Bristol Dig Berkeley

The third and final week ended in torrential rain but thankfully we had finished recording the features on Thursday evening in the glorious sunshine! The sump, still holds water! Over the course of the week the team worked very hard to finish excavating and recording all of our remaining features. The feature thought to be a well was bottomed and it is now being interpreted as a sump rather than a well. It was only 85cm deep and has two stone lined channels leading into/out of it.  The sump, with its two channels, one of which runs alongside the E-W wall It may well have been dug to help dry out the surrounding land to make it more suitable for building. We know thanks to the many drains excavated in this part of the site and from stories told to us by local residents that a number of springs exist in this area of Berkeley and so water management must have been an ongoing issue for the town's Medieval inhabitants. The West end of Trench 8 with the...

A partial tile fragment was uncovered in the south-west area of Trench 8 on Monday 3rd June by two of our First Year students: Katrina and Omar.   Katrina and Omar excavating slot against southern trench section to investigate pre-Tudor demolition deposits In its unwashed pink-clay stained state, this object sparked debate between the dig supervisors who could not agree whether it was made from stone or ceramic. After a wash, it was clearly seen to be made from clay and had evidence of finger marks sweeping across as decoration or perhaps from fitting the material into a mould.   Clay tile fragment in situ within context 8710 The exact nature of this object was a bit of a mystery, and it was suggested to be some kind of wall decoration or 'cladding'. This was solved after we sent some cleaned-up photos to our pottery expert Paul Blinkhorn who said that from the images, it looked like a Minety ware roof tile. Clay Tile after cleaning The village o...