Ovingdean Round Two!

Excuse the shadow. My lovely, clean slot. Not entirely sure what all the chalk symbolizes.

My slot right in front. Carol was excavating a half circular unknown feature.

 The trenches at Ovingdean have changed greatly this past week to reveal post holes and hard chalk features, as well as a few special finds. I was placed in a new slot in the same trench that I excavated on April 27th. After clearing away quite a bit of dirt, there lay a hard chalk packed feature.  I brushed it up as you can see in the photograph. There were no visible post holes but may be part of a building or wall? I will leave that one up to the experts to debate. Not many notable finds - a few fragments of pottery, fire cracked flint. When that slot was cleaned, I was relocated to a square shaped test pit just northeast of where I was working previously.

Unfortunately I have no photographs to display of this test pit. I excavated a square section (since it was a fairly large test pit) and whilst, it was mainly dirt that was coming out of the ground, I did chance upon a gorgeous piece of blue flowered porcelain - possibly 18th century? Also fragments of yellow porcelain, one fragmented oyster shell, bits of pottery and flint, and three pieces of glass.

Director "Big" John drawing features.

Surprisingly until yesterday, I did not own an archaeological trowel. Why buy one when I could borrow? (Student mentality still kicking in). Brenda was kind enough to give me a used trowel for keeps, likely out of exasperation of my continuous borrowing at Rocky Clump. Up until now, my archaeological kit had only consisted of a green garden mat and durable gloves. But now I am thinking I really need to invest in a few good brushes as well until someone invents an archaeological vacuum that will suck up the troweled dirt. At the same time this vacuum will all the while be analyzing the contents and transferring any fragmented artifacts into a special compartment. Ingenious? I had a lot of time on my hands to think up this one yesterday. Maybe I will patent this invention. "The Sweeney Hoover," it shall be forever known as.

The bullies plus one (missing the chocolate brown new inmate.)

Oh, yes. Cannot forget the horse drama either. The three rescued horses in our field decided to bully the newest "inmate" by chasing him around the field and rear-kicking him. He eventually kicked back, covering the front of a gorgeous white horse with hoof marks. Naturally, we were all distressed watching this event continuously repeat itself throughout the afternoon. I half expected the four horses to charge our flimsy fence separating humans from animal.