British Archaeology and Duodecahedral Mystery Fever (II): The Archaeology Group Struts its Stuff

(Contd from Part one)

Puzzled by the reference to metal detecting in the text about the discovery in Live Science, and since the good folk of the so-called Norton Disney History and Archaeology Group did not actually want to discuss how one of their finds ended up in the PAS database, it turned out that if I wanted to find out more, I'd have to look at the material in the public domain about the third season (2023) of their (apparently) privately-funded excavation (7th-20th June 2023)  of the Potter Hill Dig site. It was there, in a feature in Trench 4 on Thursday 15th June, that the dodecahedron is reported as having been found. 

Apparently, something called  "Allen Archaeogy" [@allenarchaeo] is in some way involved in this project. It is not clear what the formal status is or how that is organised and funded or what its role actually is, but it is worth noting that on their own website, Norton Disney does NOT figure in its presentation of their "projects". So that is another thing that is unclear. 

So who was directing this dig? What are the research aims?  

The information I found online was profoundly disturbing. We do not know how many diggers there were, but the photos suggest that on a good day there were c. 15 of them. And we know the digging was planned for ten work days. Whoever was in charge decided that this was enough to open not one trench but FOUR, on a Roman site, across deep stratigraphy (a pebble floor stratified in one section, pits and ditches already known from geophys). There is no site plan in the Group's materials, but it seems from the photos those trenches are (by eye - not a ranging rod scale anywhere in the whole series of site photos) four metres-plus (five? metres) across and more than 20m long.  To my mind, that is simply irresponsible, there is no way that (unless the trenches were utterly sterile) that is enough people to deal with an area that size properly in the time available. 

So the result is what we see. There are no grid pegs for planning, nor any equipment for surveying /measuring visible in the photos. There are no planked barrow runs, no wheelbarrows, if its too far to the spoilheap from where somebody is digging, loose soil is just heaped on the ecavated area. There are spilt earth and trample all over the excavated surface. I dread to think what the site photographs look like. But then, in the dig diary there is no mention of cleaning up the area around a feature for a photo, or a general site view.  Wroxeter Baths Basilica this is not. 

Attention is drawn to a number of cases where one one day in the photo of a trench there is no socking big hole in it, but a photo taken a day later shows a large cubic volume of archaeological (one assumes) deposit has been removed, apparently in one go. It is difficult to see whether a half-section of these features was attempted. The whole dig gives the impression of having been done in a huge hurry. Why?  In addition, the site is a disgusting mess - apart from anything else a site in that state is a huge risk of alien material appearing to come from layers it has not - ie of contamination. Where did the volunteers doing this learn to excavate? Where is the site discipline?

There are vague mentions of a "surface" (seen in the photo as having been cut through, rather than exposed and planned) a "[quarry] pit" and "ditches" - but there is no site plan to show that any length of any of these features was traced anywhere. The photos show that little box-trenches were dug by the trench-edge baulks (crooked, not vertical or for the most part not cleaned back), but it is not clear what they represent. No photographs show any of the layers as labelled in the field. 

Trench 4 of the Potter Hill Dig  (photo:Trench 4 of the Potter
Hill Dig (photo:Norton Disney History and Archaeology Group
- fair use for criticism, comment, news reporting and teaching)

It is against this sorry background that we should discuss the dodecahedron find. There is no mention of the find in the so-called "dig diary" online, but there is a photo of what "Richard, Richard and Julian" were doing on that day in that hole... and basically one can only remark, "what the ****?" What is the excavation strategy here? Three blokes digging randomly down at different depths. What's going on here, where is the edge of the feature? The baulks are all over the place, on day nine, the spoil heap is right on the trench edge and part of it is sliding into the excavation (I use the term loosly). There is a shovel lying blade up, a hoe (for some reason) lying in the hole. 

I cannot really see what those three blokes are doing in that hole. It is entirely possible that a large feature like that has several phases of filling, but digging it like that, the excavators would be hard-put to identifying them (or any intrusive features or post-depositional effects), and therefore the actual context of the dodecahedron. So it may well be one of the few from an excavated context, but from what we can see so far of this excavation, that really does not count for much.

In the dig diary intended to inform the wider public about what was done and how by this group of archaeologists, most of the photos are not of the site and the features found and explored, but people holding pieces of pottery, or finds trays full of pottery (mostly the big bits - no sieving here apparently, though the soil looks ideal for it). The dig diary throughout talks of getting more and more "finds" but little about the contexts. The whole text reads as if this "archaeology group" thinks archaeology is just about "digging up old things" (23 kg of them apparently - they weighed them). The impression this archaeologist gets from looking at the material they have produced and publicised so far is that this is basically just an artefact hunt. This is the legacy of the PAS in action. 

BUT, unlike what I was expecting from the earlier write up, no metal detectors in sight. I am not sure here however that this is a good thing. No mention was made of a single coin being found. No 'Constantinian grots', no barb. rads. If that is the case, how carefully were they digging? 

In the event, after just ten digging days, these holes were backfilled without, it seems from the presented account (and as may easily have been predicted), any of them having been fully examined and it is not stated which research aims were fulfilled. If their shoestring funding stretches to a return to the site, will it be possible to return to them and pickup where they finished off? I'd say the apparent lack of evidence of a fixed planning grid, if that is the case, is going to make it difficult.  

With my Polish archaeologist hat on, I would say that - while there are also huge problems in Poland - a case like this demonstrates the value in several ways of the permit system (Valetta Convention art. 3 that the UK rejected) and the oversight of standards of fieldwork by an external body (the regional conservation services to whom fieldworkers have to report in the interests of conservation of the archaeological record). Perhaps cases like this show the need for a rethinking of this?

As I said, since the archaeology group refused to discuss this with me, in order to understand the background, I am perforce having to use the material they themselves put into the public domain to show what they are capable of and what they were doing. This raises more questions than had been my nitial intent to discuss, but what the documentation seems to show is highly concening. It looks to me that the site is being unneccessarily damaged. From what I can see, there are a few doubts about the archaeological context of the site's most famous find, and about the quality of the information this "dig" is producing in general. The word "amateur" does not have to mean "bad", from what we can see, there is a LOT of room for improvement here. 

I do hope the "Dig Diary" is misleading and the site and excavation process did not really look like this. But then, if that's the case, what is the point of any of this?