Belfast Continued

My third full week working on the project started on the 30th of September, it was an overcast and cold morning but I tried to keep my morale high. I had finished excavating the cross section of the pit feature and was ready to complete the section drawing. However, it started raining straight away so I starting cleaning up the edges of the trench, the rain kept getting worse and I was getting nowhere, if anything I was making it more dirty so we went inside to wait out the rain. The rain continued and there was no point attempting to excavate but we are still behind on schedule and supposed to have this trench finished by Thursday (no chance), so we went out and started cleaning a rock feature in the section 2A, where we will move to next. This was an arched strip of medium sized rocks, stretching around the south section of the mine about 20 metres south of the edge of the trench 1A, Naomi theorised that it was a bank that had been washed away, marking a boundary of a possible enclosure. She described the distribution of rocks as metalled, which is effectively a Neolithic path, but we still do not know what it is and if it is even human. We cleaned this as much as possible but the rain kept getting worse so again we weren't getting anywhere and went inside for the rest of the day. Tuesday completed my drawing and went on to clearing another area, which was definitely a work area of the flint mine but was not properly pit shaped, just like every part of this site. finding edges, bedrock etc. I spent the rest of the week on this pit area, Mark joined me and on Thursday to finish the half section. Ciara also came down to the site to complete her scans, using photogrammetry and a drone to gain a survey of the excavated and coded area, so the morning task was the clear the already excavated area of any loose rubble or flint that needed to be bagged. This included tidying up a half section of a pit that had been done months ago.

That weekend I went out and met another friend, called Vishad. We had a good night and I got to do my first stint in Limelight, the club that everyone kept telling me about. It was a fun night and spent the Sunday chilling at Vishad's as he lives in Whiteabbey, the next village across.

 The Monday of the 7th of October continued with us finishing area 1A, I needed to clear out an area in the middle that had been used for navigating the trench, then smashed out the rest of large pit that I had half sectioned with Mark. This was a large area so took me a couple of days, as it joined up with another large pit area that Naomi began to quarter section. The finds were drying up even more and we found almost nothing in any of our features, just a few more flint hollow scrapers. The Neolithic inhabitants definitely weren't using this area for drinking, feasting, or any material ritualism that left behind remains. It must have been purely for work and probably a temporary site as the surrounding landscape made it accessible to mine the flint, including the natural water that had run through the soft limestone. It is such an excellent example of extensive work that was carried out in the late Stone Age, as it shows the effort and coordination of many people to target this specialised site. Nothing of this size and use of mining technique has been found in the whole of Ireland for this time period; yet we are being pressured by the quarry whose land it is on to finish and move on to the next section so they can prepare to blow it up just to collect the limestone bedrock. I am now realising the reality of commercial archaeology, this ancient and unique site that should be studied properly, at length, with better resources and then protected is going to disappear so a greedy capitalistic company can gain a bit more profit. 

Anyway, we should be moving on to the next area, so it will make Kilwaughter Quarry happy. I leave on Friday to go home for my operation so will miss a week of work unfortunately. When I return I will get the update from the team to fill in what I've missed so will include that in my next post.