Day 9: Wood You Believe It!

… You have probably guessed it, yet another scorching hot day at Sizergh Castle, and we’ve had yet another fantastic weekend of excavation and activities!

The biggest find over the weekend has been the remains of wood lining the trough of the burnt mound. There appears to be the remains of a large plank lining the bottom, and uprights on either side, and one end. The upright stones we originally found appear to be outside the wooden box. Hopefully, further excavation will reveal more about this fascinating find!.

Jon excavating the burnt mound

The wooden trough

The team down at the burnt mound were also joined by Gill Hey and Denise Druce from Oxford Archaeology North. Denise’s expertise was called upon to take core samples of the mound and surrounding area for analysis, which can help us to build up a picture of what the landscape was like in the past, but she seemed as keen on wearing the soil as recording it!

Coring at the burnt mound

Denise experimenting with a local clay face pack

Up at the top trenches the teams are still working away hard to uncover the date and purpose of the enigmatic feature running across the site. A few finds have been coming out, including a lead musket ball, but as yet nothing dating the feature!

 

A musket ball found by the ditch

The excavation team at the top site, were also joined by members of the Young Archaeologists Club, who tried their hands at excavation and recording, and also spent some time in the ‘hands on archaeology’ activity area. The activity area was manned by volunteers of the National Trust, and members of Oxford Archaeology North and included fun archaeological activities, including a kids mini dig, an artefact handling table, and a clay pottery workshop, teaching bronze age coil and strap building techniques of pottery manufacture. A great time was had here by all, learning about how finds are recovered, what they can tell us, and how they are made!

David Maron with members of the Young Archaeologists Club learning excavation techniques

The Pottery workshop, artefact handling, and mini dig area.

Some of the pots from the budding young potters!

All in all, it has been a fantastic week at Sizergh, topped off by a great weekend, I certainly had a lot of fun playing with clay in the sunshine, and look forward to doing the same next weekend! For now, everyone is looking forward to next week, when we will have more local school groups being led round by David Maron of Oxford Archaeology North, hopefully we can start to answer some questions about what the enigmatic feature is, and fingers crossed for more exciting developments down at the burnt mound!

Adam P