Well, we have begun closing down. This week we will hire some local workmen to take all the dirt that we have so carefully excavated over the past month and put it back in the holes.

It's usually pretty depressing to backfill, because you spend one day putting in the dirt that it took a month to take out. You never find anything and if you do a good job it looks like you were never there at all.

Because the project will work on the same trenches in the future, however, we do place a layer of plastic in the bottom of the trench before filling it in. This plastic has to have holes cut into it so that any water can drain away normally. It simply serves as a marker to show where we stopped digging.

As for last-minute surprises, it's fair to say that we had something turn up as expected: a pit dug between two walls in trench 3. No one seems to have an explanation for it at present, and perhaps future excavations will figure out its purpose. And trench 4 has come down on what appear to be ovens, with lots of ash and glassy slag nearby.

We also had a couple of small finds on the last day, one of which is a very nice coin, but it was found on the surface rather than in a trench so doesn't count for much. Overall, I'd have to say this has been a "teasin' season" in terms of finding interesting things. There's more there, but it will have to await another year's work.