Life Way Back When

Hi there, I’m Aidan, one of the Durham Uni students at this year’s Bagendon excavation. I’ve just completed my second year. It seems that there are a fair few of us digging in Gloucestershire this year and it’s really good seeing old friends and making many new ones. The Bagendon excavation is exciting for me personally as it is closely linked to my dissertation topic, which centres around interactions between Romans and indigenous Britons through their social and ritual architecture. Despite the heat, we managed to complete a lot during the first day, de-turfing our trenches and making significant headway revealing a section of collapsed wall that is over 10 meters long. The second day involved defining the features and clearing away large amounts of topsoil to better reveal the contents of the trenches. At this stage, we are still trying to work out what sort of site we are dealing with. It could be a villa structure, although personally I'm keeping my fingers crossed for a Romano-Celtic temple. We finished cleaning away the topsoil from trenches 5 and 6, and though the weather took a slight turn for the worse, we still managed to begin planning. Evenings are fun: sitting in the sunshine with friends, drinks and pot-washing (my new favourite pastime).