Here in Ludlow we have a unique historic medieval market town that is situated in south Shropshire. The town has had over 75 years of historians researching and postulating over the medieval surviving texts, and this led them to begin to compile their chronologies…so far
Over 450 listed historic buildings in the town still surviving… and there is the high potential of undisturbed archaeology that remains buried.
The Medieval Artefact study is now in preperation and I am aiming to complete a test pit excavation in the historic core of the town within the next few years. I can then retrieve any archaeological evidence and analyse them back in the museum lab. From here I will be able to understand in particular the medieval pottery in order to get me a date range on the origins of the town…
The Test Pits…
The idea of test pits is to get a sample of the archaeology underneath an urban environment using a simple less invasive strategy than a full-scale excavation. This gives me a sample of the archaeology underneath the town, as on any excavation, the idea to get a view underneath the ground to examine visible trace remains of a past landscape.
It’s like peeling back layers of an onion. In a rural environment, there is plenty of open space to investigate without the complications of urban buildings disturbing the soil.
But in an urban environment you are restricted….by buildings and less open spaces
Going Down…
The methodology of excavating the test pits is to excavate down 10cm spits. In each layer everything that is found is bagged and tagged from their individual contexts.
From site the finds are recorded and separated into pottery, tile, bone, metal, glass and organic finds, the context layer found in is recorded on the finds bags. Then they are to be sent back to Ludlow Museum to be cleaned, recorded and analysed
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