The Brayford Pool, in the centre of the city was once a much more extensive area of open water, dotted with islands of sand and gravel and surrounded by marginal wetlands. The area was gradually reclaimed throughout the Roman and medieval periods, with extensive levelling and landscaping in the 19th and 20th centuries.

An archaeological evaluation by auger survey and test pitting undertaken by us in July 2015 allowed the creation of a deposit model of the underlying deposits and provided radiocarbon dating for the sequence. Worked flints recovered from hand sieving of a palaeosol (prehistoric land surface) at the base of the archaeological sequence showed that there was human activity in the area in the prehistoric period. A strategy was agreed based on the deposit modelling and the specific impacts of the proposed development and excavation of a sample area 17m x 8m and 3m deep was commissioned. Deposits were machine excavated under archaeological supervision until the level of the palaeosol was reached.

Hand excavation of the palaeosol enabled the recovery of 214 artefacts, all of which were recorded in three dimensions during the work. The deposits were sampled (3000 buckets of soil were recovered!) and washed over a sieve to recover even the smallest flint blade. Even at its early stages, it is clear that the collection of fine flint blades and points, dating to the Mesolithic period, will be exceptional. Work is ongoing and the results will enable us to look for patterns within the distribution of the flint tools across the site.

Digging such a big, muddy hole in a rather public area gathered a lot of interest and the site featured in the Lincolnshire Echo