With the trenches ready cut, the task today was to clean up the sections and begin the first (of many) cleaning back of the trench surfaces, carefully pealing back the top layers of the archaeology.

Trench 1 (confusingly the furthest trench in the field) is located across the interior ditch and bank of the northern double-ditched enclosure. Trench 2 is located just east of Trench 1, just beneath the barrow ridge and is located over another ditch and bank with some interesting looking “features” just inside from the ditch. We would quite like these “features” to be hut platforms, but we shall see! Only a short climb back up to the hill's summit and south of Trench 2 lies Trench 3. This is located over another ditch and bank feature; a smaller enclosure located closer to the summit of the ridge. According to the geophysical report, this enclosure lies within the larger southern enclosure although we do not know what the temporal relationship is between these enclosures. Could it be that Trench 3 is located on an earlier part of the site? Our aim is to gain a better understanding of the archaeology of the site and we are hoping to find some good dating evidence to facilitate this! Hopefully, there will be a convenient layer of charcoal at the bottom of every ditch! What's the betting?

Finally, Trench 4 is located furthest south on the site but in line still, with the barrows. Trench 4 is supposed to be located on the entrance of the enclosure and again, there are some “interesting” features at its eastern end.

After a day of troweling away, Trench 4 is the first to yield some information with the revelation of two sets of plough marks and more excitingly, four worked flint pieces! Unfortunately, these were found still within the ploughed zone of the trench and so are not in their in-situ archaeological context. The flints themselves are fairly crude in manufacture and are probably Bronze Age in origin but they are still exciting finds. Flint does not occur naturally in this part of Britain and so any occurrences of flint are anthropogenic in origin; they were brought by humans.

Yet another sunny day but the wind was certainly keeping things fresh! Our merry band of volunteers has grown in number but our average age range has just dropped a generation or two with the arrival of brothers Max and Ryan, aged 9 and 7 years old respectively! Keen diggers and hard workers, the boys were placed in Trench 1 to supervise their parents .

Meanwhile in Trench 4, the plough marks were carefully planned by Jo whilst her trenchmates continued to trowel away at the western end of the trench. As a volunteer dig, we see this as a training opportunity for volunteers to learn the skills and processes of archaeological investigation. It is our intention to teach our volunteers about all aspects of the dig and the recording methodology. Today we introduced context forms to record the initial archaeological data and Hubert began his masterclasses in the art and science of measure drawings! Doesn't Jo look pleased?!

Trench 2 has also been yielding some small pieces of flint and it looks as though the top of the ditch has been revealed at the southern end of the trench .

Following a 24 hour intermission, the rain returned once again today! I'm not sure if we're toughing up a bit or if today's rain wasn't relentless enough, but we ploughed on nevertheless!

We have begun half sectioning the ditches in all the trenches now except Trench 1 because we're not entirely sure where it is in Trench 1! The usual dark, tell-tale deposit and layer in the section of the trench which has in the other trenches revealed the ditch fill, seems to have disappeared in Trench 1. I'm beginning to wonder if it's not just a buried occupation soil horizon... Still, the plough marks in the eastern end of the trench as looking quite nice and are worthy of another photo, set up and taken by Margaret and Jo.

Half-sectioning the ditches is the easiest and quickest way to excavate the ditch fill in order to see the ditch cut and profile so that we can have a better understanding. Progress on the ditch in Trench 2 is well on its way!

There was more masterclasses in context recording today as well as an introduction to recording elevations using a dumpy level for our now youngest member of the team Theodore. How many archaeologists does it take to record a level? Four and a half apparently!

Our dig Director Pete was off today and so our Head of DAT Archaeological Services Jim stepped in as the dig Director.

It was a tremendous effort today in Trench 1 and despite the hard work everyone remained in good spirits! I must say at this point that our merry band has been very hard working and enthusiastic throughout! All the trenches are looking great and the arduous paper recording work is being done also! I think each day we are becoming more resistant to the now fairly miserable weather but our spirits are not dampening! The tea-break and lunch time conversations however, seems firmly weighed down with toilet humour.

Meanwhile, Director Pete and merry band member Rob A have discovered that they have actually met previously on another archaeological dig; back in 1971!

We also received our first school visit today! Year 5 from Ysgol Bro Ingli visited along with PCNPA Ranger Richard Vaughan. The children were fantastic! Ed and I split the group and took them on a tour of the site; Ed leading in Welsh and myself in English.

There is only a limited amount of enthusiasm and excitement that a ditch can inspire, even less so for children as I'd imagined. I was quite concerned that the children might find our sand pits rather underwhelming. How wrong could I be?! Children have the best imaginations, ask the brightest of questions and approach things with an inert enthusiastic energy!

For a dig lacking any obvious or monumental archaeology, we were keen to emphasise to the children that for sites like these where we don't have much artefactual data we must use the sediments as artefacts. We must learn how to read the soil. We encouraged the children to get stuck into the spoil heaps, to feel the changes of texture, to see the colour changes and to read the patterns and layers in the trenches. By the end of the site visit they could all “read” the trenches and one particular sharp eyed pupil even identified a flint in one of the contexts!

Today has been a very busy and productive day!

We received our second school visit from Year 5 pupils at Ysgol Maenclochog and they were also fantastic children! I could go on and enthuse about how good they were but I should only be repeating myself. So I shall just say that we were also very impressed with them and to apologise for forgetting to take pictures again!

Meanwhile elsewhere; guess what's turned up in the ditch fill of Trench 4? Only a charcoal deposit! It's not at the bottom of the ditch but it is far enough down to justify taking a sample. It would be nice if every ditch yielded such a layer!

As like the other trenches, Trench 1 has started to be recorded on plan and levels were taken. This turned into only a brief lesson for our super proficient volunteers and Margaret, Jane, Hazel and Sue were able to record it in no time at all.