My name is Callum and I’m studying History and Archaeology at Southampton University. What I’m most looking forward to about Basing House is using techniques and technology’s that they didn’t have on the excavations in the 60′s.

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First Day

Morning

We set off from Southampton at half past eight looking forward to our first look at the Basing house in the flesh. On arrival after a quick drop off of our bags we were taken on the tour of the site by Dave Allen who told us about both the History of the site and also the Archaeological History of the site, including information on the dig from the 60’s which we are going to excavate. We then saw the site which we would be digging over the coming three weeks (it looked a very daunting task!). For the rest of the day we set about trying to de-turf the site from all of the grass and deep rooted weeds and flowers.

Afternoon

Towards the end of the day after some of the site had been cleared you could see the shape that the Archaeologists of the 1960’s had chosen to dig the site in. The site had been divided into different pits with runways between them that are about three feet higher than the depth of the filled in pits now. During the day while we had been taken on our tour and the started de-turfing the site an MSc student Clare Allen and two other students were Geo-Surveying the Common which is believed to have maybe held a large settlement at one point.

Filed under: Day One, Deturfing, Student Reporter, Summer Excavation, Uncategorized Tagged: archaeology, Southampton, student-reporter