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Matt, Many & Lisa sieving enviro samples

Contributed by CAROLINE

Trowelling of the topsoil continued today. We are removing the topsoil to reveal the natural geology (clay or limestone bedrock) in order to reveal features cut into the rock such as post holes and pits. Wet sieving is also being carried out on site, this is a very wet and messy job. Wet sieving is of large bags of soil from the midden and features of last year, there is quite a back log to get through- trowellers are too fast for their own good! Wet sieving allows us to find any particularly small finds that were missed during trowelling to be found and also to separate environmental evidence such as carbonised grain which floats to the top and is sent away for analysis. The tens of thousands of bone fragments are also being washed on site, these are also to be analysed by a specialist who will help us to determine what animals were being consumed on site and in what quantity. The bone specialist can also tell us in some instances how the animals were butchered if any cut marks can be seen. We had rain again today but this time we weren’t so lucky as it didn’t rain during break and so we couldn’t hide in the site hut. The same problems were faced as yesterday but digging was affected as the rain was more constant even if a little lighter.