Student Blog — Finds From BcGn-23 OA1-D: The Summer Kitchen

Sophie Archambault

The Summer Kitchen extension of the house may not have had any finds as amazing as the stamp or the ring, but it did produce some smaller interesting finds. One of the coolest finds we had was a skeleton key. It was difficult to find a date so it is not dated as of now but hopefully can be dated in the future.

The key was found while using the screens when excavating context 63 on May 7^th, 2024. Many of our interesting finds were from context 63. We found part of a drain pipe in the northeast corner of the trench in context 63. We only found a small piece of the pipe so the rest of it may be waiting to be discovered. 

We found the ‘Forbidden Disk of Knowledge’, which is the name given to it by those who were excavating context 63. This find was especially interesting because we found it while removing a tree stump, and it was sitting perfectly flat under the trunk part of the stump. We were told that it could have been part of a wooden stovepipe damper which supports the Summer Kitchen evidence. Some other finds that supported the Summer Kitchen evidence were pieces of ceramics, nails, and bones from domestic animals. We found small pieces of ceramics in many different contexts such as 63,68, and 69. We found three deposits of ceramics (larger pieces that were found with small pieces in one small area) which contained pieces that could be put together in context 63.

These were created as X-finds and had their locations mapped. We found many nails which were all of similar size and shape. They were also all architectural nails so they could have been used to connect wooden pieces of the Summer Kitchen extension. The bones we found were in fragments in most cases. For the past few days, we have been trying to identify the bone fragments to the bone and the species they came from.  From the bones we were able to identify so far we have found mostly domestic animals and other animals that would have been eaten such as fish. Most of the bones have been from cows, sheep, and pigs. We also found a small amount of bones that had been cut. These bones were mostly cow ribs and were cut by humans. Another interesting find was the intact brick we found. We had mostly only been finding pieces of brick so it was cool to find an entire brick.