A windy day and a WooHoo

After pelting rain last night (which some of our team got caught in on the way home from the pub apparently) the trench looked a bit pitted, but fine.  It was good to have a bit more moisture in the features, really, especially as today's main weather condition was WINDY.  Lots of shouting 'what?' across the site accompanied by hand gestures and shielding of eyes from the dusty sands of the trench.

The ditches and palisade under excavation in the desert of REAP and tresses blowing in the wind.

Cathy had a dream last night she was in the desert - only to arrive on site to see it was real.  But we ate jelly beans and the sugar hit made everything OK.

Work continued on all of our main features, with the tricky annexe ditch finally being mastered by Dave, John and Michael.  It is still incredibly difficult to see, even in the section, and the fill is very clean.  We don't believe the annexe was used for domestic structures given the almost complete lack of charcoal in the ditch and in the interior posthole features.  At the moment we are kicking around the theory that it is a livestock enclosure and the numerous posthole alignments are either stalls inside a structure or outside pens of some sort.

In terms of finds today, we had more lovely sherds of Late Roman amphorae and a fantastic blue glass bead the presence of which was announced by a cheery WooHoo from the sieving area.

We also had a great team of helpers from the Aberdeen Young Archaeologists Club who helped to trowel clean an area.  They had a great talk from Monikie Rock Art (http://www.monikierockart.co.uk/)  as well about the realities of trying to carve stone in the Pictish period (one of my favourite things to ponder, personally).

And of course we had the great Rhynie Woman on site making us all fat and happy with Pictish pizza and cake (mmmmm cake....). If you are in the area, you really need to come down next Saturday for the Open Day to experience it for yourself!