The whole lot, and me behind the camera, ready to lift up a stone from Trench C(Nick and Rosie's)

Mark giving instruction as to how to proceed the work at Trench C, where the entrance to the cellar is.

Me at my last day of digging up Bob. He was a wild one.

Parts of Jenna and her whole pipe

Mark and Hannah looking around the interior of the Upper House- serious talk time!

Stephen SuperStar

That day I killed Bob!

First Tour around the project site day at Plas Brynkir! We're all up and down in the Training room at 9am, dressed up in our fancy Cardiff University Student Guide t-shirts and ready to show some people how much we know about the site, or how much we don't. Should we be nervous, chilled, anxious, or do we just want to keep on digging? There was really no time for such existential, profound questions. I should have learned how to improvise these stuff earlier in my life. Now I'm just an almost 22-year-old first year student an I start forgetting English just because I have 3 people following me around and expecting to be amazed. For me the funniest bit of the tour was the beginning itself when I started off smoothly with forgetting the word "bridge" in English. The other teams had their own group to lead around and I had to start the tour of my group with introducing the Lower House. Pieces of history of the site, pieces of my rotten English and a lot of awkward pauses, while looking at my notes. Thank the Goddess Pete came down from the hostel for reasons unknown to me. You remember Pete-our dig food-magician, favorite person to play NEVER HAVE I EVER WITH and my rival for the snacks in the vending machine. Off topic!!! It took me exactly 20 minutes to get my compact group of lovely archaeology involved people around the Lower House and up to the hostel. Jenna was the one taking our group to the Upper House which is also the actual dig site at the moment. She was treading in front of the hostel, waiting for the group to come out and completely forbid me to go with her. I don't really blame her- I do tend to overtake and I wouldn't want to be doing to a team-mate, even less to a friend. After the tour was officially over and we bid our farewells with the lovely elderly visitors we went back to digging and surveying in the afternoon. That, men and gentle-ladies was the exact time of Bob's death. About 25 to 2 pm I reckon... I had finished the rusty layer of soil the day before and I hit the next context and was ready to put lots of effort into troweling I realized everything beneath my hands was a compact surface. I should have been happy but this was perhaps the saddest day in my archaeological existence. After cautious cleaning, taking of photos and information for drawings Bob will be proclaimed officially dead. I am not ashamed to admit I did procrastinate, just a tiny bit. But we all know good things come to an end. Other things happened at the site as well. I would hate for the readers of this blog, as few as they may be, to be scandalized by my selfishness. Jenna reached a flagstone surface in her trench and cleared the place where a supposed window-seat is, the lovely Lily kept on expanding her main door trench and Kate was winning over the white hat(SUPERVISOR) by helping out Rosie and Nick in their monster trench. As for Stephen and Alex they did in fact leave us on the field, digging in sun and rain and began work with Mark on the drawing up of plans for the Upper House. It was another fine day at Plas Brynkir. And everyday does get better. We are a lucky bunch

Don't ask what your dumpy level can do for you, ask what you can do for your dumpy level!

Day 8 was one of those bizarre days, which seem to last forever, especially when your eyes are dangerously closing up every time you need them to be open. It was time for me to stop recording Bob for a bit and get on with troweling him. That necessity became even stronger when sometime after lunch Will, who was digging a trench in the exterior of the house, just like me, reached a cobbled surface. Bad thing it took him a bit too long to call Mark for supervision. Will started taking out the cobbles which Mark later believed were part of the original ground covering of the house. Unfortunate, but shit happens. To be honest the idea of finding a original level in my dear Bob motivated me even more and I was more keen than ever on getting the rusty-colored layer of the trench. But before anything else cold happen I had to get the dumpy level out, as I was know a proud owner of the knowledge ho to use it. Needless to say, after you have presumably read the title of this post, everything didn't quite go peachy with the dumpy level. As of that day I o have a love-hate relation with that specific piece of surveying equipment. The measurements themselves are not hard to read. However, the spirit level on it is a tricky bastard which I never could have conquered without the help of Kate. Later that day Jenna, who was by then completely consumed with her lovely trench, reached a wall on both ends of it, which could only mean proof for the window seat hypothesis of Mark and Hannah. By the end of day 8, amidst the singing, the occasional reminder of NEVER HAVE I EVER and the strive to get to end of the day, I indeed reached the end of the rusty context in my trench. I wish this could all sound more exciting to you, not just some dry facts from a damp trench. But then again I am not sure anyone can really know how we feel every day without getting their hands in the dirt. Life long and carry on troweling.

Day 7: I'm above the grid

The rust was everywhere. I looked down Bob and as my hands and knees were still feeling so soar I felt a bit reluctant to get back in him. The good thing with troweling is once you start you get so caught up in it that nothing else matters. The morning was quiet and empty of finds and somewhat full of the revelations from the previous night's NEVER HAVE I EVER. It was after lunch that the interesting matters started coming out. I remember quite clearly that I was sieving the soil from Bob, my trench, when Jenna went suspiciously quiet for a bit and then jumped right out of her trench, hiding something in her palms. As my usual bossy self I wanted to see and started jumping around Jenna, the dwarf that I am compared to her, to try and see. She was however relentless and wouldn't let anyone else but Mark see her find first. To be honest I have never before seen Jenna so excited and emotionally involved and with an object at that- but no shame on her. It was a complete pipe, made out of clay, with production marks and names on it, and with a gazed light-green finish to it. At that time it was my turn, honor and privilege to learn something new. I had to start properly recording my trench and a grid plan, or a bird's eye-view for the unenlightened, was the next agenda. As I am only an inexperienced first year I had Lily and Kate help me. Not only did they explain everything I needed to know in the best way, they also made me a blump-bob. This miracle of nature, and the swagger minds of the YOLO-team, was named Jason and he is now forever going to stay in the breast pocket of my blue waterproofs. While all this was happening at trench A- mine and Jenna's trenches combined, Nick and Rosie ( part of team B) found another wall in their monster of a trench and soon after bits of a huge metal object became visible in the soil covering the steps to the Upper House's cellar. All in all this was a good day, but when I get to think about it they all turn out to be good anyways

Days 5 and 6: There is something seriously wrong with loving a trench this much

Apologies for the sudden merging of day experience, however to me it all feels the same when I am around Bob. He is my little 1 by 1 meter window in the past and has facilitated views into the history of demolition at the Upper House of Brynkir. Bam! New context. Bam! Another one. I felt so overly concentrated on what may come out of the loose soil that everything else just faded. People somewhere keep killing each other, bad things keep happening to good and not so good people and there I was just troweling as if I was troweling for my own life. I wonder if this is not too pretentious, too much over the top for me - to feel so obsessed with a whole in the ground, made by me at that. Jenna was still sat right across the wall, which serves as one of Bob's sides. This experience keeps proving to be very healthy for her, as I can see the amazing progress she has accomplished from day 1. On the far corner of the exterior wall Will kept digging his trench and hit a very compact grayish layer which according to Mark could be late medieval. Day 5 was also the day when I learned how to use the dumpy level. Imagine my total amazement at the fact that I actually now know what to do with that peculiar thingy. I keep talking about archaeological procedures and on-field skills as if they are something magical and unearthly. Of course I know they are not. This is just me, realizing my total merging with a world I have previously felt unreachable. Even though the first year at Cardiff Uni has taught me so much, surely nothing can be compared to this: feeling the dirt in between your fingers, saving the worms from the vicious edge of the trowel and taking little pieces of someone's history out of the soil. Day 6 had a rather sad turn to it for that was the day after which Hannah left Plas Brynkir, Cwm Pennant and 9 Cardiff University students completely adoring her. Sometimes life and the schedule of an archaeological dig do rather surprise us. Towards the end of this day I finally reached a layer in my trench beyond demolition. The rusty color of the soil got me so excited that I was even eager to return to it al day during our day off. Now all that is left for me is to boldly go where no one has gone before.

Bob in the beginning