what have they found.... in the ground?

this is the view of across the whole of the site - if Falmer Stadium was finished i would be stood on the pitch or probably more precicely somewhere in the away stands

looking across the field you can see activity up in the top corner

its almost exactly where the carpark is meant to be

this is a picture of it zoomed in

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you know im gonna have to take it all back when i said all that stuff about archaeology using industrial machinery

cos, would you believe it, when i met up with one of the archaeology team - there he was actually holding a trowel!

and this one is holding a gps theodolite - shes marking out that dark brown circle - taking about 8 readings round the edge of the circle

theyre interested cos it shows where a post has been put in the ground probably by mesolithic hunter gatherers about 9-10,000 years ago - the dark brown bit is where the wood has turned to, er, brown dirt (tell me if i get too technical for you)

they also showed me loads of knapped flint - i thought all the bits were arrowheads but they said theyre just offcuts really from when they were making arrows or axes and to find those proper bits is pretty rare cos they were a careful lot those mesolithic folk

- so now the archaeo's have diggered trenches down to mesolithic depth and not really found anything all over the site (except loadsa knapped flint)

EXCEPT IN THE SPOT WHERE THE CAR PARK IS SPOSED TO BE

before you footie fans start having a hernia, its not gonna delay the building in anyway - this isn't the mesolithic taj mahal - but it seems like a big find

- and here it is, a possible mesolithic roundhouse!

ok, it might just look like a bunch of dirt, but thats because, well it is

ive taken a little vid and that might make more sense of it - but what youre looking at is where the darker patch of dirt is - is the foundations of a probably mesolithic building (at a guess its about 10 metres across)

it could be a roundhouse - but it doesnt go all the way round
so it might be an animal enclosure - except the mesolithic were hunter/gatherers so didnt keep livestock

basically theyve just found it and theyre throwing guesses around - they said they ll dig down more and do a few cross sections and try to build up an idea of what it was made out of and looked like

- and then when theyve got the gps of all the outlying posts theyll look to see if it can be made into a shape and era that makes sense