Tuesday, July 13

Today was spent working on one of the two research programs I signed up for. This one is the Living Project team for the Multi-Period Binchester Research Program. The purpose is to develop a mapping methodology to show the various periods of use of the site. Four other people have signed up for this and we go to the Binchester lab at the University to begin our work.
The first thing we do is to go thru the existing literature and review what is known about the history of the site. Pretty soon we have a good list of about 1000 years of history at the site, from the arrival of the Romans to the middle ages and a bibliography of sources.
Next we develop plans for documenting the layers on site as we reveal them. We pick out five areas that so far are giving us a decent picture of multi-period use and plan to do some video and still photography recording of these areas.
After spending some time reviewing secondary sources we go off to the library to see if we can find the primary sources. We get a tutorial in how to use a British library and go off into the stacks. As a result of having such a great archeology program at the University they also have a great archeology library and we find what we are looking for.
We also get a presentation of just what Archeological Services is. A for profit company setup inside the University, it purpose is to leverage the vast archeological skill sets within the University. They have a contract from both Durham and Stanford for complete site management. This includes on site supervision, processing of finds and full use of their extensive laboratories. It is quite a nice setup.
It should be noted here that the weather today is the nicest we have had since we started and of course we have been indoors all day. So it goes.