Last of the Plumpton Roman Villa

I happened to have a day off from work last week and debated over checking up on Ovingdean, the Culver Project and Plumpton Roman Villa. I found myself staring at the fine trenches of the villa and the site ditch once again. They have uncovered quite a bit in the past three weeks since I was last up there.

Embarrassingly I forgot my camera so I only have one measly photograph of my find but the crops that I definitely thought were leeks a few weeks ago have transformed into corn. A bit like when Jesus turned water into wine. This turned out to be beneficial to me because the large corn stalks provided much needed shade while I was excavating in Trench 3.

Cow Skull, date unknown at this point.

When I first arrived, I was placed back in Trench 1 with the American student Megan whom I had met a couple weeks ago. We worked on the edge of the ditch, attempting to determine the natural. Plough damage sure made it hard to discern. After a bit, the new supervisor whose name I have now forgotten (sorry!) asked me if I had done this sort of thing before (lots of head nodding and fake smiling) and I found myself relocated to Trench 3 to remove a cow skull that was partially excavated in the lovely hard baked clay. I spent a couple hours there with Andrew (?) a college student who had never done any archaeology before and we made a plan of action to sort of chisel our way underneath the skull in order to prise it neatly from the ground. It did work, surprisingly, because I was able to extract it myself and place it into a tray of bubble wrap. Then, as it was transferred to another tray, it began to crumble. At least our extraction method was successful.

A Twitterer on Twitter commented on my photo and suggested that perhaps it was the Plumpton Poisoner until I pointed out that this skull was indeed a cow and not a human. Although we cannot rule out the cow as the one responsible for adding strychnine to somebody's tea back in the 1935.

Till next time folks! I will likely have a new update on Ovingdean next time!