Today we have a guest blog from a recent placement student, Caitlin Herod.
I am a current archaeology student who is doing a placement year as part of my degree. As part of this I decided to work with York Archaeology and their post excavation department. I worked with the department for three weeks and during this time I gained many valuable post excavation skills such as finds processing and environmental sampling. Whilst finds processing, I learned how to properly clean delicate artefacts such as pottery and animal bone and how to leave them to dry so they can be recorded and sorted correctly. I was also trained how to use the environmental tanks to separate archaeological material from sediment. The leftover heavy residue is then left to dry where it is then sieved to separate the residue by size. The sieved residues are then sorted through to retain any archaeological material that we need to keep, such as seeds and microfauna bones. I thoroughly enjoyed my time working with the post excavation team over the time I spent there and greatly appreciate the time that the staff spent to train me as it has given me experience and taught me many valuable skills for my future career.
