Epiacum Operation Jericho Diary #3 — The Wall Continues to Fall!

Everything Else / By

Our volunteers are amazing!  We have made great strides in getting the stones down, and the finds are coming thick and fast.  We can’t wait to show you what we’ve found!

 

But first, we must thank Al Oswald from the University of York for his help and archaeological oversight in the wall removal process.  He’s brought several UofY students to help  and learn, and we couldn’t be more appreciative.  The generosity of everyone associated with Operation Jericho has just been humbling.  A very heartfelt Thank You from all the Epiacum Heritage Trustees to everyone for their help!

 

As always, we are happy to get the word out about Epiacum via the media.  Here, Al is interviewed by the local press who are covering our demolition.

 

So how do all those stones get off the site?  With the help of a cart on treads, rather than wheels.  The treads spread the weight out and protect the fragile site much better than a wheeled cart would.

 

 

 

Progress the last two days has been exciting to see — the wall is noticeably smaller and in some places has been brought down to the footings:

 

We have even acquired a mascot!  Here is Chair Dave Wilkinson’s dog Sam with Dale in front of the command tent.  Sam may have spotted some wooly visitors!

Dale and Sam the camp dog

And now on to the finds.  The first one has everyone excited, as it’s a rare thing to see in Victorian-era wall fill — Roman glass!

 

We have also found more interesting stones and have set them aside for expert evaluation.  The one on top is a roof tile (with a square hole), and the other is a stone plug.

Volunteers hard at work — and at play!

Tracks

 

Sam DID spot some wooly visitors!  He made sure they kept their distance.

 

 

As the day ends, the sky begins to darken, and it’s time for some well-earned supper.  Plus a cheery bonfire!  We’ll be back again tomorrow.

Epiacum Operation Jericho Diary #3 — The Wall Continues to Fall! Read More »

Day 4 … more wall fun…

Epiacum / By

The North Pennines weather struck again. As the nice weather of yesterday gave way to first a cold front followed by sudden and rather damp squalls, the work on the walls over and around the fort continued.

The first job was to clean up the footings left and cover the infill area with soil…

Then removing the dozens of finds for cleaning and catalouging….

which largely entails loading them into wheel barrows and walking thing them down to the  camp and the finds tent…

Where the finds get cleaned

by a team

But not all the finds are being removed. Many of the Forts chamfered stones from the forts walls that I mentioned yesterday are being used for the footings, so that the line of the wall will still be seen…

But the wheel barrows need to be brought back, in the drizzle…

 

Archaeologist Al Oswald trudges back in the drizzle with a wheelbarrow for the finds…

We haven’t only been deconstructing walls. Some of the perimeter walls needed repairing. So before hand they need to be dismantled and the stones laid out (As sam goes hunting) before a professional dry stone waller can put it back together and repair the breach .

Day 4 Anatomy of a Wall
Day 4 Anatomy of a Wall

Laid out like this it looks like a plastic model kit…

The fort ramparts can be seen behind.

Even here finds were made like this quarter quern stone:

 

Day 4 Quern Stone
Day 4 Quern Stone

Tony, (a friend and work colleague I hadn’t seen in over 30 years and who made contact as a result of this blog and rode over on his motor cycle to see the action at Epiacum like other visitors we get during the day) modelling a quern stone find from the perimeter wall…

Sam says goodnight as the troops gather around the camp fire…

More in the morrow as we start to tackle the sections in the second wall…

 

In this series:

 

Overview of the project:

 

Day 4 … more wall fun… Read More »

A socket or drill stone

Day 3 Finds and news about the wall…

Epiacum / By

Today was great weather. Blue skies and clear visibility, just the day for motoring on the wall deconstruction and did the team on the wall motor but more about that later. First lets have a look at some of the finds today:

First we have a range of quern stone fragments

Then we found an interesting piece of slag with something embedded in it. This is going to be sent off for analysis to see whether it is slag from lead extraction process. This is important because Epiacum is in a lead mining area. This is the first slag found on the fort and is very exciting.

 

Slag
Slag

The slag has something embedded in it…

Embedded

Is it from the Roman era, earlier or later?

We have then found a series of architectural stones from buildings…

 

Door or window stone

Then this

chamfered stone – window detail?

 

A socket or drill stone
A socket or drill stone
Practice Drill holes?
Practice Drill holes?

And a grind stone. I have put it in black and white and colour. See the grinding marks?

 

And the last part of the first wall was dismantles today. I said todays crew were motoring in the good weather…

 

Last part of the first wall
Last part of the first wall

 

 

Tidying up
Tidying up

And all gone!

The weather is threatening to break tomorrow – more wet stuff on the way. I dropped off a big tub of dubbin for the student’s boots tonight. I think they might need it. My boots are prepared!

I am still stunned about the amount of archaeological material coming out of this wall.

That’s it for today. Bed time.

In this series:

 

Overview of the project:

Day 3 Finds and news about the wall… Read More »

More day two finds….

Epiacum / By

Yesterday the wall gave up more evidence of early life at Epiacum.

Becoming frequent now are the forts main building stones…

Fort Building stone

The Romans, masters of standardisation had standard shapes for the stones they used to construct forts with. All the stones in most Roman forts were this Triangular shape so that when they got to corners they would fit together nicely to male rounded corners which are stronger than sharp square corners. The face of the stone is square.

Next we are finding roman bricks…

Interestingly many of which (including sandstones) are showing blackening from burning…

This could be as they were part of an oven or hypocaust (underfloor heating). These could come from the Roman baths which have been found on the ramparts (part of the later life of the fort) or the Commandant had underfloor heating… 2,000 years ago.

An Army marches on it’s stomach and a lot of daily activity in and around any settlement in Iron Age, Roman era and Medieval times would have revolved around food.

We are finding an increasing amount of Quern Stones for grinding wheat and other gains into flour.

Two stones would be rotated with the inside faces having carved grooves…

This is a very thin small quern stone. But these…

are much bigger and sturdier.

I wonder if the drystone wall builders in Victorian times had any idea what they were using to build their walls, and just how old these items are?

It is incredible to discover so much material in one dry stone wall. The wall is beating all expectations of everyone involved in operation Jericho.

As you can see, much of the big wall has gone already

Stay tuned to see what new secrets the wall will surrender today…

DW

In this series:

 

Overview of the project:

More day two finds…. Read More »

Day 3 Dawn

Day 3 – Some good questions

Epiacum / By

Good morning. Today is looking good weatherise as dawn breaks over the valley …

 

Day 3 Dawn

Overnight we got some really good questions on social media.

The first was  “Why dismantle the wall if it part of the history?”

An excellent question.

Answer:

The problem with the wall is four-fold.

  1. The first issue is the construction methods and location / situation meant that the wall was dangerous and kept on falling over. The constant repairs were damaging the fort as well. This wouldn’t be a problem in any old field, but because it is on a scheduled monument to which the public have access it has been a long standing safety problem. Coupled this with the fact that because the wall goes directly across the middle of the monument people kept climbing it to get from one side to the other, which was also dangerous.
  2. The next issue was that in order to get from one side of the site to the other, if people didn’t climb the wall, they ended walking over both the ditch system and areas of both archaeological and natural importance.  As the visitor numbers increase these areas were getting severely damaged. Opening up the fort enables access without damage.
  3. Historic England gave permission for the removal of *part* of the wall for archaeological reasons. (We have only removed the parts of the wall necessary – those on top of the fort and left the remaining walls.). Doing this is enabling us to see if we can learn anything about the construction of the wall and about the history of the fort as digging is prohibited.
  4. Lastly the removal of the part of the wall on top of the fort allows people greater appreciation of the scale, siting and construction of the fort. The site is scheduled and protected. It is illegal to dig or to remove anything from the site without permission and oversight from qualified archaeologists. We are preserving the site for future generations.

The second question was “Why is digging prohibited?”

Another good question.

The problem with digging is that it is destructive. Once a site has been dug that’s it. The evidence can’t be reconstructed. So unless digging is going to answer a research question that can’t be answered elsewhere, doing a dig just destroys the archaeology and others evidence we don’t know yet how to get at or even see.

If you think about all the technology we have today that enables us to see things we couldn’t 100 or even 50 years ago. Things like MRI scanners for the body, Radio telescopes for space. Lidar and other technologies to see under the soil…

This means that in all likelihood in the next 50, 100, 1000 years new technologies will enable us to see things we don’t even know exist today.

Now if we destroy that evidence using the primitive technology of today, we are denying future generations the chance of finding things out we can’t at the moment.

So if we preserve it we then give a chance to future generations to learn more with new non-invasive technologies.

There are very strict rules in the UK about where people can and can’t dig for these reasons.

And so onto site and I will do a post soon about some more of the many discoveries from yesterday.

🙂

DW

In this series:

 

Overview of the project:

Day 3 – Some good questions Read More »

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