11th April dig diary
Here we are again with another season and this year it is our 10th season! We spent
much of the week tidying up the sticks and leaves that had blown into trench Apple 5
over the winter. The students after tidying up the edges of the trenches then planned it
all. They did some surveying and section drawing and we did a day of finds work
including pot washing and finds labelling. Unfortunately it had been too wet to be
able to work on the main site as the clay platform needs to dry out from the spring
rain before we could work on it. The dig closed again at the end of that week until we
start for the main season in June.
A week after the dig week I had to go to Ireland to do some filming for the BBC on a
new programme about the history of Ancient Britain. I was demonstrating Neolithic
Cooking in the middle of a peat bog on the edge of the sea in County Mayo.
Fortunately my film day was nice and sunny, but the next day it started to snow and
we nearly did not get on our flight from Dublin to Newquay as the snow was getting
pretty thick. Here are a few pictures of what I was doing. The presenter was Neil
Oliver of Coast fame who I have worked with before so it was nice to catch up with
him again. I made Butter, Neolithic bread and added home made malt which I ground
on a Neolithic quern from the local site. I made a beef stew and frumenty which is
whole wheat boiled until it bursts then eaten with cream and honey. This was actually
very nice too although Neil had to eat so much of it to get the shots right he got a bit
fed up with it, especially as he had just had his lunch before filming!