Day Four at the Roman site on the Nailbourne

Sally writes: The site continues to produce abundant finds of various materials: fired clay building material (Roman brick and tile), Roman pottery, animal and bird bone, slag, slate (modern in the topsoil) mortar, flint, iron and possible lead.

A piece of CBM (ceramic building material) with inscribed graffito was revealed in Trench A. The object may be a tegula or a brick. The marks are very clear and look like Roman characters (perhaps SA or VS).

Trench A also produced a tegula marked with likely hobnails! Someone stepped on it before it was dried and fired some 1800 years ago.

In Trench B, Context (2005) is being carefully removed to reveal the rubble layer, ready for 3D photographing. Underneath 2005, a new context contains numerous large sherds of pot, many with rims, which are diagnostic, and the large animal skeleton.

Other finds from the site include: a Dressel 20 amphora from Spain that would have contained olive oil, floor tessarae with mortar attached, multiple nails, including a hobnail, a sherd of Nene Valley pottery, a piece of CBM with a dog paw print, a piece is clay moulded with a spout for a gutter or a bath plug.

Imprint of a dog’s paw on a fragment of roof tile.
At the end of day 4 the external wall and apse in Trench A are gradually being revealed.
The dig team carrying survey equipment onto site.