VM 365 Day 126, today’s image shows one of the two sets of what are thought to be Horse bridle bits, both consist of a pair of iron rings linked by loops at either end of a curved iron bar. They were found during the excavation of a pit at the Iron Age settlement at North Foreland, Broadstairs.

Both of the bit sets were found in the fills of the same pit dated by the associated pottery to the Late Iron Age around 150-50 BC. X-Ray images showed that each of the rings had a break in it, possibly to allow the bar to be attached to the rings which could then be hammered shut.

Bronze Bridle bits of this type, with a single plain bit, are more commonly found but these sets are unusual for Iron bits because they are made of a single curved piece of iron, rather than the more typical two or three piece iron examples.

Perhaps the two sets of bits were used together for a specialised purpose. It is possible they have a different function altogether and the similarity with horse bridle parts is a deceptive coincidence.

Today’s VM 365 Day 125 image is a fragment of worked bone found during excavations at North Foreland in 2001.

The worked bone was found in a large pit dated to the late Iron Age by the pottery contained within its fill.  Also found, at the base of the pit, were two sets of iron bridle bits.

This fragment of worked bone measures 52mm by 16mm and has been worked to form a relatively uniform convex curve along its length. It is probably a knife handle,  there is iron staining on the back and it is pierced by two holes, presumably for rivets to join the handle to the iron blade and its matching bone piece on the other side of the knife.  If you look carefully at the top of the piece you can see two shallow circular depressions where two false starts have been made for the rivet holes.

Today’s VM 365  image for Day 124 is of two loomweights that were found among the soil and rubbish used to backfill an abandoned grain storage pit at North Foreland, Broadstairs, one of two similar  pits that were found near to each other. The other pit had been used later to bury a woman in the upper part of the cut.

The loom weights were found in the upper fills of  the pit, among pottery dating to the middle Iron Age.  Other domestic waste in the pit fill included animal bone, marine shells, flint, daub, charcoal, and burnt and charred grain and chaff from species such as oats, barley, wheat and spelt.

The loomweights were carved from chalk, which may have been picked up from the coast nearby. The weights may not have been used before they were dumped in the pit with the other rubbish. One weight was certainly unfinished as the hole in the centre did not penetrate all the way through the chalk and must have abandoned while it was still being worked on.

The image for VM 365 Day 122 shows in greater detail the Iron Age chalk plaster blocks found in at the base of an abandoned grain storage pit at North Foreland, shown yesterday under excavation. The scales in the images above are all 10 centimetres long.

A chalk paste had been used to make a form of plaster which had been spread over a timber structure, much like the clay daub that was often used in other places. Although the timber itself had rotted away, some of the blocks still had distinct voids and impressions that had been formed by the rods and sails of the supporting framework of wooden stakes.

An impression of a possible timber structure identified near the mouth of the pit suggests that these blocks may have formed part of a lining for the pit, or alternatively part of a superstructure built around the upper opening to the pit.  The blocks were tipped into the pit in pieces and covered with rubbish once it it was no longer used as a grain store.

Each of the blocks in the image above preserves a ghost of a timber stake in the voids left in the plaster that was spread around it. The dry chalky conditions of Thanet’s soils do not often preserve organic materials and finding a piece of timber that was two thousand years old would be a remarkable discovery. The closest we are likely to get are the negative ghost timbers that were preserved in these blocks of structural material at North Foreland.

Today’s image for VM 365 Day 121 shows a number of large blocks of moulded chalk paste at the base of an early to middle Iron Age pit at North Foreland, Broadstairs, under excavation in 2003.

The pit was 1.38 metres deep, with a bell shaped profile. The diameter at the surface measured 1.66 metres,  widening to 1.9 metres at the base.  The pit was originally dug to store grain,  the earliest fills containing large quantities of burnt and charred seeds, chaff, and grain of species including barley, spelt, emmer and oat.

Sealed between two of the earliest fills were the blocks of moulded chalk paste, used as a form of lime plaster to cover a structure. After the blocks had been dumped in the base, the pit was  used as a rubbish pit, with artefacts including pottery, animal bone, marine shell and fragments of quern stone being tipped in until it was completely filled.

Later a woman was buried in the upper section of the pit, probably after it had been partly cleared of the dumped debris. The grave was covered over with more material derived from the surrounding settlement.

The chalk blocks are important as they represent some of the only evidence we have for what the structures in the surrounding settlement that created this storage pit might have been made of.  All other traces of the above ground Iron Age structures were eroded away over time, leaving only the below ground elements of pits, ditches and post holes to be excavated by the archaeologists.