Carry on Kids!

I did a day working at a school in Dorchester, where the Ancient Technology Centre based at Cranbourne had already built several structures, such as this I/A roundhouse. In this the kids were being taught about how past people made art:

Here they can also look at food processing:

The present project is the construction of a 'henge' with central 'dolmen' (a stone room in which the dead were placed), which the kids are actively engaged in making themselves. This is a mix of the two monument types, but one has to make compromises. They even moved the large stone themselves using wooden rollers! They are digging the surrounding ditch and making the bank, then digging the central holes for the stones, which are being set one a year, the last to be set on top of the others in 2015:

The ditch and one central hole being dug. 

The kids are great workers and set about their tasks with gusto. In fact, it is difficult to get them to stop. Which is a marked difference from some of the professional diggers I have worked with! One kid said "I don't know what I'm doing, but I'll carry on anyway!" What a trooper.  

Deb & Dom: The Diggers 1

Down Farm, Dorset

Martin Green & WDDAG 

The West Dorset Diggers Archaeology Group visited Martin Green at Down Farm this weekend to see his fantastic collection of archaeological material and the results of his decades of work on features found on his land. Martin has been described as the best amateur archaeologist in the UK.

Martin's museum

A very small part of Martin's collection

Not only has he been excavating features, such as this deep natural shaft reconfigured and used by Neolithic people for ritual and burial purposes:

  he has also been reconstructing an excavated pond barrow:

Reinstated posts and pond barrow in background

This is a short film of the group visiting the bowl barrow reconstruction. It was real archaeology weather!

                                     

 A truly remarkable man dedicated to the archaeology of his area.  

Last Days

The last part of any dig can be taken up with checking the paperwork and going on 'pot search', digging out sectioned features for more diagnostic pottery. But for 'Uncle Albert' it was a rush to dig a last feature, which turned out to be a kiln:

The flue at the baulk and some burning were the clues. Easily missed by less experienced eyes. This changed the way the feature next to it was interpreted:

This is an important find for the site, as it shows that this settlement was also the location of pottery manufacture.

Our supervisor, 'Pistol Pete', also wanted to obtain some photos of the roundhouse. As we couldn't afford a helicopter we rigged up a camera on the level staff for some high-up shots:

Mine were not so good:

so I will ask for some copies and post them later.

All sites have to end and the team breaks up. In a big city unit one can usually see staff at another site sooner or later. In a rural setting, and staff who are on very short contracts, it is probable that I will never see some of this team again. 

I'm off digging in Taunton next week, for three days, and then I do not know when I will be digging again. I enjoyed this site and the team I worked with, but glad I no longer do it twelve months a year. The weather made this a tough one, but that comes with the job. I still look forward to another site, sooner or later, but now it is back to community work and teaching.  

A Diggers Day No.17-18

Well, no treasure this time. But this grain/cess pit was last open 2,500 years ago and took me three days to dig it. The slot coming in from the right is the enclosure ditch cutting it. All the recording is done and we finish on Thursday.

A Diggers Day 15-16

The last couple of working days have been  hard slog to get the cess pit dug. It has been made harder by the water turning the clay/mud into a slurry, thus I'm sinking faster than I can shovel! So, we had to think again. We decided to take out the other half of the pit and hope that I can then dig deeper and find the base of the pit before it becomes unworkable. It is generally the case that the best finds tend to be at the bottom of a hole/well. People chuck stuff in and then bury it.

To speed things up, as we only have 4 working days next week before we have to vacate the site, I had a younger digger do some of the hard work for me (what else are they for!):

 It was suggested by one of the texts we had to read at college, from the 1960s, that Borstal boys are a good resource to have on site for the heavy work. 'Loowee' here has never had his 'collar felt', as far as I know, but is just as good!

Next week I will finish off the feature. Will I find treasure at the bottom or just more bottom waste? Look in to find out.  

A Diggers Day No.14

I have had a s**t day today - literally. That pit I mentioned yesterday I found to have a clay lining. This normally means that it may be a grain pit, such as this one:

Mine is dug into clay, but it would have functioned in the same way. The clay lining keeps out water and the cap keeps out air, so the grain produces carbon dioxide which kills any microscopic bugs and thus the grain goes into stasis ready for future use.

However, my clay lined pit had cess in the bottom:

The flints are in the fill of the enclosure ditch that cuts the pit.

So it could have been used to get rid of human waste. Although it may have been used for grain previously (one hopes it was this way around!). There was a lot of charcoal flecks mixed in. I took a sample so that the boffins may find out what our I/A farmers were eating 2,500 years ago. So my pit was more interesting than I first thought. The last time I dug a cess pit was in London and I found half a dozen of these:

These are called Albarellos and as the name suggests (the AL is arabic) they are from the middle east. They were imported into a London in the mid 1350s. No such luck in finding whole pots in my cess pit this time, although I did find this nice rim: