Piddling down today so a few of us mainline archaeo junkies did some finds cleaning and on-the-hop site analysis. The top of context 3 has had a nice wash and cool down ready for a good doing over on Sunday.
Trench 1 Context 3 with special cooling areas for tomorrow’s heat
As is becoming usual with finds’ laundry days, Find Of The Day became obvious only after cleaning. Today’s little treasure was only in the finds tray as a bit of fun. One of our newer diggers had thought it was something like a scraper so I decided it could stay in the tray as an example of an ‘eolith’. A century or so ago these were stones originally thought to be artefacts of Britain’s earliest inhabitants but turned out to be of natural origin – the resemblance to actual tools being natural happenstance. People actually collect these lookalikes. Anyhooo once cleaned up our pet eolith bit us on the bum. With t’muck removed its true use was immedietely apparent. Covered in cut marks, smoothed grains, and the characteristic wide shallow U profile of an old fashioned sharpening or honing stone. If you have an old well used whetstone look at it side on and you will see that classic profile. A surprise find.
Find Of The Day – sharpening stone
Beast Of The Day is Empis tessellata, a fly on stilts with a taste for flowers jeweled with rain. It seemed to be supping the nectar from the bloom.
Beast Of The Day – a fly on stilts with a taste for flowers
One final note – while we will be digging next week, the site will be closed on Tuesday. We will be digging again on Wednesday though.
Alex Whitlock