Another day of misty murky weather mingled with light rain, haven't seen the sun for days but we're carrying on regardless. Today's star find of the day goes to Caz with this fragment of a small shallow crucible:
Here seen from another angle showing you just how shallow it is:
Rose and Julie had a good look at it and wondered whether - due to its small size and very shallow profile - it might possibly be for a precious metal such as silver, we've never yet had any evidence of working in silver on the site, plenty of copper alloy and iron working, together with glass bead production, but no precious metals. Our archaeometallurgist Dr Gerry McDonnell is due on site shortly, and he's bringing his XRF scanner, so we'll be able to get him to scan the crucible to hopefully see what it was used for.
If you've been following the dig diary you may remember Luke getting star find with his half a quernstone, the other half subsequently turned up as well, and here they are slotted back together again.
Another stone sitting outside the finds hut the other day was Alex's pivot stone, it was a sunny day for once and the polished area to the left of the pivot hole showed up really well in the sunlight, tried to photo it but it hasn't come out too well, but when you see it win the sun there's a completely smooth and shiny section where the door must've rubbed as it swung back and forward, and this motion over the course of many years polished the stone to a shine.
You imagine someone 2,000 years ago thinking to themselves every time they used the door that they must get around to rehanging it so it didn't catch and then just never doing it. Think everyone's got a door just like that at home, I know we have!
Comments