Hunting Hall Archaeology Blog

16th June 2025 : Dig Diary Day 15

Another great day at the dig. Good turnout of volunteers and very productive in our two trenches. It would appear that the quern stone mentioned yesterday appears to be a ‘Beehive’ quern stone. That probably makes it older than we thought, putting it back to the Iron Age. The photo shows two drilled holes, one for loading the grain and the other for a handle with which to turn the stone, one on top of another. I’m sure we’ll get better photos once we have removed and cleaned it. Two big pieces of animal bone from trench 8 today too. Work continues in trench 10 to establish ‘edges’, ‘cuts’ and individual features such as pits and postholes. There seem to be postholes appearing across the trench and interpretation is going to be almost impossible because they probably existed over a very long period spanning hundreds of years. Differential drying of the surface is letting us identify the pits that we’ll section over the next couple of weeks. We’ve decided that Sunday 29th June will be our last digging day. The following week will be used to tidy up the site so if you’re planning a visit then better make it during the next couple of weeks. Very warm weather over the next few days (a heatwave has been mentioned. In Northumberland? Really?) See you from 10.00 tomorrow.