Hi Folks,
Just to let you know that Stuart Platt, Paul Garvey and I finished machining out a problem site in Salter's Lane West Bromwich for Sandwell Valley Council last week.
We have taken every whole bottle, clay pipe, piece of patterened pottery, brick, jar, lid, stopper and interesting fragment from the site. It was systematically dug and every foot of the site was gone through, some of it more than once. Even the 6 inch layer under two foot of capping around the edges was dug.
The site has been levelled and raked ready for seeding to be turned back into pasture land. The Council did not police the site that heavily over the last few years, but now the new buildings on the site are complete and builders yard gone, they will not be so tolerant to anyone being caught digging there.
To dig the site is risky and pointless. Hand diggers pretty much blitzed it, so it was only the deep and heavily capped part of the site to go at. These hand diggers got the lion's share of the finds, but there was still enough recovered for BBR to run a story on the site so keep an eye on Alan's Mag for the full article.
Regards
Al.