The Wraysbury Excavations
Wraysbury is a town in Berkshire. In the seventies it was a place I used to go to. It had an archaeological site in the field behind the local church. It was seen as a mixed site in which artifacts from all periods of history emerged (eg. prehistoric flints, saxon and medieval potsherds etc). There were two, or more trenches in which one was taught the basics of excavating using a trowel. Work here was done by volunteers, and ofcourse, I was one them. Victor Marchant was the site director with a great experience in practical archaeology. He was a tall affable thin man. Quite often during my work there I found pieces of animal bone. But Victor though was more keen on finding human ones!! As for the animal bones, and notably potsherds I used to take them home to be cleaned, and marked in white paint indicating where they had been found. One of the things I learnt in Wraysbury was the construction of a grid diagram. This was a pen and paper job in which I managed to t...