Anyone who has dug on Bridge Farm must have been told to start digging in the known and work towards the unkown. What I hadn't thought of before is how much that phrase sums up the whole of Trench 7 and probably most of the Bridge Farm Settlement, although proceed into the unkowable might be nearer the mark on some occassions.
Whenever we think we have a feature we can start to understand during the first 2-3 contexts you can bet your treasured trowel its gonig to keep on going down for the next metre or so in multiple fills and way beyond our comprehension.
The last post showed part of the 'figure of 8' feature soon after it had been uncovered. It had very dark, charcoal rich soil in the SE circle and a ring of burnt clay around the NW circle and an upper fill rich with 20mm tile cube tesserae. So theories started to edge towards kiln and stokehole or 2 small kilns and possible tesserae production rather than flooring; gone any thoughts of lime production despite the pile of chalk that originally alerted us to the feature. About a metre deeper in both areas and still going down it may be time to reassess. Rain stopped dig today mid afternoon but with over a week still to go we are hopeful of completing the half sectioning of this feature (subject to the feature and the rain ever stopping) and recording it.
More pressing is the recording the 1.2m deep multi-layered pit in the NW corner of the trench as the western 20m are going to be closed this year (Oh! yes they are). However the eastern 25m have too much work still to do so will remain open for another year with an extension 15m to the north (t.b.c.), where you never know there could be something completely different or there could be more big deep burnt pits. What has become apparent this year is that what ever is going on in the centre of this settlement its certainly not domestic.
