A Diggers Day No. 4-5

Yesterday I finished off the section through the enclosure ditch:

This is a better picture, and as you can see there are lots of flint at the base of the secondary ditch cut. Archaeology is not all treasure, you know.

I then moved on to another section, this time to establish the butt-end of the primary ditch. The fill of the secondary ditch was richer in pot and this nice BBW base came up:

But better was to come. After taking more soil out I came across this:

This is a piece off the side of a pot which was hung over the fire, hence the 'lug' seen here in situ. It does look like someone has been buried with only their nose showing! This was post-ex:

This section of ditch yielded quite a few bags of pot, both BBW and a red ware that was quite poorly fired. A good haul:

The only down side at the moment is the small site hut. If the generator is not working I have to go for a pee in the dark. One has to trust to a good aim. However, we are due a site workers canteen next week - luxury! Hot lunches and fresh coffee too.

Working tomorrow, but on time and a half - hooray!

A Diggers Day No.3

A better day weather wise, but still very windy. As the rain/sleet/snow held off the ground is drying and easier to work, plus I am not several centimeters taller every time I come off site!

I have finished digging the section through the enclosure ditch and found this nice translucent flint:

Not a great pic but my hands were cold. It is very thin and has a nice cutting edge.

This is the section through the ditch, in very strong sunlight, so again not too good. I found that the ditch is in fact two; the first wider and then a second one cut through the middle of the earlier feature. A small posthole can be seen to the left.

We had two deer scamper across the next field today. Two young males with furry antlers. I wouldn't have seen that in London!

A Diggers Day No.2

When I moved to Dorset I was told that it never snowed here. Five out of six years it has snowed, and this year it has snowed again. On site today we had sleet, snow and blue sky's, all within a few minutes.

People used to say to me "archaeologists; you only work during the summer". This is how we have to work at in February:

But I had a consolation. I am working on the enclosure ditch and within a few strikes of a mattock I found this:

Some sherds of Black Burnished Ware (BBW). This is a slot through the ditch:

So, although the weather was changeable some nice bits of 2,000 year old pottery can brighten the day.

A Diggers Day No.1

It is a truth universally acknowledged that were you find a digger you find 3-4 people standing looking at it. 

I started at the site today, and a windy one it is. It myst have been blowing 50-60 miles per hour. As with most sites we had to wait for the digger to turn up, so we had a look at the work done so far. The site had been stripped previously and produced some standard features as can be seen on the map posted previously. So we had to remove the protective covering and soil first. Once we had uncovered the site we could begin to clean back by troweling.

This is one of the postholes of the roundhouse and luckily the fill is dark and the surrounding natural is a nice orange/yellow clay with flints. Nice and clear!

We found some unstrat pottery straight away. A nice base from a Romano-British small dish. Once we have cleaned back we can start to see what needs to be done.

Not a bad start and the view is quite good too!

  

Digging!

I am working on a site near Dorchester, Dorset for three weeks, starting next Monday, and I will be blogging every day, if I am not too knackered! And pics too. This is what has been found so far. Looks Iron Age.

This example is larger, but it gives an idea of the type of settlement we may have here:

Course

My 'Grave Concerns' course is transposed to March 24th at the same location. I was ill over the holidays but ok now, so looking forward to doing the new course. Let me know if you are interested.

The Dorset Cursus

One of the lesser known monuments in Dorset is The Cursus, running from Thickthorn Down to Bokerley Down, at just over 10kl and is the longest example in the UK. It is an average of 80m wide. The ditches are flat based and 3m wide by 1m deep. It was constructed in two stages, 5.8kl from Thickthorn to Bottlebrush Down and accommodates the long barrow on Gussage Down. The Midwinter sun sets behind the mound and is silhouetted on the skyline when observed from the Bottlebrush terminal. The second phase extends NE and another barrow is built into the N bank of this section. Not much can be seen on the ground, but surviving sections are still visible at this point and Thickthorn Down.

William Stuckeley called these large parallel lengths of banks with external ditches by the Latin name of cursus because he thought they might be Roman athletic courses. We now place them in the Neolithic.

Internal features are rare and mostly confined to the terminus. It is thought that they were used as processional routes during rituals, and some have the remains of wooden circles and/or fires located at the ends. Finds of arrowheads suggest hunting connections to some archaeologists, where young men (?) 'prove' themselves on their journey to adulthood.

Crop mark of the cursus terminal with long barrow

The structure will march across the terrain regardless of the landscape, with this example crossing a river and three valleys.

Marked crossing Wyke Down

As usual there can be no definitive answer to the function of cursus monuments, but they are some of the largest and most overlooked ancient structures in the UK.