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Summer Excavation, Page 3

Day 7 – Ice Cream, Rain & RTI! – by Vicky

Second Week Begins! So the first week of the Basing House dig has gone, and after a well-deserved Sunday break, the second week begins. Despite spells of rain, it did not dampen the team’s efforts with the trench dig and progress was made. This was seen especially in the tough far corner, which finally after a few days of mattocking and shovelling, the group finally dug through layers of ground and had successfully de-turfed a large area. Morning trench shot. Continue reading →

Day 10 – The discovery of a Roman coin! – by Phoebe

The archaeology of the sections so far… The excavation has reached it’s tenth day here at Basing House, and as all the sections are hitting their respective base layers it is easy to see from looking at the section edges of the trench as well as the finds from each of the contexts we have removed, the changing archaeology of each soil layer and perhaps even their era of human activity… The site so far… 1. Continue reading →

Day 9 – Artists and Family Fun! – by Dan C.

Background information Today the team were continuing with the re-excavation of the work done in the 1960’s from the previous dig that took place at Basing House. The main idea of the day again was too track down the trench boundaries left behind, as well as to continue further on from where the previous excavation had finished in an attempt to find any new finds or information that had not been previously discovered at the site before. Continue reading →

Day 7 – Quick Photo Diary

One of our excellent student reporters will be writing up an article about today’s archaeology, so I just thought I’d share some photos from my mobile phone to give you an idea of how our day went. Early morning site tour Each team explained their archaeology from the day before We all updated one another on what we’d been up to Quick progress shot during coffee break, before the troops returned. It was actually warm enough today to all have an ice-cream. Continue reading →

Day 5 – Hampton Court Palace – by Michael

After four hard days of work at Basing house, the team took a well earned break and headed down to Hampton Court Palace for a day trip. After a short lie-in we headed up north to the famous palace. Basing House is known to have been built in a similar style to Hampton Court so the excursion helped us to identify the various parts of Basing House which had been described to us, as well as give us a sense of how grand Basing House once was. Continue reading →

Day 4 – Digging a ditch and playing games!

Alice Hi I’m Alice studying BA Archaeology. During my time at Basingstoke I’m most looking forward to learn more on the field and experience Archaeology from a time period I am passionate about-with hopefully lots of Medieval or Roman finds! And of course working on a site of such magnificent history! — Day 4 – Thursday 25th July So work begins again on this cool day. No sign of sun as of yet but a perfect day for digging. Continue reading →

Day 6 – First Saturday of the Dig – by Michael

I’m Michael Sherry an Archaeology & History Student from Southampton. I’m most looking forward to experiencing a site which has both early modern archaeology as well as Roman and Iron Age finds. — 27th July 2013 First Saturday of the Dig With everyone feeling rejuvenated after the trip to Hampton Court the day before, we began work on Saturday morning with high spirits. Continue reading →

Day 3 – Slipware Mystery! And some other stuff – by Jake

Jake. Written by Jake, The Northern One. — Day 3 On the 24th July 2013 at the Basing House Project a slipware tankard was unveiled in the far left corner of the excavation site. At first it was believed to be a c. 17th century contemporary piece, but after careful analysis by experienced Basing House staff, Dave Allen and Alan Turton came to the conclusion that the tankard was in fact a modern replica. Continue reading →

Day 2 – Let the Festival of British Archaeology begin – by Callum

Callum My name is Callum and I’m studying History and Archaeology at Southampton University. What I’m most looking forward to about Basing House is using techniques and technology’s that they didn’t have on the excavations in the 60′s. — Second Day Today at Basing house we started straight where we left off yesterday with the taking off of the top layer of grass and flowers from the site. Continue reading →