Roman Swinton Day 5, 10 October 2014

The last day! And what a day! Not only did the sun shine all day but we got some really exciting archaeological remains! We were joined on site by Bev, Ruth, Helen and John, all itching to get at the archaeology. Helen began by helping us to try to understand the area where Andrew had dug some of his holes. This had been puzzling us for a few days now.

With John's help, the two of them started to clear out the enigmatic area! They mattocked and shovelled for all they were worth!

But by mid morning the features still didn't make much sense. We could see that there was a solid sandstone edge which was possibly the one that Andrew had found, but beyond that, everything looked a bit mixed up!

On the other parts of the site things were going a bit easier, Bev excavated the other half of the post hole that Adam and Peter had been working on before. She also took samples from the fill of the feature, so that we can analyse any microscopic remains in the context and add them to the report.

Ruth continued to excavate the sondage through the orangey brown material, so that we could look at the section to try to understand the formation processes on the site.

Back in the confusing hole, John found some pottery, another rim fragment:

You can see the really nice shape of the pot, very definitely Roman in date!

Then moments later, Helen also found more Grey Ware!

Another rim fragment, but this time from a different pot. They were definitely in Roman archaeology here!

It kept coming as well! You can see many pieces of the Grey Roman pottery here in their finds tray.

Then the site became a media circus as the Rotherham Advertiser dropped in for an interview, as did the BBC's Look North, with Cathy Killick.

Both Alex and Andrew were interviewed for the program.

Meanwhile, the interesting set of features turned out to be a Roman ditch! Helen had found the sandstone sides and was cleaning the edges to reveal the original cut and shape of the feature! This was excellent, we had a proper Roman feature with Roman pottery in secure contexts at the bottom.

Bev finished off the post hole to an excellent standard, so this was photographed for the archive:

Looking right down into the hole you can clearly see the lower part where the post would have originally sat.

Ruth also finished off the sondage, so this was photographed as well. You can make out the orangey brown layer just below the dark greyish brown layer.

Then it was all hands to the pump as everyone helped to clean off the remaining ditch fill. You can see very clearly where the ditch runs; straight under Andrew's fence!

We also had Peter Robinson back on site, proudly displaying his Elmet t-shirt! His help in identifying pottery and other artefacts was incredibly useful!

Then towards the end of the day, Ruth found her first piece of Roman pottery, a small fragment of Grey ware!

This had come from the very bottom of the ditch and had a small lump on that may have been the remains of a handle or decoration!

As the day drew to a close, you can see how much work the diggers have put in by the size of the spoil heap! It just shows how much dirt a small, but determined, team can move!

And in the last hour, both Andrew and his step-son Thomas joined us in the bottom of the ditch.

Everything was then packed up, the soil sample from Bev's posthole was marked up so that we know where it came from.

And the great Swinton project was finished! It was all thanks to Andrew's discoveries that we were able to excavate in his back garden and add a little bit more knowledge to the Roman history of South Yorkshire. We hope everyone enjoyed themselves on site and learnt something more about archaeology! Elmet are very grateful to Andrew and Lindsay for putting up with several mucky archaeologists and also a massive thank you to all the people who helped on site, we have had an excellent time and hope you have too!

However, we didn't get everything cleaned for final photographs by the end of the day, so Alex and Lauren will go and finish off the outstanding recording and cleaning on Monday, so for you lucky Blog readers, this means we will have a Bonus Blog Post on Monday! So stay tuned!