Roman dig

We had the opportunity to go with our homeschool group to see a real Roman dig in action.  The University in Cambridge wants to expand their campus and as I understand it in England whenever you wish to build you need to first do a archeology discovery, which is paid for by the developers of the project.  A set amount of time and money is given to explore the area looking for any archeology finds.

This property was once farmland

Our first stop was to the educational center which we had an overview of  what is an archeologist and how they find things in the ground and what they look for

We then walked out to the sight.  Here we are shown an place of a round house.  The holes were where post where and the guide explained the variation in the soil and what that might signal to the archeologist.  

Here was pointed out the dark stripe in the ground was once a Roman road and it eventually ran right thru the house that we just looked at.  Which was one of the ways they knew the house was older than Roman times.

The layers of the soil were explained

We watched from a distance a man digging out an area.  Unfortunately we weren't able to get very close as it had rained  the previous day and the field was extremely muddy 

Next the guide showed us a map of the area and the amount of area they needed to cover.  They had only been given 6 months to complete their excavation.  So far they had not found any great finds in the area

they did find broken pits of pottery

funeral urns 

Butchered animal bones.  Kids got to see actual knife scores on the bones.  they believe this area was mainly a farming area based on the finds they had found so far.

a few unbroken pottery containers 

We had a good day out and it was fun to see how archeologist work in the field.  Also the kids got to know not every site will yield magnificent finds such as the Staffordshire hoard or Sutton Hoo.