Week 4 saw the volunteers complete their time spent with registered finds and today we concentrated on metals. During the first half of the session Susan, Dreena and Lilias, reorganised and sorted out the copper alloy artefacts, including a post medieval corkscrew, whilst the rest tackled the pretty nasty iron remains from the site.
However, although these rusty blobs seemed fairly uninteresting, we then looked at their associated x-rays and discovered that whilst some failed to show anything, others really highlighted the original object beneath the rust.
For the second half of the session all volunteers got to repack a large piece of iron, almost all of which were roman hobnail shoes. Again closer inspection of the x-rays really highlighted the hobnails and added to their interpretation.