Digging the Dirt - Page 1 of 3

DIGGING THE DIRT AT DIRFT

Excavations at DIRFT West, Northamptonshire, 2006

Not everyone gets to dig on excavations in the warm summer months with the sun on your back and a series of nice finds every time the trowel hits the ground. The nature of the work we do means that sometimes, in fact the majority of times, we dig (usually with mattocks and shovels) when it's cold and windy, raining, snowing or hailing (or even all at the same time), but then that's our job…

I think it's fair to say we had our fair share of bad weather at the beginning of 2006 when we undertook excavations at DIRFT (the Daventry International Rail Freight Terminal), but archaeologists battled the British winter to get the site completed on time, and to the requirements of the client. The site was just one of a number of extensions that needed looking at by archaeologists before it was built on and fully developed.

The stripped area, known as 'DIRFT West', was pretty big. In all 17 hectares was set aside for this site, with just under 4 hectares of the Northamptonshire countryside being investigated by our team. This was split into five areas that were fully stripped for us to look at, record and excavate a sample of each type of feature. Every area stripped was packed with archaeological features and finds, dating to a number of periods (prehistoric to the present day), which left a slightly taxing question of: where do we start?

Excavation Areas 3-5. Click on each Area for a plan of excavated features

Next>
Page 1 2 3