Iron Age quern (150-50 BC) found at North Foreland, Broadstairs. Reconstructed from 11 pieces, c 320mm diameter.
While prehistoric periods are often separated by innovations in the technology of cutting tools, from flints through to copper, bronze and iron implements, one technology seems to link all these periods and to extend nearly to the limits of our own living memory.
For many thousands of years hand grinding of cereals and grains were essential to processing the fruits of agricultural labour into the the food that sustained life each day. In much of the developing world hand querns, mills and grindstones remain an essential part of daily life.
While much of society was devising new and innovative ways of chopping down trees, cutting raw materials and taking a swipe at each other with the latest materials, somebody somewhere was grinding out flour with a rubbing stone, a rotary quern or hand mill. The application of animal, water or steam power eventually scaled up the process, but somewhere in the mechanism remained the grinding surfaces between two stones.
On many sites, whatever the prevailing ‘… Age’ indicated by the pottery, grain processing and storage are the predominant finds, suggesting that what unites the developing history of Britain is one long Grain Age.
If you are out and about on Thanet’s beaches this coming Bank Holiday, or, come to that, any time of year, keep an eye out for features such as this appearing in our chalk cliffs or in the wave cut shelf on the beach.
This medieval well shaft was exposed at Cliffsend in 1985 following a chalk fall and recorded by the Isle of Thanet Archaeological Unit. Over the years Iron Age features, including pits and ditches, have been recorded at Dumpton Gap and prehistoric, Roman and Medieval features in the bays between Westgate and Birchington. The bases of Roman well shafts have also been recorded on the beach at Reculver.
So, keep your eyes peeled because you may spot a piece of Thanet’s Archaeological heritage on one of your seaside walks.
P.S. Please remember that cliffs can be dangerous and keep an eye on those tides while you are out and about.
Early Iron Age pottery sherds from South Dumpton Down with rusticated surface treatment
The bizarre effects of a surface treatment that as applied to some pottery in the Early Iron Age (600 – 400BC) are illustrated in todays VM_365 image of a sherd from the Iron Age settlement at South Dumpton Down, Broadstairs.
Additional clay was added to the surface of the pots while they were being made, which was wet enough for the potters hands to raise these irrregular lumps and bumps on the outside of the vessels. Sometimes broad wiping marks or and other visble signs of the potters hands can be detected in the surface pattern.
It is not known why this process was applied to certain vessels, but it is thought it may have made the vessels easier to grip if they were perhaps used in activities that would otherwise have made the surfaces slippery. A suite of vessels has been identified in east Kent which have had this ‘rustication’ effect applied to their surfaces, examples are also known from the continent.
The method of roughening the surfaces of the vessels was commonly used in the early Iron Age period but the technique may have lasted in the potters repertiore into the later Iron Age, although used less frequently and without producing the exaggerated roughening that is commonly found on the earlier vessels.
The flint lined cellar cut into chalk hillside overlooking Viking Bay
Before the building at Stone Road that featured in yesterday’s VM 365 post was discovered, there were few confirmed archaeological sites of Roman date in the Broadstairs area. Only a few years later, in 2009, a second building was discovered, on the south facing slope of the chalk ridge that forms the northern side of Viking Bay. The site was adjacent to the historic Fort House, which stands on the crest of the promontory overlooking the sea to the east. In the mid 19th century Charles Dickens and his family rented Fort House on several occasions for extended stays, from where it derives its current name of Bleak House.
On the site of a new house which was to be partly terraced into the chalk slope, a number of large soil filled features were found cutting into the surface of the solid chalk geology. The whole site had been heavily truncated by terracing to form platforms for gardens and at one time an orchard.
Excavation revealed that the the pits were in fact large cellars which had been excavated below buildings that once stood on the surface of the chalk, although nothing of these surface structure remained to be recorded. Although two of the cellars seem probably to have been lined with timbers, one had a flat ledge cut around two sides which supported several surviving courses of large water rolled flints, occasionally interspersed with thick flat sherds of Roman amphora.
The wall shown on left side of the image was divided into two sections by a huge nodular flint, which may have supported a post of the structure above. The upper levels of the wall had been destroyed and robbed of its stone, part of the wall had been removed by an engineering test trench excavated before the archaeological investigation began.
Although there had been a great deal of damage to whatever Roman building once stood here, some complex sequences of deposits survived to show that the history of the building was complex and once again hinted at a more complicated story that may not be possible to reconstruct in detail. Almost all the finds associated with the structure were found in the fill of a ditch that had been cut through a gritty sand deposit which had filled the void of the cellar.
Some of these finds will be explored in later VM 365 posts.
Basement room, almost all that survived of a Roman Villa at Stone Road, Broadstairs.
The North Foreland promontory is separated from the downland slopes further to the south by a dry valley, which falls to the cliff line near Stone Bay. In recent time a cutting was made through the cliffs, forming steps and a steep ramp to reach the present shore. In the Roman period there may have been a more gentle slope through the base of the valley, leading to a natural bay located further to the east, which has since been destroyed by coastal erosion.
In the 1920’s O.G.S, Crawford, the great pioneer of British archaeological survey, noted that earthworks and Roman pottery had been found on patch of open downland at Stone Gap , to the north of Broadstairs. No further investigation of the site seems to have taken place before the growing suburbs of Broadstairs eventually enclosed the location within the garden of a bungalow. No attention was drawn to the record of the Roman finds made by Crawford again.
In 2004, the large garden of the bungalow was divided and part was sold to be the location of a new house, to fronting Bishop’s Avenue near its junction with Stone Road. In an archaeological evaluation trench on the site a few scraps of painted plaster were found, with a few Roman and late Iron Age pottery sherds, along with a row of rounded flint cobbles which appeared to be part of a wall. A larger area excavation had to be carried out, which was not an easy task in the very limited space.
Below the deep layer of garden soil that had been distributed over the site to level it, the remains of the basement of a Roman building, an overview of which is shown in today’s image, were uncovered.
The basement had been cut into deep drifts of plough soil which had accumulated on the sloping valley side. The pottery sherds within this soil were almost exclusively of Iron Age date, probably debris from the extensive North Foreland settlement which lies only a short distance to the north of the site. The sides of the rectangular cutting into the soil were lined with large water rolled flint cobbles, bonded with a chalky clay paste.
Many more small painted wall plaster fragments were found in the thin layer of demolition deposits that had been trapped within the rectangular area enclosed by the rounded cobble walls. The lower layers of flooring were revealed to be thick spreads of beaten chalk of variable depth, which sealed two infant burials in one area. The floors seem to have been repaired a number of times in association with the construction and then abandonment of a series of small kilns, which had been fuelled by burning chaff, the fibrous husks separated from harvested grain.
In the latest floor surfaces two more substantial kilns or ovens had been built, the soot from the latest was spread over the clay of the last floor surface. Within the soot a military belt buckle and other small metal items including a spoon, were found, suggesting that clothes or timbers with fittings still attached had been used to fuel the oven.
The Stone Road building provides an intriguing glimpse of a moment in history which can not be fully narrated, but nevertheless generates many associations and speculations. With the limited access to the space in the area of the building and the heavy toll of erosion and damage from subsequent construction work, further archaeological investigation in the future may never be able to answer the many questions raised by this remarkable discovery.
Burial of a woman in the fill of an Iron Age grain storage pit at North Foreland, Broadstairs
The VM_365 image from our archive today is of a burial found in Broadstairs in 2003 in excavations that were carried out before a new housing estate was built in the grounds of the former St Stephens College, which is located on the crest of the high chalk promontory of the North Foreland, north of Broadstairs.
Broadstairs has a particularly high concentration of archaeological sites dating to the middle and later Iron Age, most located mainly on the slopes of the undulating downland that surrounds the present town and Viking Bay. In the Iron Age the coastlines would have been very different as coastal erosion has caused the cliffs to advance to the west. The line of cliffs and the bays that were formed between them would have been located much further to the east than they are today.
Several sites have produced evidence for timber structures, reconstructed from the truncated remains of post holes that have survived in the chalk geology. On the long North Foreland promontory ditched enclosures, buildings and even a significant late Iron Age coin hoard suggest that the area was densely settled and relatively prosperous.
Large round pits, sometimes with undercutting edges are typical of the Iron Age settlement sites excavated in the chalk lands of Kent and the South of England and several have been found in the Broadstairs area. They are commonly interpreted as storage pits, where grain could be sealed away underground and kept for later use. The burial pictured in the image today was found in the fill of one these large pits. At the base a thick deposit of charred cereal grains including barley, oats and spelt and emmer wheat was found among large lumps of chalk plaster, strengthened with timber stakes, which appears to have been part of a lining for the pit.
Once the pit had served its original purpose it was filled up with soil containing pottery and other settlement debris. The burial seems to have been laid on its back, on the surface of a pit made by cutting down the original fills of the pit to about half its original depth. Analysis of the skeleton showed it to have been an adult female and at her neck were three blue beads made of a from of early glass called faience , objects made of faience were traded throughout Europe as a luxury item.
Several similar burials have been found on archaeological sites at South Dumpton Down and the Seven Stones estate on the southern side of Broadstairs. The significance of the use of the former storage pits is a matter of debate, perhaps there was a symbolic association around the idea of storage below ground, or perhaps the pits were mistaken for earlier burial mounds and the association was with earlier cultures or ancestors. No one can be sure as we have no written evidence that records the ideas and beliefs of the people who lived at this time.
Bone and ivory pins, personal items from a Roman Villa
While some of these bone and ivory pins are undoubtedly personal objects, used as hair pins and possibly for fastening clothes, these fragile objects from the Roman Villa at Minster in Thanet may also reflect the enormous variety of crafts and industries that were carried out in and around the Villa.
Some pins and broken fragments of pins which have eyes through in the upper part of the shaft, are probably large needles. Being made of such a brittle material they were perhaps used to stitch together soft woollen cloth, perhaps in a process associated with weaving, or perhaps they may have been used to make and mend nets.
Similar straight wood and ivory pins with their carefully carved terminals can be found among the bobbins of lacemaker’s tool kits in the present day, although there seems to be no direct evidence of Roman lacemaking.
This intriguing picture shows the entrance to a First World War air raid shelter which was exposed in 2011 when a new supermarket at Chatham Street, Ramsgate was being constructed.
Bombing raids from Zeppelins and cross channel shelling had affected Thanet, but it wasn’t until 1917 that the Island was targeted by German Gotha bombers. Many of the air raid shelters on the Isle were dug into the chalk bedrock at this time.
The Chatham Street shelter was surveyed by Rod LeGear, assisted by other members of Kent Underground Research Group in January 2012. The survey, shown below, revealed that the tunnel included benches cut into the chalk and had been lit by simple candles some still remaining as stubs in niches in the wall.
An Ice factory occupied the site from around 1907 and this shelter was probably dug as a refuge for its employees in 1917 in response to the Gotha bombing raids.
Further Reading:
LeGear, R. 2012. Underground Thanet. Trust for Thanet Archaeology: Birchington.
Following on from yesterday’s image of the gold thread in grave 285 from Sarre, today’s image is of 29 glass beads found in grave 286 from the same Anglo Saxon cemetery site.
The grave was large and well cut, most likely containing a female, based on the objects within it. Like grave 285 it had been disturbed in antiquity, skeletal material and objects left behind by the robbers were scattered throughout the grave fill.
Among the objects found within the grave were nine amber beads and thirty one glass beads. Twenty nine of the glass beads are shown in the picture above, all are coloured glass. The one at the top left hand corner is a multi coloured or polychrome bead, almost globular in shape and of yellow glass with brown crossing trails. The other beads range in shape from pentagonal cylinders, 4 sided cylinders, short cylinders, discs and one is pear shaped.
Find out more about the site by reading:
Brent, J. 1866. Account of the Societies Researches in the Saxon Cemetery at Sarr. Part 2 Archaeologia Cantiana VI, 157-85
Brent, J. 1863 . Account of the Societies Researches in the Saxon Cemetery at Sarr. Archaeologia Cantiana V, 305-22
Perkins, D. R. J. 1991. The Jutish Cemetery at Sarre Revisted: A Rescue Evaluation. Archaeologia Cantiana CIX, 139-162
Perkins, D. R. J. 1992. The Jutish Cemetery at Sarre Revisited; Part II. Archaeologia Cantiana CX, 83-120
For more on the clothing of the Anglo Saxon period read Penelope Walton Rogers’ excellently researched and illustrated book:
Walton Rogers, P. 2007. Cloth and Clothing in Early Anglo-Saxon England. CBA Research Report 145, Council for British Archaeology: York.
Although Saturday 12th of July, the day of our fourth annual Archaeology for You event, was preceded by some impressive storms and rain, the wet weather held off for the day.
As in previous years we set up our eight Archaeology for You activity areas on the lawn in the gardens at the front of Quex House. With only some areas under shelters, our fingers were tightly crossed that the weather would stay calm over the day for the activities that were set up in the open air. The upper windows of Quex House provided a convenient vantage point for a photograph to be taken of our team of Trust Staff and volunteers setting up for the event.
Set up for Archaeology for you 2014, viewed from Quex House
Iron Age and Early Roman re-enactment group De Bello Canzio joined us again this year bringing a sense of the real lives behind the objects from that era that we had on display and our activities were arranged in the form a large circle so that people could progress from experiencing the methods of investigation in the field, toward the interpretation of objects and their use in the Re-living Ancient Life activity area.
Romans from De Bello Canzio with a new recruit to the Legions
The new Archaeology for You logo we launched for the event this year was used on our display boards to guide people to each of the activities.
Our Logo in action on the activity signs
This year, each of the areas where methods of practical archaeological investigation were demonstrated was linked by the four corner posts of a 10 metre square, fitted with strings and tapes to demonstrate how grids form the backbone of archaeological research. This formed the arena for the demonstration of site surveying using Geophysical and Aerial Survey in Seeing Beneath the Soil and the hands on Dig and Discover boxes, in their new green livery. The grid took centre stage as the framework for Pictures, Plans and Paperwork, where people could learn about the recording process and for Evidence from Objects where finds could be processed and examined for clues about the past.
Our aim for Archaeology for You is to build a complete experience of the processes that archaeologists use to digs and the methods used to make records and understand the evidence of the past, which anyone can take part in. Many people took part in our Give it a Swirl
Giving an environmental sample a swirl
introduction to processing samples taken for environmental evidence and busy potters made pre-historic style vessels at Inspired by the Past. Great imagination was also used to create mosaics that reflected favourite themes from mythology and the modern world.
Every year we try to introduce a new element to the activities at Archaeology for You and in our Bones and Burials area this year we recreated a burial, which had to be carefully excavated and recorded over the day.
With the aid of our other teaching skeleton and books people taking part in activity can get a feel for the complicated digging and recording that is needed to get the most information from each burial that is investigated by archaeologists.
Excavating in the new skeleton activity
Archaeology for You is one of the education activities of the Trust for Thanet Archaeology that is supported by a grant from the Education Committee of the Kent Archaeological Society. The Powell-Cotton Museum is generous in allowing us access to their gardens for the event each year and the Director and staff of the Museum give a great deal of support to the event.
We would like to thank everyone who came along on the day and took part, we learn as much each year from the people who take part in Archaeology for You as they do taking part in our archaeological activities for all ages.
