact. Ed's since had a chance to excavate the contents and reports that although badly damaged in antiquity the bottom third of the main vessel can be reconstructed and we have 3 sherds (1 rim and 2 body) of a fineware vessel in a black fabric accessory vessel. These were found in amongst the cremated bone so the pot was definitely inside the main vessel. There are 3 sherds of a redddish fineware that may have been associated with the burial but as these were in the top layer of soil, above the remaining cremated bone, Ed cannot absolutely state that it was part of burial 31.

The photograph below shows how close the latest crop of burials are to each other.

Having nothing better to do with the rest of Saturday Ed decided that there were a couple of burials on the bench that needed her attention ......

Burial 32 was fairly mundane. Large pieces of cremated bone in the bottom third of a thick 'grey ware' pot. Badly truncated and disturbed in antiquity, the only thing to report is that it contained the bones of an adult human!

Burial 31 was also badly truncated  again with only the bottom half in situ. This time we had a large spread of body and rim sherds adjacent to the burial which were lifted in a large lump. Originally there had been a little accessory vessel as there were 3 sherds (1 rim and two body) of a small black colour coated vessel (Colchester ware?) in amongst the bone in what remained of the vessel.

Having promised that she'd get onto Burial 23 ( 26 09 09) Ed finally summoned up the courage to attack the massive lump that has been occupying half the store room. PC Dave lifted it with a 'bulge' to the side as he thought that there was an accessory vessel beside it:

Well he was wrong...... the lump was just rim sherds and the 'dragged side of the main vessel. The accessory vessel was inside!!!!!

Badly damaged in antiquity both vessels are packed and ready to go to HQ with burial 32 etc.

This was a brilliant one for desk top excavation. The bone was in good condition and the plaster bandage had held the whole thing intact so it was a dream to work on. Afterwards Ed had a lovely time with a 3D jigsaw puzzle....

to this:

and the main vessel has some lovely 'pinched' decoration as well:

Totally different to any of the other vessels that we've found.

A lovely day for being down a hole in the ground. We uncovered the backfilled burial (34) and, whilst Stuart was lifting it, the deputy site directors deliberated upon it and decided that we needed to go down at least 100mm deeper over the whole area as we might be missing more un-urned burials. Needless to say neither Heidi nor Ed were the most popular archaeologists on site - it's a big area and it was hot in that there hole in the ground!

followed by ..

Paul gave Ed a hand to excavate and lift the vessels as she's notoriously slow...possibly due to all the chatting...and Ed then carried them off with the cremated bone to do her reporting.

The second vessel, which Ed's now reconstructed, as it was, mercifully, only in 4 sections (although it seems to have lost its foot ring in antiquity), is a Samian ware Dragendorff form 33 (early), which is again 1st century. Ed's irreverent son, Jared, has nicknamed it "The Noodle Bowl"

Whilst all this excitement was going on Jennifer, back after a few weeks absence, was quietly finding yet another un-urned burial which Heidi helped her to lift before Ed could take a photo of it in situ. This is the next best thing: the hole bone came out of!

As you can see, Burial 36, due to its higher position, would have been found even if we hadn't formulated a new 'depth policy' but it's hardly as exciting as Burial 35...."the one that would have got away"!

It was a quiet day, not much by way of finds. 

We've gone down to the level where we found the lovely Samian dish but it looks fairly sterile. Jennifer found a lovely rim and some bone which we thought could be another burial (?) - this is on the same level as the burial she found last week.  As it was quite late in the day we covered the area and left it for the coming week. 

Richard found what looks like exactly the same type of post hole feature as last week - this one however was a bit lower - it seems as though he's got three post holes right next to each other. Can this be true?

Other than that not much - the odd pot sherd and sliver of glass as well as a lovely waste flake.

In spite of the unpleasant conditions we had quite a large turn out...and we found....Nothing!

Paul found a nice flint scraper but unfortunately it was in the backfill of one of the trenches Brian dug trying to establish the layout of the ditches on the site so although we know it came from the area of Brian's trench, as it was opened before the open area we are working on at the moment and backfilled with the soil that came out of it, it is not stratified ...still, it is a lovely little reminder that folk were actually on our site in the Mesolithic.

 View showing bulb of percussion                       View showing retouch work around the edges

Disappointingly Jennifer's bone scatter and rim sherd turned out to be just that ... a scatter of bone and a stray rim sherd...ah well better luck next week.....

Digging was slow due to the lack of rain and not much was found by way of finds. The usual suspects, i.e. clay pipe, roof tile and a few flint waste flakes. 

A strategy meeting is to be held in the near future as we're running out of digging space - we had a few new members on site and its going very well, apart from the cramped quarters.