Update on the Roman wall collapse at Caerleon dig site

I was supervising the trench near the south gate when the whole section gave way. Turns out the soil was looser than we thought from old root systems. Has anyone else had to deal with a sudden collapse and how did you fix it without losing the context?

2 comments

2 Comments

morgan51224d ago

Oh man, "the whole section gave way" is exactly what happened to me last year on a different dig. We were working a trench near an old well and the whole north wall just silently let go, dropped about two feet of soil into the trench. Had to backfill the whole thing with clean sand and then carefully trowel back, which saved most of the pottery but we lost a whole day of context photos.

the_jake24d ago

Backfilling with clean sand saves the artifacts, but the real loss is those context photos can't be recreated.