I can hardly believe fourteen days of digging have flown by. The last day was a busy one, as always, with some last minute recording. This involved drawing the whole side of trench 3 and Kay proved her secret talents in this by producing a fantastic drawing. These drawings help us understand both the nature of each context as well as their relation to each other. Then it was time to complete some paperwork in the form of context sheets just before lunch...

Meanwhile out in the field our road was taking a battering. Although there has already been a piece of pottery from one of the ditches we thought there might be something else left, so out came the mattocks. Having carefully recorded the ditches already the team removed a large amount of material which was sieved. Our strategy paid off and a lovely little horse shoe was discovered in the lower fill. This shoe is very small so is perhaps from a small native breed.

After lunch it was time for everyone to get shovelling and the back-filling began. We were very lucky to have some terram and lined the bottom and sides of the trench. This will make life much easier for anyone going back into the trench to get straight back to where we left off without too much head scratching. Of course future excavators will first need to get through our back fill, all put back at top speed.

After the back-filling out came the barbeques and a wee celebration to say thanks to all those who have come along to help us out.

The dig this year at Foulis has been good fun with lots of interesting archaeology. Thanks to everyone who took part but it’s not over yet, keep an eye out for updates on post-excavation workshops, dates and more information on our finds.

This feed was drawn from the ARCH Highland website

Today was another big learning day for me down at the dig. The lesson today was a practical session in drawing. This involved setting up a string right along the trench edge and measuring points above and below. These points got marked on a drawing and we could then join them up to show the different layers or ‘contexts’. Some of these were very big going all the way from one end of the trench to the other. Lynne was using a metal metre grid divided into 20cm squares to draw the bottom of the trench. This seems to make life much easier and Lynne was having a nice time.
We also learned about vertical troweling to help bring the colours out on the trench sides.
The day passed very quickly but we managed to finish all the drawing in trench 4.

               
Meanwhile on the mound a merry time was had taking samples of all the dark layers in the deeper side. There was also a hunt on for charcoal which was put very carefully into little bits of tin foil and then into bags. These will be used in our barbeque tomorrow... only joking, they will be used for radio carbon dating. This will let us know when the things in this layer were burned and when the mound was being used.

The trench edge was cleaned here too and the drawing was started. Once this is done it will be time to fill in the trench again.
It will be a shame to finish as our little camp is such a lovely place to be now it’s all worn in.
 

This feed was drawn from the ARCH Highland website

Here we go. The final three days commence. Luckily we have had a great team working hard to get the final excavations and recording underway. Ok so we have had a slight head start on the traditional Time Team 3 days, but the frenzy is much the same!

                                           Working hard in Trench 4
We have taken off the final layers of our sondage in Trench 3, revealing a layer of black soil, charcoal, large stones and lots of animal bone. This suggests the mound was a site of repeated burning and animal butchery. But when? We shall have to be patient to find out, today the trench has been cleaned up, photographed and drawn, so tomorrow we can take samples of the deposits in the hope of getting some radio-carbon dates from the burnt material.

                Jaw bone found in Trench 3                      The sondage in Trench 3
In Trench 4 they have pulled out all the stops to get the last contexts excavated from the ditches and road surface. One of the main aims of this trench was to find some dating evidence for this roadway, and we may have discovered this in the form of a piece of salt-glazed stoneware pottery, found today in the lower deposits where the western ditch meets the road. This trench has also been cleaned and photographed, ready for drawing tomorrow thanks to everyone’s efforts.

                     
Above:  Pottery found in Road-side ditch.          Right: Time Team style reconstruction

The weather was both a blessing and a curse today, the sunshine kept our spirits up but made the contexts almost impossible to see, whilst the rain had many of us running for cover but moistened the trenches beautifully before our photographs. Consequently we have some great shots which will record for years to come our findings at Foulis.
And finally, as well as a visit from the Munro’s, we were joined by a rather fine frog, who dropped in to Trench 4 to review our progress. Apparently satisfied she was escorted to the burn, where she will no doubt spread the word amongst the amphibious population.

This feed was drawn from the ARCH Highland website

Ideal dig weather, dry, some sunshine and a slight breeze to keep the midges and flies at bay. Ten people on site including Lachlan and Lynne. Two visitors appeared over lunch time and were shown round the trenches and had progress explained to them by Lynne and Lachlan.
We had some lovely goodies for snacks, chocolate doughnuts and apple turnovers. Karen provided us with Jack Daniel’s fudge – YUMMY!

Trench 1 – Some work done there in the afternoon. Soil very heavy almost claggy.

Trench 3 – A lot of work done by the main team. Evidence of charcoal layer appearing. David made some bone discoveries.

       A Bone Found Today

   Digging in the sun        

Trench 4 – Further excavation of ditch and roadway boundaries. Some small pieces of coal were found. Kirsty and Gary were involved in measuring and drawing work. Best place to work  today – in the sunshine.        

A mighty mountain range...oh no wait, our spoil heap

Alpha and Susan visited in the afternoon to inspect progress.

A good day was had by all.
 

This feed was drawn from the ARCH Highland website

Wednesday turned out to be a super day for digging. The wind had dropped and the sun occasionally popped through, just enough to keep our spirits up but not enough to make soil description difficult!

Our small team of 8 people were quickly at work intent on trying to unravel more mysteries from the Foulis nexus. As usual we had our quota of (very) interested members of the public who were warmly welcomed and given the obligatory tour. An interesting conversation developed at morning tea-break when Lachlan arrived with his parent's axe. Each archaeological tool was reviewed with a view to how effective a weapon it would be in hand to hand combat. The mattock was the general weapon of choice!

No further work was done today on Trench 1. Trench 3 on top of the mound was opened further with a sondage being lined off and work started at the east end of the trench. By the end of the day a section of the sondage had been dug to a depth of 20-30 cms revealing even darker soil than had been seen previously. The soil appeared to have been impregnated with charcoal and it would appear that many burning events must have taken place on this location to have created soil of this nature. There were far fewer stones present at this depth than there had been in the layers above. The sondage will be opened to its full extent tomorrow and soil samples taken for possible future carbon dating.

In Trench 3 our 'road' and associated ditches slowly became more apparent. At one point in the day we thought we had double ditches on both sides of the road-way. However further excavation proved one ditch on the north side of the road to have been illusory. The ditches are proving to be of considerable width approximately 1mt. wide, partially filled with stone a mix of cobbles and broken sharp stone, with a depth of around 10 - 15 cms. Work is continuing to ensure that we have actually 'bottomed out' our ditches.

The bridge abutments were examined in order to compare the width of the bridge surface with the width of the road which has been excavated. The bridge was found to be approximately 3.8 mts wide while the road carriageway is approximately 2.9 mts wide (excluding ditches).

Roll on tomorrow !
 

This feed was drawn from the ARCH Highland website

After yesterdays rush of around 50 visitors (thank you to all those who came along) today a kind of calm returned to the Foulis dig. However, while our small and dedicated team got down to work it was not the crowds but the weather that was making a lot of noise. The wind on site was very strong, not so bad in the field but on the mound the spoil was flying out of the trench.

Work continued on trench 1 opened up again from last year. It has now had many of its stones removed and is almost ready for a photo. This trench is now approaching completion and will probably be done soon.
On the mound, in the wind, we continued taking out a deep band of mottled brown and black with lots of stones. This layer contains lots of charcoal and is almost certainly what produced the strong positive reading on our geophysics. As this layer appears to be continuing down and time is running out it may be time to crack out the mattocks again on Wednesday.

 Trench 1

Meanwhile work in the field trench (Trench 4) continues to tell an interesting story. The two ditches marking the sides of the road now appear to have become three ditches. Just on the inside of the east ditch another much fainter ditch appears to run parallel to it. This has been empted in a slot and now shows a lovely double dip. This third ditch probably belongs to a separate phase of road but sadly whoever dug the two ditches carefully avoided the other so it’s not possible to say which came first. It does give us a hint though that this road was used for a good length of time as a new ditch was required at some point. At the other end of the trench the west ditch is proving more elusive. Although a liner feature is certainly present its sides have been a little ‘messed up’ by other smaller features. These may be a result of later ploughing or small furry creatures.

Two Ditches?

The last word today must go to say a thank you to two of our excavators. Bob Herbert who had his last day today and Esme who has been doing a great job on frog and worm watch. Thanks guys.

Lynne and Esme working hard
 

This feed was drawn from the ARCH Highland website

The Open day was upon us before we knew it. A specially made notice by the roadside attracted several dozen eager Mound Hounds to our site. All arrived safely and avoided getting bogged down in the mud en route. Parties were taken around the various trenches mainly by Lachlan and given many insights into varieties of subsoil and their fifty shades of brown. As a result of the (most welcome) visitors not as much work was done in the trenches as perhaps would have been done on a normal digging day.

               
Chief attraction was of course the Mound, but not far behind was our resident Jacobite Ian Devenney who demonstrated the correct and most effective use of claymore, broadsword and Lochaber axe to a capacity crowd. He also had a collection of coins, medals and military bits and pieces. His military buttons from Prestonpans made an interesting comparison with our button from Trench 4.
Eric, the metal detectorist, also brought along a collection of 'objets trouves', mainly coins. Many came from local fields with the consent of the landowner.
Slag pieces were the main finds of the day, from both Trenches 3 & 4. Theories abound as to its sources. It could mean ironworking was happening in situ. On the Mound it’s more likely to have been carried there.
Still some hiccups with the Total Station, but the discrepancy has now been reduced to 20cm thanks to Malcolm’s deep reading of the manual. But wildlife abounds on the site: sightings of a mole and a frog in the barley crop. Also some mice were planted in the spoil heaps. Explanation in tomorrow’s blog.
 

This feed was drawn from the ARCH Highland website

A memorable day in the trenches. The Young Archaeologists Club (YAKs) visited the Old Archaeologists Club (OAKs) ie those already on site and were given a tour of the Foulis Mound site by Lachlan. Susan and George accompanied them. The Yaks were given the opportunity to dig, sieve, collect soil samples, draw the bridge abutments, practice flotation and take photographs.
Trench 1: Kirsty is busy drawing a plan of Trench 1, the distinctive tumble of large stones at the East end of the mound.

                                          
Trench 3: Carol and Malcolm continued excavating at the top of the mound in Trench 3. An exposed layer across the trench appears now to be a single context with lots of small stones and charcoal flecks and the tumble of large stones at the Southern end a distinct separate context.Finds included animal teeth and vertebrae (for which Carol was awarded the ”find of the day badge”. Slag was also found – interesting as slag appeared on top of the mound during the 2011 excavation.

                                       
Trench 4: Bob and Karen were based in the field in Trench 4 Bob focusing on the central ditch feature which now appears to be surprisingly shallow. Karen worked on the tumble of stones at the Western end. The Young Archaeologists also assisted in the search for a ditch feature in this area. A piece of 20th century pot base revealed itself. Soil samples were taken from Trench 4.

                                        
Other notable events: Lynne served us up with delicious Brownies which Lachlan said he made, however we did not believe him. Bob gave Karen a leaf trowel thanks Bob! Tomorrow is open day so we are preparing the site for visitors. We all hope that the sun and some of our friends and mentors from last year turn up - especially Kathy and Cait of whom everyone speaks with great affection.
Sound bite of the day “Reveal, don’t remove” – Lachlan.
 

This feed was drawn from the ARCH Highland website

Well I now know what an archaeological dig is, how it’s run and what a volunteer does.
I spent most of the time in trench 3 troweling soil, of various tones of brown into a wee shovel and then tipping it into a bucket and when the bucket was full taking it to the spoil heap, sieving it to see if I had missed any treasures – I hadn’t but did find a wee bit of bone. I was shown how to record this and then had to show someone else how to do the same. I did have a look into trench 4 where they were all sitting on the spoil heap and told me that they were doing paper work.

               
We had a mission to try and get water running to the tap from the burn, down the alkethene pipe, unfortunately our siphoning methods didn’t work. But I can say that I had a most enjoyable day, learnt a lot and had fun and tea breaks with dough nuts.

                                 (We were doing some planning too, honest!)
 

This feed was drawn from the ARCH Highland website

The main task for today was to get Trench 4 in the field cleared of the last of the plough soil and cleaned up for a photograph – this involved hoeing and trowelling back to remove any loose material which might obscure the colour differences in the archaeology. Our participants valiantly undertook this despite the wet conditions – ‘cleaning’ is very difficult when incessant rain is determined to turn everything to churned mud. Despite this they managed, and will be very pleased to know that the photographs taken to record the features they exposed have come out well and their efforts were not in vain. A linear feature which hopefully will turn out to be a road-side ditch was clearly visible and a very mixed area in the middle of the trench is looking ever more convincing as a churned up track-way. Now that the photograph has been taken these observations will be drawn and then we can excavate the features.

      Cleanng Trench 4                                       Trowelling Trench 3

In Trench 3 on the mound having already recorded the spread of stones we began to remove the darker area across the middle of the trench, taking soil samples as we went. These samples will later have water passed through them to float off any charred material, such as wood or grain, which may give us clues as to when and why it was in use. Whilst water will be very useful for processing the samples it is not much good when collecting them, and the rain today made it very difficult to tell the soils apart. This and general dampness of the diggers led us to stop excavating early today – hopefully after a day off to dry out tomorrow we (and the trenches) will be ready to continue the progress we have been making in unravelling the story of Foulis mound and roadway.

This feed was drawn from the ARCH Highland website