An idiots guide to an idiot: Archaeological dig in Shillington, Bedfordshire.

It must be at least two and a half to three years since I last put my trowel and mattock to good archaeological use but my digging drought has now been broken!
As the Pirton digs drew to a close Shillington got going with some test pits and had some lottery money awarded so they could have the pottery analysed by Paul Blinkhorn of Time Team fame.
They follow the same method as Pirton which is 1m square test pits dug in 10cm spits to a depth of 1m, any deeper and you should be shoring up the sides. This was the methodology used by the Cambridge University outreach scheme ( then headed by Carenza Lewis also a former Time Team archaeologist) in Pirton and the other villages they dug in East Anglia. It's simple and it works. As you reach 10cm from the last context you clean up the surface, photo and draw a plan of anything of interest also note what is in the sides of the test pit, at Shillington this is done by Derek who runs the show and any finds from that context are bagged up so you know what depth they came from, the site of the test pit is carefully planned and mapped for the record.
Just the odd test pits are dug now as inevitably interest waned after the initial village digs in 2013, I believe they are now up to 50 test pits dug.
Todays dig had potential as it was in the garden of the doctors house who in the First World War had a small hospital in the gardens for recuperating troops although we were not digging on the building footprint.
After Derek marked out where we were to dig Kevin got to work taking off the turf & myself and Nigel moved the turf to the spoil heap area and we were underway!
The day was hot hot hot smothered myself in sun tan lotion before I left home but forgot to take it with me. Bugger! Luckily Nigel let me use some of his. Ivor was the other digger on duty today & it worked well taking it in turns to dig & also to sieve the spoil coming out of the pit, this is where alot of the finds, such as they were , were found. While I was digging I found half a wine bottle, difficult to date not old enough for the glass to have vitrified but from the look of it not of modern manufacture.
Have to say that finds were thin on the ground unfortunately, Victorian blue & white pottery, two sherds of possible Medieval pot, a couple of clay pipe stems and part of a bowl, and small pieces of bone too small to identify really but the deeper we dug the fewer the finds and also they more clayish the soil became.
Stopped for lunch about 1pm. Must say my pork pie was very welcome, got through alot of liquid (not the alcoholic type liquid either!) as it was so hot, I was knackered but we pressed on and eventually called it a day later in the afternoon at 0.8m depth when the finds had definitely stopped altogether. Believe me that's alot of dirt to shift!
We back filled and tamped it down best we could , it looked pretty good to be fair, almost like we'd never been there.
Post Dig Analyses then............at The Crown. Never did pints of Tribute ale slip down so well as today! Derek reckons that's it for this area of the village that hasn't produced much but at least that is now known he has other hot spots he'd like to dig & is always asking locals for permission, there's another two digs lined up for this year at present.
Got home early evening to meet our house guest for the week Casper. A white German Shepherd dog. He's bloody huge but a lovely old boy!