The Big Dig – 20/06/21 – Geophys

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GEOPHYS SURVEY – Phase 2

Undertaken by Chris Matthews of Archaeological Surveys West on behalf of CPAT

18th – 20th June 2021

The date for this, the second phase of the Geophys Survey, was only confirmed a few days before it was due to start – so when we asked for volunteers to help with the re-start of the archaeology project, there wasn’t a great response.

But as it turned out the geophys team were quite self-sufficient and extra help was not really necessary and the survey was successfully completed over the bailey area of the hill-fort – and after the wonderful, warm spring weather we’ve had recently the cold, blustery weather that greeted the team came as quite a surprise.

The society was able to provide a vehicle to get the team and their equipment to the mountain top and we had a couple of volunteers to help with marking out the surveying grid and one volunteer, with a bit more experience than some of us, was given the opportunity to operate the professional equipment.

As usual when we are working up there, several passers-by stopped to ask what the team were doing and we were able to enlighten them about the project – hopefully they will continue to follow the rest of this exciting project online.

As the team doing the Magnetometry survey downloaded the data they gathered, they were quite optimistic that they were finding features worthy of further exploration. Once the data has been processed more fully they will prepare a report that will provide information to help the archaeological team decide where best to excavate trenches for investigation – it is hoped that phase of the project will start in August or September. Again we will be looking for volunteers to help with this phase of the project – so if you are interested in getting involved please contact us via email and we will ensure to keep you informed of any developments.

Photos: Click the links below to see galleries of photos of the team in action:

CLICK HERE TO DOWNLOAD THE GEOPHYS REPORT

FIRST IMPRESSIONS

Following is a message from Chris with his first impressions of their findings before fully processing of the data collected

Good evening all

As you are all aware, we undertook the survey at Twmbarlwm over the weekend and managed to complete the remainder of the hillfort relatively unscathed! I have attached two draft plots of our results. The overwhelming conclusion is that the fires have caused a significant amount of magnetic noise along the south facing slopes of the enclosure, presumably where the fire was at its hottest and closest to the point of origin.

We need to work on producing some interpretation plots for you as aside from the fire damage there are some faint but promising anomalies that bare resemblance to those we had at Nesscliffe.

We are hoping to get a full report to you in the next three weeks and in the meantime will send over some interpretation plots once we have them.

All the best
Chris