Nathaniel Welsby (aka Nate) is from the Wessex Sheffield team, is on secondment to the Salisbury office for three months training within the Geoarchaeology & Environmental team. The aim of the training is to teach Nate further methods and processes in order that he can help run a new environmental processing set-up back in Sheffield on his return.
Nate had spent the previous five months excavating at Wylfa Newydd, Anglesey and on his arrival in Salisbury says he was flung straight into the thick it by the environmental team.
‘I’ve been kept busy with samples from Wylfa Newydd (seems I can’t escape that site), getting mucky with waterlogged and clay samples, having a whale of a time processing skeletons from Tidworth and Bulford and even finding a Saxon blue glass bead’.
Nate recovered the glass bead (pictured) during processing of a soil sample taken from the skull cavity of one of the many 7th-8th century Saxon graves at the MOD site in Bulford.
‘From working with the geoarch and environment team I have learnt that samples need as much attention on site as in the processing shed, and intend to keep a close eye on sampling strategies on my return to Sheffield. I have learnt about the processes involved with sampling on a large scale and had the excitement of finding the unknown in the next sample bucket’.
Source: Wessex Archaeology
