Open Day

Back Garden Archaeology

The largest archaeological trench I've dug in our back garden is this one, 3 metres by 1 metre and it went down to 1.5 metres at its deepest point. It was quite an undertaking but well worth it.

It was this trench that we opened the garden for when there was an event in the village, hence the labelling.

I learnt a lot from this trench. For instance, Iron Age pottery sherds were uncovered both above and below evidence of Romanization in the form of a few fragments of red and grey ware. From this I concluded that the rural Iron Age way of life continued in our area before and after the spread of Roman ways.

One thing I learnt, also, was that a trench of these dimensions takes a lot of filling in!