The excavations here at Arbeia are now in their third week.  The team (made up of volunteers from Earthwatch) are actually digging just outside the wall of the fort itself, hoping to pick up some of the civilian settlement that built up outside the military base. This is a new area of excavation, only opened last year, and is a deep pit right next to our offices. I’m hoping we can convert it into a swimming pool when the dig is done, but think I might be over-ruled on this one.

On the finds side, there have been two interesting objects this week, both slightly unusual.  One is a small fragment of a brooch and the other is the rim of a small glass vessel with handles. This is good news for the dig, but not so good news for me, who is supposed to be able to identify these things.

OK, so the brooch is not exactly photogenic, and won’t ever be appearing in a museum near you any time soon, but for me it’s intriguing. I get to do some detective work to try to find more complete parallels in order to pry its story out of it.