Katie – Day one

What a day! Its 8pm and I’ve just got home. Anna and I met up with Dave and his grandson Aaron, and Alan Graham, the archaeologist Naomi had organised to excavate the hoard. We thought we would have a hoard in a pot by the end of today, but it soon became clear when Alan began clearing the soil from around the top of the pot that what Dave and we had thought was the rim of the pot, was in fact the base of an inverted vessel on top of the pot, and fitted neatly inside the rim. Which means it is one big pot! I made a quick phone call to Wiltshire Heritage Museum this afternoon when it became clear the pot was roughly 50cm in diameter. WHM houses the pot from the biggest coin hoard in the country (54,952 late 3rd century coins from the Roman town of Cunetio near Marlborough). Dianne, the Fundraising Officer, nipped off with a ruler and measured the Cunetio pot for me – 50cm in diameter!!! My mind is racing with visions of coins. I rang Sam Moorhead from the middle of the field – he sounded in shock and kept saying ‘can you see any Carausian coins?’ (the so-called rebel emperor AD 286-293).

The difficult decision of the day however was how on earth to get these coins out of the ground. If we lifted en bloc, it would be a mammoth task (Sam guessed it would weigh a ton, no joke intended) and very expensive. Plus, as it would then have to be excavated in laboratory conditions, it could take a while before we knew what was in there. The decision was taken, with help from Bob Croft (Somerset County Archaeologist) who had called by and Roger Bland on the phone, that we would take the coins out in layers. Sam was keen to see whether there was any differentiation between the date of the coins at the top to those at the bottom. In other words, had this pot represented some sort of bank over the years. It was clear anyway that the pot could not have been lowered into the pit with the coins inside as it would have been far too heavy.

Another facinating discovery is that the pot was packed around with reeds of some kind. They are not weaved, but they are clearly placed. The pot is cracked and almost intact one small piece appears to be missing. Anna, Dave, Aaron and I spent a good hour hunting through the spoil but to no avail. Dave and Aaron are camping out tonight, right next to the pit. Can’t get better security than that!