Prescot Dig

Yes it is! Like for most of my lovely colleagues this is our last week on the Prescot Street site. How do I feel about that? Well…like I mentioned in an earlier blog, I have mixed feelings about it. I am very happy to been working here, in London, on this really cool site. It feels ok to leave after some intense and fun six months and there’s always a scary feeling about what to do after this.

My first day on site was 21 April this year. The site had only been going for a month or so and we were working in the North Eastern corner. That was also my first site with these massive quarry pits. I came from a project in Glasgow, a 19th Century iron foundry.. Erm yeah, enough said. It was great to start planning features by hand again and using the measuring instrument theodolite and yeah, basically, back to basics when it comes to archaeological methods.

It feels cool to have been part of a project that really put the public in focus too. It’s definitely necessary and it makes the public understand more about the whole investigation process (hopefully) and maybe the more they see what we are doing and how it’s been done, the better the communication we get. And also, how cool isn’t it to touch all the finds we have got? To summarise the company’s and not the least Lorna’s efforts; this has been a huge success! Well done!

Like other people have mentioned before, the western part of the site mostly consisted of Medieval and post-Medieval features. The closer we got to the middle part and eventually to the Eastern part, the more evidence of the Romans we got too. Some of the burials we found were so nice, align in N-S, E-W orientations and some younger individuals and a child. The cremations have had some very nice urns and other just re-deposited in the ground. Have we had a mausoleum? Hopefully the evidence tells us we had. I actually can’t mention everything we’ve had so I’m going to stop now.

I am glad I have had the opportunity to excavate quite a few burials, pits, ditches etc. The variety has been very good for me as an archaeologist. I have further developed my skills and also my confidence in identifying features and stratigraphic relationships and so on. The people I have been working with are really cool guys and good archaeologists. I have learned quite a few things about the Romans and ok I admit, they were pretty cool dudes. Mostly being interested in the old stuff, the pre-history, I have to confess, the Romans intrigues me. Having said that, not that many things beats the look of a post-med. horn core pit. Beautiful, something from a sci-fi film!

Liz

So what am I doing after this? Well, I’m not quite sure yet, except that I am heading back to Sweden next week and lets say.. think over my options (that means unemployment).

Anybody want to employ a Swedish archaeologist? Ask L-P Archaeology for my number, I’ll send you my CV.

Bye, Hej da!

Liz