We managed to clear the rest of the pit feature in the big trench so there was something to show Digging for Britain when the production team came to the site today.
We worked together and pushed back the remnant of the old ploughsoil to reveal any features in the buried chalk. The line of the enclosure is unclear in our 10m by 12m trench …unless the pit is part of it and most of our area is a large gap until the next off the edge of the trench?
It does have the look of the filling of an Iron Age storage pit rather than a Neolithic ditch section. At the end of the day Sarah found a second chalk filled pit. The bottom edge of linear ditches, almost ploughed, are also evident but only as a slight hollow in the chalk.
Carol and Rob have been looking for Thomas Hardy’s original path surface of Max Gate driveway. It is hoped to replicate this when it is replaced in the next few months.
These small 1m square trenches lies close to the line of the circular Middle Neolithic enclosure as it passes the front door of the house.
At lunch time we noted that the chalk bedrock here sloped steeply down and the filling was a typical prehistoric light yellow ochre chalky clay. A patinated flint flake was found in it and when Alice got into the trench she found a fragment of bone. We will see what else can be found in the filling. Hopefully something for a radiocarbon date.
Archaeology National Trust SW 