Site Diary: Trench 4

Household removals

As we began to suspect last week removal of the turf and peat showed that what had appeared to be level platforms for two circular buildings are nothing more than naturally level areas surrounded by earthfast boulders. The possible buildings in Trench 4 have disappeared.

The boundary

On the upside, the boundary bank can be seen clearly now that its covering of heather has been removed. It forms the northern boundary of the large field we are concentrating many of our trenches on this year and separates this field from a large area of cleared ground to the north, which was probably another field in later prehistory.

The boundary we are digging is about 0.5 metres high but has gaps in it which are nearly level with the ground surface. In places it is mainly stone while in others it is predominantly earth. Rather than dig the whole of the boundary we plan to excavate two narrow trenches across its length. In one of these trenches we will look at how the bank was constructed and how this varies between the more stony and more earthen parts.

The second narrow trench will be excavated across a gap in the bank to see if we can identify whether this was originally a gateway or just an area where the boundary does not survive as a visible earthwork.