Culver Project AKA Bridge Farm

Bridge Farm  was one of those digs that I tried to make it to last summer, but as life would have it,  I unfortunately ran out of time. This year however, I managed to get up there for three glorious days. Located just north of Lewes in Barcombe, East Sussex, Bridge Farm is an on going Roman excavation project. It is the site of a Romano-British settlement where evidence has been discovered for domestic and industrial use from the late first century to the late fourth century. Although there is also evidence of usage from the Mesolithic to the 19th century, the focus is on the Roman settlement. The site has an impressive trench teeming with an abundance of students, and volunteers.

Run by Rob Wallace and David Millum, I was placed in the main trench to excavate a post hole which I successfully sectioned, uncovering some CBM and charcoal. It appeared to sort of expand underneath the natural, so there was a little bit of tunneling involved in my work.

Natural inclusions included flint and ironstone (how I have not missed you since last summer!!) Day two I measured and sketched out my feature - my least favorite activity but it was good practice nonetheless! Took some levels with the dumpy and measured my grid coordinates as well.










Day three I joined the CAP students in practicing how to use the resistivity equipment (a geophysical field survey) which seemingly appeared quite straight forward but after setting up our grid (20 by 40 metres) we kept encountering problems at line 16 with the machine deleting lines. Third try appeared to work and the grid was successfully completed. Resistivity, I was told, measures the moisture in the ground through electrical resistance. It is best conducted after a good rainfall, or period of rain and as it had piddled a bit the night before, this would be a good chance to conduct a survey. Although, apparently this type of survey takes eight times as long as a magnetometry survey.

Results are published on the Culver Project website http://culverproject.co.uk/?p=1304