The first test pit...

Last week we started, and finished, our first test pit with the A Town Unearthed project. I had a fantastic team of volunteers who did a marvellous job, even if the results were not as exciting as last year. This was my first excavation where I was in sole charge of the archaeology and the people but we all survived and I think everything was recorded properly (!)

So down the excavation side of things. We were asked by the chap who is doing up the house to come in and dig a water pipe trench from his house to the meter (the trench was about 9 metres long in the end) as he didn't need planning permission for it and thought we might like to have a look. There had been work done on the house before when the walls were put up so we had a pretty good idea of what to expect, and it didn't disappoint.

We start by plotting the trench edge with string and get down to cutting the turf off...


.....we then get to the trowelling....

....with a bit of metal detecting in between breaks for good measure (some archaeologists hate metal detectors/metal detectorists but I don't mind them being used on site)...

...and they come up with a bullet; I have been informed it's from around 1941. We also turned up some military buttons (Folkestone was a very important place in the First and Second World War so finding this sort of stuff is very exciting for me) and two Roman coins...




.....we carry on...

....through a very exciting lovely green clay, which turned out to be a recent dumping episode, you could almost see the wheelbarrow treads...

....

....and eventually find what we were looking for, even if it isn't all that exciting archaeologically...

...and we get down to recording our findings (if you volunteer on my sites I will insist on you having a go at scaled drawings and paperwork; archaeology isn't all about digging!)...

....and there you have it, our first test pit over and done with.

Archaeologically speaking there were no features found because the lawn has been raised over the years so much of the ground is built up. However, the soil probably came from the back garden and the foundations for the house and in it there was a lot of Iron Age and Roman pottery, along with the aforementioned Roman coins.

All in all not a bad start to our season and we have more planned for the coming weeks so fingers crossed!

...to be continued...