TWMBARLWM ARCHAEOLOGICAL DIG 2021

The Big Dig continued from Monday 2nd till Friday 20th August

Hello again folks

I’m excited to get started on the Dig after so many delays over the past couple of years. Please note that I’m writing this blog from a keen amateur’s standpoint and the society’s involvement – all the technical stuff and information about any findings will come from the professional archaeologists at a later date. Their final report will be made publicly available on this website and other archaeological archive sites.

Friday 6th August 📷 

A better day today – grey and overcast – but dry and a bit breezy. Volunteers Mike W, Bob R and Will D. Bill FW, Norman L and Mike D joined us a bit later.

DAY 5 : TRENCH 1

No more digging down today – archaeologists RH, WD and HT had lots of discussions about whether the trench has revealed what we need at this time – I’ll cover what was discussed at a later date.

Once it was decided we’d done what we could we started to fill the trench back in – for a newcomer to this game it was almost a shock to see all our hard work of the past few days just going back into the hole. All the loose soil and rocks went back into the trench until we were down to the turf and root system of the undergrowth which was placed a bit more carefully to make the area we’d been working look like we hadn’t been there at all.

And so ended our first week of digging on Twmbarlwm – no earth-shattering finds of artefacts (not that we were expecting any) but the professionals were happy that we achieved what we wanted to in this trench. You might have noticed that I have not used any terms like “Bronze Age”, “Iron Age”, “Norman” or “Medieval’ and that’s because no two archaeologists will agree or commit to a specific time period but we do look forward to the results of the OSL sample.

CPAT’s report, when it is ready, will be published here as well as other professional archaeological archives.

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A small aside to today’s diary:

– when we sat down for our morning break we discovered a female antler moth fluttering about – it looked fresh out of its pupa stage as it’s wings were still wet and it was drying off in the sun. As Bob R is an entymologist he collected it into a sample pot for it to dry out. Later when we sat down for lunch he opened the lid of the pot to release the moth and as we waited for it to emerge another moth came along followed closely by two more – these three male antler moths were obviously vying for the attention of our female moth who we must assume was letting off pheromones to attract mates – and yes, one did join her in the pot to do what comes naturally. Quite amazing when you consider it was blowing a gale up there and she was literally just an hour or so old.

This archaeological investigation is funded by:
Ariennir yr ymchwiliad archeolegol hwn gan: