Day 19: Thursday 15th July

Weather: Couldn't make up it's mind.

Word of the Day: Tape Measure

Find of the Day: A tiny mouse skull pictured below.

Students involved in the Historic Buildings field school were back on site today after a good day yesterday at Hardwick Hall. Students were looking at the walls at Manor, trying to determine the different fazes of building. Above is the Long Gallery, and these different fazes can be indentified based on the different types of stone, various repairs and the windows. In the photo above you can see that the windows have been filled in with red bricks from the 18th/19th century.

Hutch stretching in preparation to record stone by stone.

After several days of planning, Mauro is getting back into the swing of things.

C.J doing a site plan of Trench 16.

We have found a fairly large amount of worked bone, but here is a piece of worked shell.

This is a fragment of what looks like a jug.

Kim very carefully trowelling a feature in trench 15.

Nat also carefully trowelling a feature in trench 15.

Charlie is BACK. He was also kind enough to bring Charlie's Beard back to site. It was a very joyous occassion, but still looks no different.

An Interview with C.J.

C.J aka Charles James has just completed his first year of BA Archaeology at Nottingham University. He has been at the Manor Lodge field school for three weeks so we thought we'd have a good old chin wag about Archaeology.

V: So why Archaeology C.J?

C.J: I've been interested in classics for years and years, since I was little. And with archaeology you can explore that further. You're getting to grips with the practical side. I find history quite boring, but with archaeology you are actually getting involved, discovering, hands on learning. It's interesting.

V: Indiana Jones or Tony Robinson?

C.J: If there hadn't have been that fourth Indiana Jones movie I would have said Indi. But I'm going to have to go for the Robster. Baldrick. He's a bit of legend really. Then again, Indiana Jones is good, bringing archaeology to the masses.

V: You've been here for a few weeks, what do you think is the most interesting thing we've found?

C.J: When I was in a trench with Tom, trench 17 we found that game piece, the ceramic cube, and a couple of minute later we found the top of a wine bottle.

V: What aspect have you enjoyed most about your course thus far?

C.J: The first year is an overview of the last 4 million years and i've liked how its so varied. I found ancient man like cavemen and neanderthals really interesting and obviously all the Roman and Greek stuff. I'm still not massive on 1066, I prefer my really old stuff. Achillians, Greek Islands, Troy and gaining more context of the ancient world.