Archaeology Live! 2013 - Site Diary (weeks 1-6)

[YAT]

Week 1.

In Ben's area, work began on cleaning up and recording Victorian features within the rear yards of 7-9 Dundas Street and a small area of Dundas Square.



The toilet blocks within the yards proved to be particularly interesting. Stripping away demolition deposits revealed that early brick built, cobble based cesspits cesspits were adapted into flushing toilets as part of early 20th century sanitation improvements.



Over in Arran's area the season also began with a toilet (as is tradition). This structure within the yard of 6 Dundas Street proved to quite well preserved, with the lower part of the yellow ceramic toilet bowl still present.



Elsewhere in the trench, postholes and surface repairs within a 19th century yard were recorded and excavated. Belle and Dom had particular fun planning an irregular cobbled surface.



The week 1 team did some great work that allowed us to match the structures that we were recording and excavating to those on contemporary maps and gain a better understanding of the Victorian layout of the site.



Several nice personal possessions were discovered, including this bone domino. Dom was very happy indeed!

[YAT]

Week 2.

Ben's team took on the not inconsiderable task of recording the myriad walls and features within the back yards of 7-9 Dundas Street. This involved a lot of planning!



Luckily, Ben's team quickly became quite the planning experts!



Over on Arran's side of the trench, work began on lifting the cobble yard surface that had been recorded in week 1.



After this was completed, work began on understanding the structural sequence of a row of stable buildings butting the yard wall of the Dundas Street properties. The brick walls were found to be built directly over earlier cobble floors.



Here's the week 2 team with placement student Ross in a suitably resplendant pose.



Archaeology Live! veteran 'Dangerous' Dave Dearlove took advantage of a quiet spell to spruce the site up a little. Despite appearances, he wasn't kept behind bars...

[YAT]

Week 3.

On Ben's side of the trench, the previous week's recording session allowed work to begin on taking up yard surfaces in Dundas Square. In hot weather this was hard work, but the gang were equal to the task!



Elsewhere in Ben's area, work continued on piecing apart a complex sequence of toilet structures and make-up deposits within Leetham's storehouse. A rather nice knocker was a notable find.



Arran's team also began work on deposits within the Leetham's building. Liz was lucky enough to find a complete clay pipe bowl with city of York crest as decoration. These deposits proved that the structure of the storehouse had been subject to frequent adaptation and re-building, not always to the highest of standards.



The brick walls of the stable row were recorded and lifted, allowing the earlier cobble floors to be cleaned up.



The week 3 team worked very hard in hot conditions and their findings really helped us to begin to understand later Victorian activity in the area.



On a more surreal note; by this point in the season, the concept of 'catwanging' had become firmly established...

[YAT]

Week 4.

In Ben's area, work continued on picking apart a complicated sequence of cesspit/toilet building and re-building. More surfaces associated with Dundas Place were also excavated.



These deposits proved to be quite compacted but were no match to our team of enthusiastic mattockers!



Back in Arran's area, Liz and Phil's work within Leetham's storehouse revealed that a late 18th century boundary wall had been thickened and incorporated into the later warehouse.



As we began to get our heads around the structural sequences, work began in earnest on picking apart the various yard deposits in this area. These ranged from levelling dumps of CBM (with a curiously high occurrence of re-deposited, possibly Viking antler working residue) to surfaces comprised of thick layers of ironworking slag. The oddly narrow toilet of 5 Dundas street was also exposed and recorded.



Cheers to the week 4 team for all their hard work!



Finally, here's Toby proudly displaying a medieval barrel stave complete with a rather lovely bung hole. (Ahem...)

[YAT]

Week 5.

This week saw a lot of work in Ben's area within Leetham's storehouse. A row of shallow postholes running down the centre of the building was identified alongside several make-up deposits, further evidence for the continued re-modelling of the building.



Also in Ben's area, Archaeology Live! legend Bri began recording a brick stable floor and a dog burial was found tucked away in a corner of the storehouse.



Arran's area saw the final cobble floors and walls of the stable buildings being recorded and excavated. This revealed the upper levels of a repeated pattern of levelling dumps within the yard space.



In the yard of 6 Dundas Street, Donald and Beth took up the early 20th century concrete yard surface to investigate the development of the yard and toilet structures. Minutes later, the deceptively powerful Beth had broken her mattock!



The week 5 team shifted a lot of soil, and the site really started to look different. Great work by all!



Finally, Anne, Kenneth and Antonio took the time to display the numerous positions one can adopt when cleaning archaeological deposits. How very graceful.

[YAT]

Week 6.

Work in Ben's area this week got off to a flying start as Hannah found a rather splendid copper alloy button decorated with a male chicken (For some reason, proboards won't accept the word c0ckerel?!).



Ben's team continued to pick apart the various deposits in and around Leetham's storehouse while continuing to record the stable floor butting the north wall of the building. Like many of the structures in the area, this floor had been altered several times and was recorded in detail.



The team in Arran's area made great progress in recording and excavating more yard deposits. Lifting these revealed a number of postholes relating to an earlier structure beneath the stable buildings.



Work also continued in the yard of 6 Dundas Street where Euan and Tom began to remove later additions to the original cesspit structure. These deposits yielded many ceramic marbles, copper alloy buttons and a cute miniature ceramic teapot lid.



Here's the team at the end of another great week on Hungate.



High spirits in the trench!