The flutter of anticipation has been released into the blue sky 🙂 we have had a brilliant day, the site is blooming, struck flint and pottery coming out thick and fast! But the real star is the round yellow feature filled with deep orange with hints of black, more on this later 🙂 The picture below shows it just appearing as Martin mattocks gently the hard surface.
The feature can be seen as a red and dark brown black area next to the side of the trench
The pottery that is being dug up at the moment looks more like Iron Age pottery than Bronze Age. It seems a bit different to the pottery we are used to finding in Dorset and may have more in common with pottery from Devon and Cornwall. At the site we excavated just over the hill, at Dog House, we found Bronze Age pottery from near Bodmin, in Cornwall. One piece that came from the feature described earlier, was an exciting surprise, showing a deep incised decoration of hatched lines (see picture below)
The small piece of decorated pottery, hopefully we will find more
Now back to the feature, it was very dry and did not look very impressive, so it was down to the garden center to get a water spray and Tommy went off to the rangers office to get some water. It was well worth the journey through the holiday traffic, as the spray soon highlighted what could be a hearth or kiln of some kind! It was definitely a Wow moment 🙂 The yellow is the sides or wall with orange clay in the middle and a charcoal layer just appearing lower down.
The outer yellow of the ‘wall’ of the hearth/kiln/fire pit
The feature is right in the middle of the trench
We said goodbye today to Ray, our barrower supreme. Thanks for staying to help, you were a valuable member of the team, especially as I am out of action due to a dodgy shoulder.
Ray ‘Mr Barrow’ Lewis take a bow 🙂
Archaeology National Trust SW 
Love the barrow, I was very good at snoozing in those! 🙂
🙂 a very good tradition 🙂 better than a bucket even with a kneeler on it!