This month the MAYANS were invited to return to Exeter University’s excavation of the late Roman site at Ipplepen in Devon.  We have visited this site twice before and so it was great to go back and see what new discoveries they had made.  The visit was again made possible by the Somerset Archaeological and Natural History Society’s Gray Fund who very kindly paid for the coach to take us there.  We are extremely grateful to SANHS for giving our new members this wonderful opportunity and our long standing members a chance to build on the skills they learnt last year.

We arrived onsite at about 11.30am and met the members of the Torbay Young Archaeologists Club who are also invited to the dig every year.  It’s always great to get the chance to meet members of another local YAC club.  We also met Professor Steve Rippon who was in charge of the dig and Cat Farnell who was had organised a number of activities for us.

Cat started out with giving us a tour around the site which included Iron Age and Roman enclosures, ditches and roundhouses. We were then divided into four groups, one to start trowelling back the plough soil looking for features and artefacts; the second group to sieve the spoil heap looking for anything the diggers had missed; the third to practice recording and planning the site; and the fourth to look at what finds had been discovered and how they were processed.

It was great to have the chance to visit and work on such an exciting site.  A big thank you to Steve and Cat and all the other team members from Exeter University for inviting us, and for such a fun and interesting day!