Up at 7 to pack and pull down the tent. Managed to fit everything back in, which surprised me. Left Fishbourne at 9, saying goodbye to those that have remained to work the weekend as volunteers. Had only 10 minute waits at Havant and Guildford. Got to Aldershot and had to wait ¾ hour. Had a Rollover Hotdog which purports to be “The best hotdog in the world”. I have no idea who judges this sort of thing (and it just doesn’t compare with the one we had in New York) but it’s pretty damn good when you’ve not eaten since dinner the night before. Because of this, I am not wholly objective in it’s merits and shortcomings.

Got to Alton and had to wait an hour for a cab. Finally home at 1.30. Went to bed sober for the first time in a week…but boy the mattress was good!

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I have to say that this was one of the most enjoyable weeks I have ever spent. I feel I have learned an awful lot, met a lot of great people and enjoyed myself as well. Not to mention the amount of beer I’ve consumed. Leaving aside the beer, this is in no small way due to David Rudkin and John Manley who infect you with their enthusiasm and skills. I will be going to the end of dig party on 24 August to reacquaint with (hopefully) most of them and you couldn’t keep me away from Fishbourne 2003!

Gaz at Fishbourne

And so, our final day. We started with a session with Naomi on environmental archaeology which is the study how the environment can be used to study human impact. We got to look at lots of bones – birds, mammals and human. I learned how to spot a male or female skull and, teeth willing, how to tell if a person has suffered long periods of sickness. It was an excellent session, Naomi’s enthusiasm being a big factor in this. She LOVES her bones!

It was then off to the flotation tank. This is a big drum that empties into two smaller trays with small screens across them. These sit one above the other and catch anything that floats to the surface of the big drum and cascade into these smaller trays. The water eventually collects in another big drum which pumps out.

What happens is a sample of a context is taken and put into a net in the big drum and is manipulated with the hands until bits float up and collect. Most of us had a go, dipping our hands in and squidging the dirt between our fingers. It was very cold water!

Naomi and her flotation tank

At 11 it was back to the site for morning break then back to some digging. Peter put Nigel, Bryan and I digging out a cut of the ditch. A lot of clay, heavily compacted, made it very hard going and also, not a lot of finds. It was particularly hard sieving every 3rd barrow. A break for lunch then back to it. Beside us (near Bev’s beautifully dug out posthole) David Rudkin started trowelling out around what we thought was a bit of tile. It turned out to be an amphora, maybe buried whole, that had collapsed in on itself. He took a sample from inside it and sent it for analysis to try and determine what was in it. The amphora extends out of the trench and beneath the baulk wall so they’ll have to drop a trench onto it. All very exciting.

After our coffee break, we all got our certificates then had our evaluations with David. We chatted about good and bad things with the week (there wasn’t a lot of bad) along with suggestions to improve it in the future. A few were posited and discussed. David is a lovely, enthusiastic man and a pleasure to have worked with. I hope I can do so again! He then had to bolt for Bolton – don’t know why. We went back to our ditch and cleaned it up in time to pack up for the final time.

Steve left at afternoon break and Sam and Rachel left when we got back to camp.

Had some left over sausages and salad for tea then off to the Bulls Head for the usual beer. Met Nigel and Chris there shortly followed by Bev and Bryan. We sat drinking and chatting until first Nigel (he of the extreme views on marriage), then Bev (she of parachuting prowess) left.

We were then joined by Peter, Caroline, Emmie and Gill (volunteer) who had been into Chichester for dinner. We left at closing time (again) following a spirited discussion of my extraordinary views of mankind. Peter accused me of doing it deliberately in order to inspire a lively discussion and keep him there drinking more beer – smart bastard! Bryan left us and we wandered back to the camp where we finished off in the portacabin discussing the dangerous fauna of Australia. Bed at about 1.30am.

There was a lot of after-the-burglary chat all day today. Steve said we should have woken him up because, being a policeman, he would have been given back a holiday and been paid heaps of overtime for the arrest. Apparently the two thieves were trainee marines so that puts paid to any thoughts of continuing as such. Almost feel sorry for them because they have no future in robbing things either.

First thing this morning we were back digging the robber trench, looking for the edges of the wall. At 11 we had a session with John showing us how to fill in a context report. There’s an awful lot of bureaucracy in archaeology but it means a lot of data collection can be achieved and then be manipulated in many ways. After this enlightenment we went back to the site for some cleaning up of our context so it can be drawn.

One of the walls appears to have another coming off it at right angles and most of the morning David Rudkin, David M and John were hard at work trying to find it.

After lunch we started a section further up the eastern end of the wall and I’d just reached the top of the foundations when it was time to clear up for the day. We have a two hour session tomorrow morning so the volunteers will probably get to work on it now! That’s the bugger with being a trainee.

Uncovering a Roman wall

We had a hard-to-stay-awake lecture and slide show on finds conservation from 7.30 – 8.30. It wasn’t the content, as it was very interesting but the room was small and stuffy, we’d all been working physically in the sun all day and some of us hadn’t got a lot of sleep the night before.

What I did learn from the session was that these days the thinking behind a lot of (particularly metal) finds is not to take off all the corrosion and muck but to x-ray them to see what the object is, before deciding what to do with it. In the past too many objects have been ruined by enthusiastic but misguided cleaning up.

We also found out how they move mosaics which is pretty amazing and something I’ve wondered about since seeing the big ones in the palace. It’s very long and involved but in a nutshell…they photograph it, trace it onto film, ‘map’ the whole thing out then slice a layer underneath.

On top of the mosaic goes an adhesive followed by a muslin-like cloth. This has grid lines drawn on it to match the grid lines drawn in the mapping process. Using a Stanley knife, the conservator slices the mosaic along areas that won’t be too noticeable once it’s reassembled – racks, matching black lines, etc. The bits are then turned upside down and glued to bits of board with bolts set into it.

By combining the plotted lines, the tracing and the photographs it is then placed back into position where the material is finally pealed off and voila! A mosaic. It takes a long time to accomplish but must be very satisfying. Sort of like a very big and heavy jigsaw puzzle.

After the session we all settled down for our English bar-b-que. It was a bit mellow after last night. Mostly just sat in a gradually growing then gradually diminishing circle at the foot of one of the mounds. There was no rolling tonight. We finished up in the portacabin, trying to finish the beer. Finally went to bed just after 1am.

Got quite pissed at the pub last night and consequently feeling a bit seedy this morning. Who am I kidding, I’m feeling a LOT seedy this morning. We’ve got a lesson on small finds this morning which is a nice easy start to the day at least.

Last night I was sat next to John Manley and talked to him about his book – well, the first couple of chapters. He’s got the classic gnarled features and economy of speech you’d expect from an archaeologist. He doesn’t have the same obvious enthusiasm as David Rudkin but can get very carried away with things like our yellow clay. He has a lovely habit of knowing everyone’s name and will call you by it often. It makes you feel quite special.

By the way, the yellow clay keeps going and we’re waiting for it to turn into the main ditch which was excavated in 1999. In another area yesterday they uncovered another wall (robber trench – see below) which makes it even more mysterious.

It’s going to be horrible to leave on Saturday and not know what else has been found as they go deeper. I really envy the volunteers who can stay for the whole thing (six weeks). Last night Steve asked me if I’d come back as a volunteer next year and I had no hesitation in saying yes.

It was a big and varied day. Started off bone washing in the morning. Almost as much fun as pot washing but with more variety. Not human bones, I might add. Mostly pig and chicken with the occasional horse or cow. From here it was on to the next step in the process. This is writing the dig code (FBE02) and context number (“1015″, say) on cleaned and dry pottery using ink and nibbed pens. Some of the pieces are really tiny and it’s not easy to write that much information without making it go a bit blobby. Laura said it will change what we decide are real finds in respect to size!

After this I was on the Total Station taking small finds readings – four A4 pages of them! Then a bit of digging before lunch.

After lunch George (one of the supervisors) showed us how to do site planning. This is where a metre by metre square is pegged out inside one of the five by five contexts and a wire grid is placed over it. Using a piece of filmy graph paper we then had to draw the features using special symbols. I have been ok with everything up to this point but anyone who knows me will testify to my total lack of any kind of drawing skills. Anyway, we did them in four groups and the best one gets picked to go into the archive for posterity – that won’t be mine. Felt sorry for the others on my team.

Then it was back on the Total Station for more readings. While I was doing this, the others had finished taking off the layer of one of the contexts. It now had to be trowelled back. This means about seven of us get on our knees and, in a line, scrape the ground clean with our trowels. This is so the features can be seen clearly, giving an indication of what to do next. We did it in 20 minutes.

During the day we had a film crew on site from Southern TV. They interviewed David Rudkin, taking footage of the dig, etc. It made yelling out small find numbers difficult as we would have to keep stopping and starting around their filming. Steve and Anne were both placed in the background pretending to trowel. They said later, between each shot, they would change hands, just to send the continuity crazy.

After packing away the tools all the trainees met up on the lawn at the front of the palace for some Geo Phys lessons. This was very interesting and explained a lot of what I’ve seen on the TV (Time Team, etc) but I have to say, it is not a career choice. Walking around a 20 by 20 metres square of field, stopping every metre and sinking a probe into the ground until it trills is not the most interesting of jobs. After we’d mapped the entire area, Gabs (the instructor) loaded it onto a laptop and showed us the field, or rather, underneath the field.

Bev and Rachel do geophys

Then it was back to the tents for a dinner and off to the pub…of course. Got drunk again, though not as bad as last night, with about ten others. Someone suggested rolling down the big mounds by the camp site so, at midnight eight of us climbed up, then rolled down like ten year olds, squealing and making a hell of a noise. I was a little concerned about the mix of Butser Ale and hurtling uncontrollably sideways down a hill but I managed it. The hardest part was getting up afterwards.

Then, as we sat atop the highest mound, looking for all the world like some pagan ritualists with our torches flickering around, we heard smashing glass coming from the site. Gabs grabbed Sam’s phone and got onto 999 while Pete, Chris, Rachel and I went to investigate and hopefully catch some junkie in the act.

When we got there we found the South East’s dumbest thief. His mate took off across the field but this one stood and had a conversation with us. Pete asked him what he was doing breaking glass and he said it was an accident. Admittedly he was a bit drunk but it doesn’t take Einstein to work out that standing around chatting, gives the good guys an excellent chance to get a good description of you. Particularly as we had torches and he didn’t. Mind you, I don’t think he’d have been able to work a torch he was so dumb. Eventually he decided to jump the fence between us and run away at great speed. We decided NOT to resort to violence as he was very big and scary and had nothing to lose.

A lone policeman turned up pretty quickly after this (I told Pete if he’d told the thief a long northern joke, we could probably have kept him there long enough for the police to join in) and we inspected the damage. They’d broken the only non-barred window in the small finds portacabin and grabbed stuff off the desk. There’s nothing of any value kept in the cabins over night so the ground was strewn with white labels, glass, a pair of scissors and a plastic tray. They’d also left behind a loaf of bread, an empty Bass Shandy can and, rather bizarrely, a Grinster Cornish Pasty.

Anne and I went to wake up John who was totally asleep and took forever to work out what keys are for. Eventually we got back, passing the dog squad on the way. They started scouring the bushes. Not satisfied with this, a police helicopter was called in and it started searching with it’s heat detector camera. Well, they managed to catch both of them! All of us were very impressed with the boys in blue.

Chris and Rachel went off to the station to make statements as they had the best descriptions. While the rest of us went to the on-site portacabin for some beer and a few laughs. I finally had to crash at 2am but the others stayed until dawn. A very exciting night…and that’s not counting the copious amounts of hill rolling.

Robber Trench
In the past someone has stolen the stone work from a wall to use somewhere else. They then put back all the stuff they don’t want into the trench. This means that most walls have to be uncovered down to their foundations in order to make out what’s happening with them. Roman foundations went down about a metre.

Slept a little better last night. A few aches and pains from bending over the shovel and mattocking but nothing debilitating. I’ve eaten my oats and I’m drinking my second coffee. Steve has just said he’s going to Tesco’s to get doughnuts for morning tea. Steve is one of the volunteers and wears camouflage gear to dig in, complete with big army boots. He’s a policeman in real life.

One of the Australian volunteers (Caroline) is from Geraldton and sounds remarkably like Cathy Freeman. She’s not obviously Aboriginal and I don’t like to ask. It was odd at the pub last night because she’d start talking and I’d have to look over to make sure it wasn’t Cathy being interviewed on a telly somewhere.

Just looking at the lines of tents and mine is easily the smallest and the only one with the door in the side. Steve has the biggest. I think it has a bathroom, dining room and three car garage as well as the sleeping platform – probably raised. Mind you, he arrived in his car. The tent alone would weigh as much as my entire pack.

On the dig, spent the morning working in the same context as yesterday. I found a piece of glass, a worked flint and (everyone eager) something that might be a key or part of one. It is now called “CuA OBJ = unknown copper alloy object”. After a lot of digging and yummy doughnuts with morning tea, it was lunch and another bacon bap.

After lunch we had a session learning how to use the Total Station and Staff – this is the surveyor’s tripod and stick. There’s a lot of fiddly things to do like making it level. This alone can take hours, literally. Then it has to be aligned to a known point, shown where north is, etc. Now I know what those guys on the side of the road do.

The machine is used to pinpoint the location of small finds (like my key) in three dimensions – where it is in terms of northings and eastings and the height above sea level. These readings are entered into a database which will eventually be plotted onto a map so concentrations of particular objects (as well as a definite overall picture) can be shown for further investigation. We will be plotting these finds from tomorrow.

Our group was then divided down to three (Dawn, Rachel and me) to set it up by ourselves for practice.

After afternoon tea (with cake courtesy of Anne) Dawn and I went round to Laura to do some pot washing.

Pot washing in the sun

This entails scrubbing little bits of pot and bone with toothbrushes and leaving them out to dry. It’s an excellent chance to sit down and chat while you wash, sitting at a table in the sun. We were with two volunteers who kept us very entertained with stories from past digs. At 5.30 we packed up and headed back to the tents.

Tonight we went to the Wool Pack pub (went there at Christmas with Denise, Peter, Kelly and Drew) for a Thai meal.

Slept pretty badly. Ground not very springy beneath my thin bed roll. Every couple of hours my body would complain and I’d roll over, which woke me up. Eventually rose at 7 properly and had my first can of coffee. What a genius idea. Mr Nescafe, I love you! Then my specially prepared (by me) oats for breakfast (oats mixed with powdered milk, bit of water, stir till boiled – perfect) and a proper coffee.

The day is gloriously all sun. The finds supervisor (Laura) says it’s going to pour with rain tomorrow. What a little ray of sunshine she is. Teeth cleaning and face washing completed in the toilets, as the shower block (I say block but it’s actually two small showers in the office – one for men, one for women) is locked until 8am. Slapped on plenty of sunscreen and deodorant and ready for the day. I think I’ll have a little lie down.

It’s now 6.30 and I’m exhausted. We started off (there’s 11 of us trainees) in the Education Centre with David Rudkin. He’s the Site Director and the Director of Fishbourne. We all had to introduce ourselves. We are all as varied as you can get! There’s a 17 years old and a guy who looks about 65 then everything in between. All with varying degrees of knowledge and no-one having been on a dig before. So we’re all starting from nothing. There’s an Australian (Pam) from Perth in our group and also a couple of Australian’s who are volunteers (Caroline and Emmie who I met yesterday).

I should explain the distinction. Volunteers are people with experience who sign on for the dig whereas trainees are all novices. After this week (and after joining the Sussex Archaeological Society) I will be eligible to volunteer next year.

Anyway, back to the day. David showed us some finds so we could get a bit tactile from the off. Last week’s trainees complained they hadn’t been able to touch things at the beginning so we benefited from it. Then we were whizzed around the museum and finally to the café for our “…only free cup of coffee“. We all met Ivy, the café lady, as well. At last we made it to the site.

Here John Manley took over instruction. He is Co-Director of the site with David. He sat us down and read us the rules ‘on-site’. All pretty sensible really and about what you’d expect on a building site. Then he showed us round. The volunteers were all busy scratching round in the trenches. We then traipsed round to the small finds building to meet Laura who is the Small Finds Supervisor. She is in the tent next to me with Ollie, her partner.

Laura showed us lots of bits and pieces, some lovely Samian ware and brooches from last week. She also showed us the unwashed stuff! Sam & Rachel, who were sitting near me, started wondering how we were going to tell the difference between the unwashed stuff and rocks. It’s true, there seems to be very little difference.

After this it was time for lunch. Had a delicious bacon bap then went and bought a dig t-shirt and John Manley’s book, AD 43, the Roman Invasion of Britain, A Reassessment. Must get him to sign it.

Back on site, David Maynard taught us how to use the mattock, shovel, wheelbarrow and our trowels properly. And then FINALLY we were put into groups to start digging. At first I was put up with the metal detectorists, clearing the rubble for them.

David on site

This is probably a good point to explain what happens. We gradually mattock a section (usually) 10cm deep by 5 metres square (the context), trawling regularly through with our fingers and trowels then shovelling it into a wheelbarrow. This is then trawled through again before it is taken up to be metal detected, then discarded. After the entire section has been cleared, it is all trowelled off smooth.

Finds are divided into bulk and small (and probably earth shattering but this was not mentioned). The bulk being bits of tile and brick, most pottery, animal bones, shells, etc. They are put in plastic containers with the relevant context number on them. Small finds have their position marked on the ground which is then recorded 3 dimensionally using a machine that looks like a surveyor’s tripod and stick.

Shovelling rubble was not a lot of fun but eventually I got onto the site and it was excellent. Mattock here, shovel there. We found a very big bit of tile and a few bits of pottery but nothing of any great import. A yellow discolouration of the soil, however, had everyone buzzing about what it was. So we started following it back to see how far it went.

All too quickly it was 5.30 and time to pack up the tools, move them into the shed and head back to camp. Had a much needed and, I think, well earned shower then a coffee before dinner. After food and a nice long relax on the grass outside the tents, we all headed over to the pub. There were only the campers and two of the trainees who are staying in B&Bs locally. I talked to Laura and Ollie about cats, dogs and computer games. Ollie is an engineer who knows as much about Grand Theft Auto as I do so there was lots of scope to compare notes. He’s got a mate who has completed it without resorting to cheats! Pretty impressive. Got back to the tents at about 11 and crashed.

Up at 6.30. I don’t know why. It just happened. Left the key with Katie and told everyone about the guy coming for Sidney on Monday – mainly so Dick doesn’t “duff ‘im up”. Finally hoisted my pack and hit the trail.

OH MY GOD! Walking bent over to stop from toppling backwards. The weight was okay-ish but it’s all pulling me back. Had a couple of stops but still made Alton in about an hour. The sun stayed hidden until I arrived at the station, which is a GOOD thing as it’s very hot now it’s out.

Now sitting on one of many trains today. Second train from Aldershot to Guildford and, naturally, lots of loud, obnoxious teenagers.

I’ve started re-reading Notes on the Making of Apocalypse Now and it’s still brilliant.

Train number three, Guildford to Havant. There was no electricity at Guildford which equals lots of staff being strangely helpful. The coffee bar was open but without the power the girl was just sitting there. She reckons she’s going home and I can’t say I blame her.

This train is late. Oddly enough, it arrived early but then there’s was some problem. Probably a shrew on the line.

A couple of annoying upper class twits sitting across the aisle talking about sailing in daddy’s yacht and drinking in Winchester. They are off to play “tennis in Surrey“. I really don’t care what they do but it would be really nice if they’d not include the whole carriage in their conversation. Fortunately they got off at Godalming and the train slipped into a merciful silence, after breathing a collective sigh of relief.

A lovely trip through the countryside to Havant and then my fourth and final leg to Fishbourne, which I made with two minutes to spare! Typically the train came in from the opposite side that I thought it would and I had to reassess where I’d assumed the ocean was. From Fishbourne it was a short ten minute walk to the Palace (as promised). I had my tent pitched and settled in by 3.45. And I left at 10am! You could drive it in less than an hour. Anyway, all part of the adventure.

Went down to look at the dig site from the anonymity of the bike path. Looks good and very real. Can’t wait till tomorrow.

Tent city outside the mosaics

I’m now settled and lying in front of my tent. I’m pitched right next to the portacabin so it’s only a short walk to the kettle in the morning. It would be all very pleasant and peaceful camped here by the huge mounds if not for one tiny thing. The A27 is about 500 metres away. You can’t see it because of the mounds and copious trees but you sure can hear it! Also the train line is even closer but you can only JUST hear it over the continuous traffic.

Having had my first meal of noodles. Cooked over my own little camp stove, I understand what Bill Bryson says about them. They ARE novel at first but wear very thin, pretty quickly. I’m glad I’m only in for a week of digestion.

The portacabin has all our essentials like kettle, fridge, table, chairs, etc and is a portable cabin on blocks. We get water from an outside tap behind it. I met an Australian girl called Emmie and there’s also a very friendly guy who suggested we go to the pub. Being English he omitted telling me HIS name.

Just met David Maynard, the Assistant Site Director and finally someone has filled me in on things. We trainees are meeting outside the Palace at 9am tomorrow to be told what to do/not do. I asked him how they’d got on last week and he said “…lots of finds…” but not what they’d expected. So instead of answering questions, they just asked more. He seems very friendly but also a tad odd. Sort of shy and retiring with a habit of stopping a conversation, pausing for a few seconds then quickly walking off. It’s not a problem, of course. If a conversation is over, there really is no need for a long dragged out session of small talk, but it’s rare to find someone with so much determination to get to another place.

Went to the Wool Pack for three pints. A few people from the campsite sat outside but I didn’t feel comfortable invading their space so staggered back to camp and sleep.