Stroud 'Big Dig' Day 5 - Arthur's daily photos

The weather was again kind to us today and with a big team we started by cutting and piling the turf lifted by the mini-digger yesterday.

Then work started on tidying the edges. As usual the team's standards of workmanship were high...

Then we had some visitors - some local people, and also this group from Fernhurst who had come to see the types of iron ore we had been finding on site on previous digs. We donated this piece of iron ore found in Trench S today so they could take it away and test it. They seemed to think that the ore on site had been high in sulphur content and usually unsuitable for iron production, but that it may have been treated in some way to reduce the sulphur content.

The rest of the day was spent levelling the surface as seen below. Some finds started to come from the ploughsoil layer (context S1000); for example there were pieces of lead, a strip of copper alloy, a big piece of bottle glass probably from an 18th century flagon, some Romano-British CBM, and various small sherds of R-B pottery. All in all a good start.