The Fort

The hillfort is made of a Iron Age promontory fort (500-100 BC) and surrounding farms still inhabited during the Roman occupation (100 BC - 400 AD). It is excavated every year since 1981. The goals of the excavation are to allow roundhouses and other buildings reconstruction, to understand the defensiv system and the economic and social system. I will just deal with the area we worked on this year, but a lot more have been done previously.

The big hole


The 'Big hole' is really impressiv and has quite the size of a pool. We don't really understand it's purpose, but the inhabitants might have taken the soil materials they needed from here, and maybe fill it again with their dishes. We dug it further than what you can see on the last picture, but refilled a part with soil because there was no more archeology further.

The defensiv ditch

When we saw the darkest line of soil you can see on the left of the left picture, we thought this could be a defensive ditch.
So we carefully excavated it, to find the slope and its angle, without damaging it.

But the slope is not deep and sharp ernough to be a really effiscient protection. So we imagined it could just be a social or religious symbol.

The modern hole

This hole is no proper archeology as it was made only a few years ago, but we still excavated it because it may containt a humain corpse or the one of the oldest goat in the world. It was in fact empty, and its mysterious purpose remains unknown...

On the left picture you can see Dave and Peter wondering about the strange 'L' shape of the hole. On the second picture, Peter hold the TST stick to record the drimentionnal coordonnees of the hole.

The tent


The tent is the economic and social center of the fort: it's where the materials and food are stocked, where the supervisors have their chairs and where the rest of the archeologists sit in circle around them. It is also a fortified building against rain, but as you can see on the second picture, the water went in, and Dave had to dig a drain! It even collapsed due to strong wind...

Misc

The supervisors

The supervisors - on the Fort Dave and Paddy - have to manage the teams so they are not boring, to help them so they understand their work, and to guarantee their 'health and safety'. Don't misunderstand me, it really is hard work, as you can see Dave throwing rocks on a post and then Dave and Paddy arguing about the quality of the matics! ( don't worry, they are not all that lazy! ). By the way, to become a supervisor, you have to take a class in University which acronysm is SADIST...

Explanations

Each weekend, a bilan is made about what have been done, what we have understood, what we will have to do the next week, what are our new hypotesis ect...

This so the students don't forget why they are working: to answer questions!

Delay

On the second week the delay came to pick all the soil we removed from the fort.

Spoil heap

The spoil heap is where you empty your wheelbarrows.
To access it is often a whole adventure, trying to avoid walking on everybody's working area...

That's why we recommend you to become a supervisor so you will have magic feet which will allow you to walk and jump on the working areas without damaging it!