Wednesday 20th May
Day 1
Late start this season due to various commitments our leaders have had this year. On site today raring to get going we’re Bill, Chris and Andrew with joining later in the morning Patrick and Paul Kenyon. Chris and Patrick had been on site the previous day to remove the covers and check out how it had survived the winter. We were also joined by Ben Dyson from GMAAS who we had invited to help us with how to tackle the two potentially sensitive areas i.e. the possible cist features in both the central sandy clay mound (F11) and the newly discovered ring kerb (F22). For location of these features see our plan drawing here.

At our committee meeting earlier this month we set out our aims and priorities for the coming season, one of which was to investigate the features and agreed we would need professional advice as they may contain the primary burials of the monument.

Ben spent some time talking us through how he would approach the task and after he left Chris made a start on the F22. His first task was to remove the loose stones to see if the feature had a solid floor. This revealed more stones going down but still wasn’t clear if he’d reached the bottom.

One of the aim mentioned at the meeting was to establish the extent of the stony layer on the north and northwest side. Not necessarily the highest priority but certainly something that could be started straight away. Andrew and Paul were given the task of extending Trench 1b on its NW side on the side next to the previously excavated Trench 1c (which had previously been backfilled).

Despite our late start on site, work has been continuing at the Bolton Archive facility. As mentioned last year all our cremated bone material, urns and pit fill has been sent to the facility. It has been worked on (employing a process of cleaning, washing and drying) and a batch was sent over to Dr Sam Walsh at the University of Lancashire (B10 from the F13 pit). As reported in our Newsletter No.284, the result back from Sam were quite spectacular with almost 70% of the bone fragments being identified. Included in the assemblage were teeth and pieces of petrous (sections of the skull) which enabled the person to be identified as a young adult (but not enough to estimate the sex). As reported in our Newsletter No.287 a second batch from the contents of Urn1 is also ready to go. This could potentially be even more interesting, as the the process of micro-excavation enabled us to record in detail the distribution of the bone and pyre material in the Urn. Hopefully this will give us an insight into the ancient’s burial practices.