AN OCCASIONAL PROGRESS REPORT
of the 2006 Excavation
by Jeremy Cooper

The views expressed are Jeremy's own and the information is his own understanding - he has been known to get things wrong!

More diggers this week. Sweltering heat - only Mad Dogs and Englishmen! Or should that be Mad Dogs and Archaeologists (cue to rewrite the Noel Coward classic? - click here for the full text of the original).

But the weather broke late this afternoon and work ended a few minutes early to get everything under cover as a great black storm swept out of Mordor to the South East.

Some interesting finds:

Romano-British window glass from the lower slope - Brian jigsawed the shards together:

It's translucent, but not transparent - perhaps from the privy?

Decorated imbrix tiles from the North face of the new bath house:

We've had some decorated imbrix before, but it remains rare on this site. Being on the roof, the decorated tiles would have to be carefully placed to be noticed - perhaps along the lowest row, or up the side of a low roof.

More pilae in the new bath house:

The two pilae in the foreground really are bigger than the ones behind - they are in a different room.

No major progress in interpreting the archaeology so far this week - but a sense that real progress is being made.

Day 9 of 20, Thursday 6th, July

It rained! How it rained! Not much was achieved on Wednesday and this morning, but this afternoon progress was made.

The main areas of the new bath house were well and truly soaked and far too fragile to work on.

So the focus shifted to the lower slope South of the new bath house...

...where the existing edge of excavation was moved back towards the East. There are some interesting soil colour changes as you can see from the grey patch in the middle of the photo.

The other area investigated was to the East of the lower bath house area (that is the area below the original bath house) - down the hill towards the crop line...

... where test pits were opened up. One of them had some archaeology! Not a complete surprise as the geophys shows that there is archaeology right up to the crop line. Where will it all end?

Sorry about the misbehaving links to Week 1 and back again - entirely my fault and all better now.

So here we are, half way through this year's dig ALREADY!

Today's Friday site tour, confirmed that progress is being made and that the understanding of some fairly subtle aspects of the site is being increased.

I won't try to explain them here (phew!).

Less subtle is continued confirmation that the archaeology stretches eastwards towards the crop line. At the eastern limit of the "new bath house" area they've found a clear edge to a stone layer, pointing towards...

... a similar layer found in test pit 1...

A path perhaps?

Meanwhile in the unfinished test pit 8, the furthest out towards the crop line...

... there is abundant archaeology including boxflue tile...

It's rumoured that local bookmakers are now taking bets as to how long the Whitehall dig might run - will it rival Piddington for longevity?

Have a good weekend!