Medieval Dig Site: Mota Piece

Trench 5, John's Land Rover, and the power lines

This week we were digging in a different field on the castle estate, called Mota Piece. "Mota" is because there's several moats on the site, but no one seems to know where "Piece" came from.

This site belongs to the castle but is currently being leased by a local farmer as grazing land for cows. Mon-Wed the cows were in the distance, but Thurs-Fri they actually became a major problem. We put barbed wire up to keep them out of the actual trenches, but today we had to spend a lot of time shooing cows away as they swarmed us and constantly tried to step into our trenches.

I was in Trench 4, 1x5 metres, with three other classmates and Dr. Scott. In total we had three trenches: 3,4,5 (previous digging on the site accounted for 1 and 2). You can see Trench 5 above: it was the largest and most difficult, since it was on the dry moat and therefore at a steep angle.

The finds coming out of this site were absolutely incredible (to us at least!). SO much better than Beechtree Field! I found bits of metal, an animal chest bone, many pieces of black local pottery, oyster shells, and a big piece of a pot rim (which might help to date the site). The other girls in my trench found green glazed pottery, and various bones, jawbones, and teeth.

Today (Friday) we had 27 local Gr. 4 students come visit the site for 3 hours (school here goes through July). We were all a bit worried but it was actually a lot of fun. They were so excited about the simplest things and very well-behaved. After they left, I set up level string lines and then drew our northern profile (vertical) while two of my trench-mates called out the measurements. We had taken down the barbed wire before the kids came, but this meant that the cows could now get much too close to falling in the trenches.

All in all, another great experience. Tonight we all got together in the pub for a while, but we have homework to finish and packing to do before leaving for our end-of-term trip at 4:45 am tomorrow!

Trench 4 and spoil heap. Buckets and scoop shovels for
getting out loose soil after we excavate it. We took turns
emptying the buckets, which got increasingly difficult
as our trench gradually became 4.5-5 feet deep!

Barbed wire to keep the cows out; you can see Bader Hall in the distance

Leah and Erin's end of our trench

looking west towards my end of the trench.
See the different colours, representing
different contexts, in the soil profile!

beautiful weather most of the week

western profile. Bottom layer shown here, context
4, had lots of clay building material and charcoal.

documenting Dr. Scott's section in the middle of our
trench with official photos

finds tray from context 4- lots of clay
building material, one piece of green
glaze pottery (middle right of tray)

the cows are getting closer (taken from in Trench 4)

down into context 6 in our trench

Victorian drainage pipe in Trench 3. Further down
they found a late-neolithic bark chip pathway!
The county archaeologist was called in
and it was considered a pretty important find,
extending the known history of the site by up
to several thousand years.

Brooke doing levels 

Dr. Scott in our trench (classmates digging behind him too)

context 6 finds tray! I found the big bone (top left) and
the pot rim (to its right) plus some of the other flat pottery pieces
and the oyster shells.

I found this one piece of pottery in context 5

The cows really don't want us to leave! Surrounding Dr.
Scott's car