Day 3

Another early morning start at the Naval Stores excavation! We were looking forward to making some real progress at the site today, as most of our team were quite experienced excavators. Wednesday's crew included: Jon Prangnell, Tam Smith, Kevin Rains, Alex Wisniowiecka, Alison Crowther, Stefani Eagle, Luke Kirkwood, Nick Kirkwood, Angela Spitzer, Michael Haslam and Clare Ammenhauser.

By the end of Tuesday we had excavated the whole pit to the same level, ending with Excavation Unit (XU) 6. Our first task for today was to begin removing the next unit - which was easier said than done! Not long after starting, we realised that the stratigraphy of the pit was becoming more and more complicated. The western side of the pit consisted of a dark, damp soil; the southern end was a light coloured soil with compacted rocky inclusions; and in-between, separating both of these layers, was a coarse sand layer! These were three very diverse areas that were obvious, and it was important to keep them separate in order to understand the composition of the site. We numbered the different areas as XUs 6-8.

XU7a was the light coloured soil and rocky area mentioned above. This was such a hard surface that we had to use our large picks again, as our trowels could not break through the ground! After a while we realised that this area was unique, as it was composed of a concentration of concrete in a "pit" shape, which was embedded with steel reinforcement. We removed all of this pit area as a separate "Feature". In archaeology, a feature can be a group of related artefacts, or an area of special interest which is considered unique. At the Naval Stores we decided that the concrete pit was an area which was worth recording in detail, so we made drawings of the feature, and took photographs. Interestingly, the pit feature seemed to correlate with our ground penetrating radar data showing an anomaly or hotspot in this area at this approximate depth.

By the end of the day we had removed XUs 6, 7a and 8. Each of these was sieved, and we found a large number of artefacts. We were excited to find more bullet casings, which were identified as Martini-Henri shells by experts Brian Sinclair and Christine Ianna - these are from the type of guns that are said to have been buried in the area surrounding the Naval Stores. We also found loads of glass, steel reinforcement, lots of corroded metal pieces, chunks of ceramic and a small amount of charcoal. By the end of the day we had begun to remove XU9, and we were coming across even more interesting finds. We removed a number of beer bottles, some square-shaped copper nails, 3 ring pulls and some rusted cans. Tomorrow's team will continue removing this unit, so keep an eye on the website for updates every night.

Hover your mouse over each photo to see what it is all about.