Hunting Hall Archaeology Blog

23rd June 2025 : Dig Diary Day 22

It’s been a very blustery day and our tents took a bit of a battering but have survived the ordeal (at least they had before we left the site!). Despite that we’ve had a tremendous turnout of volunteers, once again including two very valuable newcomers. Every hour of volunteer time we can get before we close on Sunday is vital to help us achieve this year’s objectives. It’s been a busy day in terms of finds. Lots of bone, a jawbone that’s probably that of a horse, what looks like a carnivore’s tooth (going by the size of the tooth it must have been a big one!), and a small flint debitage, probably Neolithic or Bronze Age. It’s typical for the number of daily finds to increase towards the end of our digs but today has pushed our total number of finds so far to about a hundred. With six days still to go that finds total will rise sharply.

With so many volunteers available we have been able to enjoy big teams in both trenches. It also meant we had small groups working together across the full length of trench 10. That also means that each of us, either as an individual or small group, is concentrating on a relatively small area and it’s easy to lose touch with what else is going on. To keep everyone aware of the bigger picture Kristian gave a very welcome end of day summary about his current understanding of events, however, even at this late stage of the dig a single important find could affect the eventual interpretation. Hopefully less windy tomorrow so on site from 10.00