Page 40 - TVH 2000 Anniversary Shipwreck Project

Recording in the re-deposited layers outboard The recording of objects from the disturbed infill layers outboard of the stern was different from any of the areas worked inboard. During the excavation of the overburden incomplete and unrecognizable objects were divided by material type and stored as recommended under dive number. If the object was recognizable and relatively complete (such as lead shot A0002) it was registered as an object and fully recorded in a specifically created database. Photographs of artefacts entered into the recording system were taken for identification purposes immediately with a digital camera and accessed to the artefact file. Modern objects were discarded while all others were kept. Objects such as incomplete pipe stems and bottle fragments were kept separately under dive number, but not individually registered. If these bulk recovered objects are processed ashore, they can be added to the finds register, similarly any concretions opened during conservation can be added. The vast number of broken glass bottle fragments and a lot of the bricks encountered in the disturbed levels (above 1.50m) is confusing, these must have washed in from elsewhere or possibly discarded following previous excavations. Finds Introduction A total of 69 numbers were allocated to finds in trench one, this is in addition to the bulk lifted items under dive number. Details about registered artefacts are in Appendix 1. Those listed below do not include bulk lifted objects that may produce further artefacts upon processing, these included wine and Geneva bottles, clay pipes, bricks, and lead rolls. The lead rolls are interesting as they occur both in disturbed and in undisturbed levels inboard and outboard. The rolls are of different sizes and are simply made by overlapping or merely gripping together a small lead patch to form a roll. Some of these still retained rope within as if they gripped the rope. It is suggested that these are weights for fishing nets, some new and some contemporary with the sinking. The finding of several within a concretion containing glass and Geneva bottles lends strength to this theory. There are a number of different sizes and some are initialed. Although bulk lifted, none were individually registered from Trench 1. All objects derived from a large concretion that began close to the port side beneath CP2 and filled much of the bottom of the trench were noted as such. This was given a feature number, Feature 1. As all items were concreted together it was thought that they may have derived from a container of some sort and should be treated in the first instance as belonging together. The types of objects recovered from Trench 1 include the following: Bricks There is a slight variation in size, with examples between 220mm and 225mm in length, 100mm- 105mm in width and 40mm-45mm in thickness (A0001, A0003, A0007, A0013, A0018, A0067, A0069). The majority of these bricks were in the disturbed levels and just below so they must either be derived from previous excavation discard or from the bricks in store in the hold. As they are not generally stored this far astern their presence may suggest a stern down attitude for the hull. Alternatively, human activity in the form of trawling over the cargo hold towards the North may have redistributed them. Barrel elements Several elements from barrels were recovered from within the grey clay layer. This included staves (0014,0015,0039,0055) and base fragment 0037,14,20) and hoop fragment 0015,0016. Glass bottles The majority of broken bottles were onion shaped wine bottles but some square Geneva bottles were noted. The bulk of glass was recovered within the disturbed upper levels, but within and below the concretions (1.6m-2.5m) negative casts of complete bottles were recovered. Several nearly complete - 34 -