The Nevern Castle Project - Dig Diary
Week 1 - 16th to 19th June 2009 |
|
| Trench B Local volunteers Reg Davies and Joan Thurman excavating some of the many shards of pottery from this trench. The shards lie scattered on top of the destruction layer, which may be as much as 0.5 to 0.9m in depth. To the left, a recently exposed section of walling on an east-west alignment, its full extent as yet unknown. |
 |
Students and volunteers taking a well-earned rest after a hard days work in the trenches.
|
 |
Trench F After much hard digging the structure of the tower emerges from the top of the motte. From the surviving evidence the tower appears to have been constructed from clay bonded slate walls, which includes some irregular sandstone blocks.
|
 |
Trench F Excavating the centre of the tower base, which revealed rubble overlying a burnt layer. |
 |
Trench F Curvature of the tower wall can be clearly seen emerging; it has been measured to approximately 9m in diameter. |
 |
Trench F The photograph shows a substantial fracture within the north face of the tower wall where the right hand section (north facing) has moved down slope sometime in the past. Why? This could be part of the deliberate destruction of the castle by Hywel Sais in 1195 or failure of the fabric of the motte to support the round tower led to the abandonment of the castle by Hywel Sais. |
 |
20th June 2009 |
|
|
|
 |
Trench B side view From this position one can see the angle of the wall revealed at last year excavation and part of the evidence for the deliberate destruction of the castle. The image looks north towards the motte which can be seen in the LHS background. |
 |
Trench B This angular section of wall recently excavated has a fine sandstone door jamb at its southern end (bottom RHS). From its condition of the sandstone with its sharp edges and well defined chisel marks it is likely that this feature may have only been in situ a relatively short time before destruction. |
 |
Trench D Tim, one of our hard working student volunteers, busily excavating one of two possible post holes in trench D over the defensive bank. The team are to attempting ascertain whether more post holes survive along this alignment. |
 |
Trench F The Tower wall continues to emerge during excavation. Here we can see the beautiful curving round tower wall being cleaned by those ‘lucky’ students. |
 |
General view across site towards trench B, image taken looking south from trench F (The Motte). |
 |
Trench A Sue Hughes Volunteer excavating a post hole in Trench A. This trench also shows large areas of occupation evidence including burnt areas. |
 |
Week 2 - 21st to 27th June |
|
Trench B Another very hot day in the trenches and the finds keep coming;
Mike and Reg get stuck into the archaeology working their way
down through the destruction layer. In the foreground you can
see a sloping surface (left to right) of mortar-bonded flooring.
Tomorrow we follow the archaeology back to the edge of the building. |
 |
Trench B The archaeology has been followed to the break of slope to the
southern range of the buildings. From this image you can see the
mortared surface exposed from beneath the plastic sheeting. This
area appears to be some form of passage between two buildings.
Above is a sandstone door casement abutted against the clay bonded
slate wall. In the foreground lies the rubble destruction layer
within the room and the slate threshold below. The rear of the
building may have toppled down the steep slope to the south either
through natural erosion or at the time of the deliberate destruction
of the castle. |
 |
Trench B This view shows the fine slate walling and sandstone blocks at
the rear of the wall of the southern range ‘A’ excavated
during last year. |
 |
Trench B Richard Jones of Dyfed Archaeological Trust and
the Community Liaison Archaeologist for the site discusses the archaeology
with volunteer Joan and visitors. You can clearly see the two external
walls of buildings A and B, in the southern range, creating the
passageway. |
 |
Trench F Local student volunteer Rhian explains the archaeology of the
surviving tower walls to visitors. This image shows in detail
the construction of the tower and the stratigraphy of the rubble
destruction layer within the walls. |
 |
Trench B We have crossed the threshold on the clay bonded slate building
in Trench B now identified as southern range building ‘B’.
The fine masonry work can be seen at the door casement at the
entrance to the room. The image shows the excavated depth of the
destruction layer which can be seen in the section. A number of
dressed stone blocks associated with the doorway were also removed
from this rubble fill and set aside for examination. |
 |
Trench F The team have excavated the tower floor discovering a large
quantity of pottery and some decayed animal bone. |
 |
Several post-holes and Beam slots? were excavated in this trench, which can be seen behind Sam. A deep stone packed gully being excavated by Tim in the background is posing some discussion regarding its origin and purpose. From the image it is possible to identify the surface of the stone fill of the same gully lying to the right hand side of the postholes. |
 |
Trench A Several significant discoveries have been made over the past
few days in this trench. Postholes have appeared and have been
excavated and sampled. Cuts into the possible made-up ground layer
could indicate beam slots or a robbed out wall. Some very interesting
pottery has also been discovered, the origin and period of which
is uncertain. Dr Peter Webster of Cardiff University will visit
the site in the next few days and hopefully shed light on these
intriguing pottery shards. |
 |
Site Director Dr Chris Caple talks to volunteers
and students about the interpretation of this trench. The area has
been cleared of the destruction layer and the floor of the trench
now lies above the pre-destruction archaeological surface. |
 |
Week 3 - 28th June to 8th July |
|
Trench F Yet more visitors on this sunny day here at the tower at the northern end of the site. Today we have the staff of Dyfed Archaeological Trust. The students are now down to the initial construction layers at the base of the tower. One can clearly see the footing stones to the left of the students.
|
|
Earlier in the week we were visited by pupils from local schools. After a tour of the excavation the children were able to participate by washing the dressed stone recovered from the destruction layers. It is possible that this stone called ‘pwtan’ was locally quarried. |
 |
Trench B South Range ‘B’ Sam excavates the occupation layer within this range of buildings. This is a mixture of clay and charcoal rich deposits which during excavation revealed stake holes which may be associated with contemporary internal structures or to an earlier phase of occupation of the site. |
 |
Trench D-D Archaeologist Will Davies opened a trench at the
base of the inner defensive ditch and begins the hard work to expose
those organic sediments that lie below. After much work in sun and
rain and biting insects he excavated the eroded sediments and discovered
flat slate slabs laid at approximately a 45degree angle to form
a inverted ‘V’ form, which appear to have been deliberately
laid and whose function is not yet determined but is similar to
early land drains found in this area. |
 |
Saturday Afternoon After a delayed start we once again resume work. Not many visitors today but some hardy archaeology fans turn up to see the remains of the 12th century tower. Here Will explains the archaeology to our two intrepid visitors while Beth and Ben continue the clean-up ready for site photographs. |
 |
Tea break, Beth and Ben take a time out and chat about the excavation before returning to work. |
 |
Sunday 5th July Another wet start, but things look up. The sun
breaks through as Dr Caple, gives Ben and Beth instructions for
the commencement of work within trench F. |
 |
We persevere until lunch then resume work in between showers. Here in Trench B southern building range Rhian begins to excavate the 12th century occupation layer in Range A while Dr Caple and Sam discuss the excavation of the mortared floor within the passageway between south range buildings A and B. In the background you can see Mike and Ben moving the smaller spoil heap to enable us to discover the extent of wall discovered in Trench B this year. |
 |
Trench B-B in wooded area Within the wooded area close to Trench B Tim, John
and Phil open another trench to try to determine the extent of the
south range building A. They hope to discover the return of the
wall discovered last year. |
 |
We continue to work dodging those showers until mid afternoon when the heavens empty. |
 |
Today we were joined by Community councillor Susan Greenwood, here with her very first 12th century pottery shard. |
 |
Mike and Trevor excavating a section of the tower floor and discover postholes of the original timber tower. |
 |
The Dig Team Left to Right - Will, Aimee, Tim, Mike, Sam, Beth, Phil, Ben, Rhian, Jon, Trevor, Richard. Other members were Joan, Mair, Rhiannon, Reg, Susan, Charles, Sue and Carl.
|
 |
