Category Archives: VM_365 Project

VM_365 Day 252 Crop and Soil Marks

Archaeology, Education, Landscape, Uncategorised, VM_365 Project
How Crop and Soil Marks are formed illustrated by D. R. J. Perkins.
How Crop and Soil Marks are formed illustrated by D. R. J. Perkins.

Today’s image for Day 252 of the VM_365 project is an illustrations produced by Dave Perkins to explain how crop and soil marks, indicating the presence of buried archaeological deposits, form in the growing plants in Thanet’s agricultural fields. These cropmarks are usually identified by aerial photography.

Pits or ditches that have been cut into the bedrock retain moisture in dry spells and crops planted above them grow taller and darker (A) and (a). The intensity of the cropmark vary, shallow features give only faint marks (B) and deeply buried remains can produce nothing at all (C). Buried masonry,  where there is less moisture and soil for  the crop to grow, produces a negative mark, where the crop is shorter than the surrounding area (D).

Soil marks result when ploughing brings different coloured material from ancient deposits to the surface of a field (E).

Crop and soil marks have been a valuable resource for plotting archaeological sites over very large areas of agricultural landscape, particularly in the central agricultural areas of Thanet outside the main towns. The presence of mapped cropmarks has helped to predict what archaeological features may be found before excavations have taken place. However although they have been a good indication of the scale of buried sites, excavation has often revealed considerably more detail and complexity which was not present in the cropmarks.

VM_365 Day 251 Medieval Well Shaft at Cliffsend

Archaeology, Cliffsend, From the Archives, Medieval, Uncategorised, VM_365 Project

VM 251

Today’s image for Day 251 of the VM_365 project shows a Medieval well shaft under excavation at Little Cliffsend Farm between 1985 and 1987.

The well head, which was lined with sandstone boulders, was discovered in 1985 when a large hole opened up in the fields above the cliff top overlooking Pegwell Bay.  The hole had been caused by the soils filling the well shaft collapsing into an open void lower down.

The backfill of the shaft was excavated by members of the Thanet Archaeological Unit under the direction of Dave Perkins and Len Jay, to a depth of more than 16 metres before the water table was reached and it had to be abandoned. If you look closely at the base of the shaft you can see the yellow hard hat of one of the excavators.

The well, dated by pottery sherds to the 14th century, was cut into the solid chalk bedrock and featured handholds in the sides, presumably cut to allow the original excavator of the well to enter and exit more easily. Similar well shafts have been exposed in the cliff face at Pegwell Bay nearby.

 

VM_365 Day 250 Dr David Perkins

Archaeology, Thanet's Heritage Pioneers, Uncategorised, VM_365 Project
Dave Perkins, St Mildred's Bay 1988.
Dave Perkins surveying at St Mildred’s Bay, 1988.

Today’s image for Day 250 of VM_365 is a picture of David Perkins, the first Director of the Trust for Thanet Archaeology.

Dave was born an brought up in Ramsgate and his passion for the history of Thanet was inspired by his father’s love of historical subjects and his grandmother’s tales of local life and folklore. He first trained as an artist specialising in book and technical illustration and followed various careers as a commercial artist and running a business designing and manufacturing leather goods before being introduced to archaeology as a career later in life at the age of 38.

His introduction to archaeology came during a visit to the excavation of a Neolithic and Bronze Age site at Lord of the Manor, Ramsgate in 1976, he volunteered to help on the same day and his illustration skills were soon in demand. He progressed quickly from volunteer to full time supervisor working on archaeological projects with the Isle of Thanet Archaeological Unit and the Manpower Services Commission Youth Training Scheme including the excavation between 1978-9 of the Medieval Church of All Saints, Shuart with Frank Jenkins and the discovery and recording of the shipwreck of the HMS Stirling Castle off the Goodwin Sands in 1979. An early career highlight for Dave was the excavation of over 300 graves at the Ozengell Anglo Saxon cemetery, Lord of the Manor, Ramsgate between 1977 -1980.

In 1982 the Isle of Thanet Archaeological Unit began compiling its own sites and Monuments record for use in research and local government planning some years in advance of the creation of a county wide record. David Perkins was instrumental in collating the Thanet Sites and Monuments Record and was assisted by volunteers from the Isle of Thanet Archaeological Unit and the Manpower Services Commission. The five years that the record took to research between 1982 and 1987 revealed to David that Thanet’s archaeology was of national importance.

In 1988 The Trust for Thanet Archaeology was formed as a professional archaeological unit for Thanet with Dave serving as its first Director until his retirement in 2003.  The first excavation carried out by the Trust was the recording of a Bronze Age settlement on the foreshore at St Mildred’s Bay in 1988; today’s VM_365 image shows Dave surveying the site using a theodolite.

Formal qualifications through part time study were added to his growing professional reputation including a BSc in archaeological science from the Polytechnic of East London (East London University) followed by an MSc gained through studying Roman and Anglo-Saxon glass. He was awarded a Doctorate by the University of London in 2001 for his thesis on the prehistory of the Isle of Thanet – The Gateway Isle.

Over the years many people heard David speak about his archaeological discoveries on Thanet, or took part in digs with him. Despite battling against the poor health and increasingly reduced mobility caused by a medical condition that had affected him since childhood, he remained an enthusiast for Thanet’s archaeology after his retirement. Dave Perkins last publication on the Bronze Age round barrows of Thanet appeared in the county journal in July 2010 just before his death at the age of 72.

His determination to understand the archaeology of the Isle of Thanet, his enthusiasm and diligent research remain as an inspiration to us as the current custodians of the archaeology of the Isle.

 

 

VM_365 Day 249 Manston Beaker burial under excavation

Archaeology, Beaker, Bronze Age, From the Archives, Manston, Prehistoric pottery, Uncategorised, VM_365 Project

VM 249

Today’s image for Day 249 of VM_365 shows the Manston Beaker burial under excavation in 1987.

The burial was contained within a grave located centrally within a roughly oval shaped barrow. The crouched skeleton of a slightly built young adult was accompanied by a long-necked beaker, a flint knife and a jet button. The picture on the right hand side shows the burial during excavation with the beaker on the left side of the pelvis.

A secondary crouched burial had also been inserted on the inner edge of the ring ditch to the south of the central grave.

The central grave had apparently been disturbed, possibly by a later burial  inserted into the barrow mound, maybe during the Anglo Saxon period, as parts of the skull were missing and a fragment of femur unrelated to this skeleton was found in the backfill above.

Radiocarbon dating carried out on the right femur of the skeleton dates the burial to 1680±50 bc (2132-1922 years BC) which places it at the beginning of the early Bronze Age.

VM_365 Day 248 What did the Minster Roman villa look like?

Archaeology, Minster, Roman, Uncategorised, VM_365 Project

VM 248

The image for Day 248 of the VM_365 project is a reconstruction of the main winged villa building at Minster in Thanet. The image is based on an architectural model of the building, based on the ground plan traced from the truncated foundations revealed in the series of excavations sponsored by the Kent Archaeological Society.   The building is viewed from the south east, across the central courtyard toward the north west corner of the building.

Although the two wings and the central range of the villa appear to be symmetrical, the east wing stands slightly further to the north than the western wing. To compensate for the offset and to link the two wings, the  central range was slightly slanted,  each room being slightly trapezoidal in plan rather than rectangular.

At some point an extension had been added to the southern end of the west wing,  adding an apse and and an L shaped tunnel to form an access from the outside to a furnace. This extension may have been a heated dining room.

Corridors on the front, sides and rear of the wings and on the rear of the main range, provided access to the series of rooms within each building range. The structural evidence indicates that screen walls blocked some of the corridors creating specific routes around the building.

The central range of buildings are fronted with a corridor and portico, linked to corridors attached to the east and west wings, covering three sides of the central yard with a roof. The yard was enclosed at some point with a screen wall at the southern end, with a gatehouse or buttress located on a square  foundation at the western end of the wall.

Part of the roof covering the heated apse attached to the north side of the  central building in the east west range can just be seen to the rear of the building. The corridors to the rear of the east west range provided access from the east and west sides into the central hall with its heated niche at the northern end.

On the western side of the winged villa, the roof of the detached  bathhouse is conjecturally reconstructed with a pair of barrel vaulted roofs covering the various baths and heated rooms.

One of the elements that the reconstruction does not reproduce are the various chimneys and flues that would have allowed the smoke from domestic heathers, heated rooms and bathouses to escape from the roof-line of the building. Perhaps this would have given the villa a more industrial appearance than the usual bucolic views that are given in similar reconstructions of similar Roman villas.

VM_365 Day 247 More bath houses and buildings at Minster Roman Villa

Archaeology, From the Archives, Minster, Roman, Thanet, Thanet archaeology, Uncategorised, VM_365 Project

VM 247

Day 247 of the VM_365 project is our penultimate post on the series of images of the main buildings of the Roman Villa at Minster in Thanet, a view facing north west across a building located at the south west corner of the villa complex.

The post for VM_365 Day 246 featured a two roomed corridor house, Building 4,  added to the south eastern corner of the boundary wall surrounding the main winged villa building.  The image today shows the foundations of a similar two chambered structure that had been added to the outside of the south west corner (Building 6).

The excavation of building 6 revealed a more complex story where at least three phases of structure were traced in the same area.  The original two roomed building that had been added to the south west corner of the boundary wall was similar in plan and construction to the core of Building 6. However, soon after it was built it was converted into a bath house through the addition of extra rooms and a furnace feeding a hypocaust. As the villa had a detached bathhouse within the western side of the walled compound, it is not clear whether the two bath houses were operated at the same time.

Small finds from the bath house excavation included copper alloy toilet sets for personal grooming and several of the bone pins that were found during the excavation were recovered form this area.

Later still the extra buildings of the bathhouse were removed and the furnace and hypocaust were backfilled with debris. The two chambered structure was restoredmon a new set of foundations.

Behind the building at the far end of the trench, a circular pit can be seen in the image. The pit was the upper cut of a deep well, sunk into the crest of the valley beyond, which may have supplied water to the bath house adapted from the two room building. The fills of the well contained large quantities of broken pottery and some more delicate finds such as the leaf shaped pendants shown in the post for VM_365 Day 31.

The complex  series of construction, conversion and replacement demonstrated how a major building like the Minster villa was frequently altered and adapted to suit the present needs of the two or three generations of people who may have occupied it, despite its relatively short life and eventual demolition in the Roman period.

VM_365 Day 246 Corridor House in Minster Roman villa complex

Archaeology, From the Archives, Minster, Roman, Uncategorised, VM_365 Project

VM 246

The image for Day 246 of the VM_365 project shows a  north west facing view across another of the elements of the Minster Roman villa complex, a small corridor house (Building 4). This structure stood approximately 80 metres to the south of the main villa, immediately outside the south east corner of the wall surrounding the winged villa building.  The building was placed on the southern limit of the plateau occupied by the villa and its boundary wall and outer structures. Along the top of the picture the break of slope of the plateau, leading to a valley on its western edge, is visible.  The detached  bath house shown in the post for Day_245 had been placed on this crest so its drains could discharge into the valley. The location of the bathouse in this image is approximately in line with the gap at the right hand end of the row of trees at the base of the valley.

Several phases of construction could be identified from the foundations of the structure at the southern corner of the villa compound. In the first stage a rectangular building, which was  divided into two square rooms by a central wall, had been  erected on the south side of the boundary, using the wall as the northern gable. The rectangular building was surrounded on the south, east and west sides by a narrow corridor. The small hypocausted room, which was featured in the VM_365 post for Day 243, was inserted into the south western corner of the corridor. Later the northern end of the corridor was widened and extended northwards beyond the original line of the boundary wall, which had presumably been removed.

Much of the building had been robbed of usable materials when it was abandoned in the Roman period.  The pottery recovered from the buildings suggests that it was constructed soon after the mid 2nd century, abandoned by the mid 3rd century and robbed of its building materials in the late 3rd or 4th century.  Intensive ploughing had also reduced much of the surviving structure and only the sub floor of the small hypocausted room survived because it stood in a rectangular cutting that extended to a depth below the  level of the wall foundations.

The trenches cut to remove the building materials were backfilled with soil,  fragments of  Roman brick and tile and loose flint cobbles, which had not been collected to be used again. Fragments of crushed mortar and small pieces of painted wall plaster in the trenches probably derived from the building, indicated that the small building was finished and decorated to a similar standard to the main range of the villa, suggesting it was a small detached house rather than a service building.

VM_365 Day 245 Minster Villa detached Bath house

Archaeology, Minster, Roman, Uncategorised, VM_365 Project

VM 245b

The image for Day 245 of the VM_365 project shows an overview, from the west side facing east, of the detached bath house building (Building 3 )that stood to the west of the main range of buildings of the Minster villa. The bath house was located within the walled compound of the building, adjacent to the west wing of the villa which was shown in the post for VM_365 Day_242. The bath house lay under the spoil and unexcavated area in the centre right of that image. The Minster villa had a number of bath houses in operation at various times in its period of use.

The bath house was formed of a series of cold, warm and hot rooms as well as cold and heated pools arranged in a tight rectangle around a furnace, which heated the raised hypocaust floors. Building materials recovered from the structure indicated that the floors were formed of concrete and lime plaster, but there was no evidence for mosaic floors. In common with the rest of the building, no structure above foundation level survived, but some of the deeper elements of the structure associated with the furnaces and hypocausts were relatively well preserved.

The main ranges of the Minster villa had been constructed on the plateau and crest of an elongated hill, flanked by dry valleys, which overlooked the flood plain of the Wanstum valley below. The bath house had been located on the edge of the plateau at the point where the land began to fall  toward the western valley.

The bath house builders took advantage of the natural slope to feed water diverted from a natural source, probably a spring,  through the various processes within the bathhouse structure.   It is not clear where the water source used by the bathhouse was, but the western valley has a small spring fed stream in the present day and the source may have been located further up the valley in the Roman period.

Although much of the infrastructure had been destroyed, probably within the Roman period, remnants of the piping and channels that controlled the flow through the building were recovered.  In the foreground of the image one of the drainage ditches from the western side of the building, traced for some of its length in the excavation, can be seen.  On the right of the picture  two parallel walls mark the route of a deep mortared flint channel that also served as a main drainage outlet for the building.

The position of the bath house reflects a clever approach to water engineering which was a characteristic of architecture in the Roman period. With the main occupants, administrative staff, servants and labourers a buildings like the Minster villa would have represented one of the densest concentrations of people within a confined space that could be found in the Roman period. The post for Day 131 of the VM_365 project showed one of the high pressure water pipes that had been used for the external drain of another bath house. located at the southern end of the  western wing of the villa.

Wherever a large population gathered, the supply of clean water and systems for disposing of waste would have been essential.  The provision of steady flow of water through the building would have served more than just the provision of luxury bathing facilities but also to keep the location and its occupants clean and healthy.

 

VM_365 Day 244 Minster Roman villa heated apse

Archaeology, From the Archives, Minster, Roman, Uncategorised, VM_365 Project

VM 244

The image for VM_365 Day 244 shows part of an apse which was located in the centre on the north side of the east west range of rooms of the Minster villa.

This structure is one of the better preserved elements of the villa’s underground heating system, which as previous posts have noted, survived damage from cultivation because they had been cut below the foundation level of the main structure. The apse is formed by flint and brick walls set in firm mortar forming a ‘D’ shape that extended out from the northern end of the middle room in the central range with the sub floor surfaced in hard, pink concrete made using crushed tile. The apse may have formed a heated niche at the northern end of a rectangular room.

In the foreground of the picture a deep ‘L’ shaped channel gave access from the exterior of the building on the east side into a furnace chamber. The hot air from the furnace entered the apse through a small arch in the southern wall,  passing under the floor of the curved chamber and out through flue tiles in the wall, although none were preserved. The southern retaining wall of the stoke chamber was built of an unusual combination of mud-brick and mortar.

The floor of the apsidal room above was probably surfaced with mosaic as large fragments of patterned mosaic had been retained in the chamber after demolition of the building giving us our best evidence that the villa building was originally extensively covered with tesselated floors.

 

VM_365 Day 243 Robbed Roman Remains

Archaeology, From the Archives, Minster, Roman, Uncategorised, VM_365 Project

VM 243

Today’s image for VM_365 Day 243 shows the remains of a hypocaust underfloor heating system from Building 4 of the Abbey Farm Roman villa complex at Minster, Thanet. The remains of the hypocaust structure survive to a depth of only around 0.5 metres below the base of the plough soil.

Building 4 was a two roomed corridor house seperate from the main villa building. The corridor house had a  small heated room in one corner. Like most of the buildings in the villa complex, this structure had been heavily robbed in the Roman period and later for reuseable building materials, including the large flint cobbles that were used in the building foundations.  In the case of the heated room in Building 4 the tiles that had been used to build the pilae stacks that supported the hypocaust floor had all been taken to be used elsewhere.

In the picture above the wall foundations around the edge of the hypocaust have been robbed leaving the raised lip of the  mortar floor and a few cobbles to suggest where the walls had been. Only the tiles that were bonded to the floor with mortar and were too difficult to remove remain in place, leaving scars in the mortar and parts of broken tiles to show where the stacks had been.