Another hot day today with blustery wind blowing dust over everyone.

Today segment three, excavated through the northern end of the ring ditch was completed, showing another wide, straight sided profile with a flat base. On the eastern side the ditch is cut by another later feature, which reduced the chalk geology to a considerable depth, truncating the east side of the ring ditch.

The later feature could not be explored further because of the limit of excavation in the trench. In the lowest fill the few finds included a cattle vertebra, located at a similar level within the ditch fills as the skull that was found a few days ago. A struck flint was found in the primary silting right on the base of the ditch cut.

The first and second segments were planned using a plot of an EDM survey which recorded strings of points along the the breaks of slope that defined the features. The survey plot was used as a base plan over which a hachured scale drawing was made on drawing film. When the drawing was completed, the overlaid plan was marked with the numbers assigned to the various features cut into the chalk geology.

The third completed segment  will be surveyed and planned in a similar way tomorrow on our last working day on site at Lord of the Manor.

Over the day we were assisted by a young volunteer who took part in the excavation, emptied barrows and processed the pottery sherds we have collected from the excavation and from the spoil around the site. The extra help was very welcome at this stage in our project.

More steady progress was made in the deep feature at the southern end of the trench. A segment cut in from the west side is showing another steep sided profile, and at the limit of the days digging, the upper fill of another curvilinear cut at the base of the segment, probably an inter-cutting pit. At the northern edge, the truncated crest of the ring ditch cut  has been traced further were it underlies the later feature. This allows us to trace an accurate plan of the ring ditch circuit as far as possible under the later deposits. As these features are often very regular in plan it is likely the ditch can be accurately projected in the final site plans. On our final day on Friday we will record and survey the segments excavated into the feature, recording the small keyhole insights into the shape and depth of the feature.

Today we turned our attention to another part of our excavation area where we had not yet done any work during this project. We began a digital survey with the EDM of a group of graves belonging to an important early Anglo-Saxon cemetery which had been fully excavated in 1982, leaving only the empty grave cuts showing in the hard chalk geology.  The small scale composite plan of the cemetery, which is the only record we have of the layout of the graves, has proved to have significant inaccuracies in the representation of  form and distribution of the graves. The small scale plan was consulted to determine the number that had been assigned to the grave cut in the earlier excavation, then the grave was surveyed with the EDM using the staff and prism to trace the outline of the upper and lower breaks of slope of the cut.

Although no burials remain in place, there is much evidence of archaeological value to gain from re-planning the graves. Already we can see that a more accurate plan will help us to determine the order of the burials. We can return to the old records of the site in the future and gain new insights into this very significant site, one of the key research aims of our project.

A lot remains to be done on the final day of the project to complete our field research into this important site, revealing more about the site and the features…