His plan for an early night was foiled by the fact that Katerina was happy to sit and talk about almost anything! She played video games a bit and knew something about a lot more; she could talk science fiction and fantasy books of all sorts. They spent a lot of time comparing their favorite authors and then their favorite science fiction and fantasy films. Before they knew it, the place was empty, and the clock on the wall said it was one-thirty! Oh shit. They headed to their rooms on different floors, unfortunately, and Jason made sure his phone alarm was on, and the volume turned up!

The buzzing of the alarm did manage to rouse him barely three hours later! After a quick shower, a hot and not very good coffee made from the ingredients in the mini bar, which he only half slurped down, he raced downstairs clutching the two water bottles he’d grabbed from the tiny bar fridge in his room. He wasn’t the last to arrive out the front where he found a small bus was waiting, but it was close! One of the undergrads was right behind him, and a quick headcount confirmed they were all present. The bus lurched into motion even as Jason was heading for a seat. Franny was sitting with Katerina, damn, so he was forced to take a spot two rows back. A quick survey confirmed most of the crew were in shorts and t-shirts, although several had brought jackets of some kind as well. A jacket was something Jason hadn’t thought would be needed in the middle of the English summer! And sunscreen. Shit! In the rush, he’d left his behind. Oh well, hopefully, someone would let him share today.

The dig site was on a farm in a wooded area. The previous season they had made one deep vertical trench ninety degrees to the line of the upper fort’s wall, and while digging that out, they had dug a couple of further, smaller, trenches northeast along the wall to find a corner. They hadn’t found an actual corner, but the fourth trench had been beyond the wall extent of the top fort and probably the older fort as well. The main trench had been extended outwards when they found the lower fort, which had been their main focus the previous summer. In addition to the two fort walls, they had found two adjoining ditches. In the case of the lower fort, the ditch seemed to have provided much of the material for the wall base, which would have then been topped with wooden stakes.

The upper wall was different and appeared to have been made of reinforced turf sods and logs with a protective palisade then erected on top of that. The dirt from the ditch seemed to have been only a small part of the wall construction. Although how they determined that from the nondescript mound of remains, Jason wasn’t sure. This year they were going to resume their search for a corner and then try and see how far the forts extended to the southwest. Oh goody. Lots of wheelbarrow work for the ‘technical assistants’! In practice, over the next few days, he found there wasn’t that much wheelbarrowing, but making up for the lack of wheelbarrowing, there was shoveling, digging, and carting tree refuse. The farmer had agreed to chain saw a tree that was in the way and used his tractor to pull out the stump and then cart off the bulk of the tree, leaving the bits and pieces that had broken off or otherwise come adrift for the ‘technical assistants’ to remove from the work area.