Hunting Hall Archaeology Blog
A daily account of our Hunting Hall dig.
25th June 2025 : Dig Diary Day 24
It’s always a great day when the children of Bailey Green Primary School pay us their annual visit. Perfect weather too. There were twelve children today and they are derived from their after school history group so all have an interest in our Iron Age settlement. We offer them so many different activities during the four hours they’re with us. This year we had, for the first time, the benefit of the mock Iron Age roundhouse that’s been built on the farm. It’s ideal as a location for showing typical domestic activities of the period. Today, whilst dressed in typical Iron Age clothing they had the chance to enjoy weaving using a reproduction loom from the period, digging in the trench, metal detecting, stone identification and soil analysis looking for tiny fragments of bone and charcoal for example. From the feedback we’ve received it all went down very well. Hopefully a couple of photos in tomorrow’s diary.
Meanwhile digging continued in our two trenches. Julian miraculously managed to recover a black beetle carapace from black soil buried deep in a black deposit. We’ve absolutely no idea how. The significance is that these are very temperature dependent and may give some clue as to the climate at the time. There’s now some doubt about the animal jawbone lifted late yesterday. Originally thought to be a horse it may now be cattle.
We only have the presence of an archaeologist during the morning session tomorrow but we have been given instructions for how to proceed in both trenches. Hope to see you from 10.00
