Category Archives: VM_365 Project

VM_365 Day 140 Clench Bolts from an Anglo-Saxon Boat Burial?

Anglo Saxon, Archaeology, Minster, Uncategorised, VM_365 Project
Iron clench bolts and roves from a structure covering an Anglo-Saxon grave
Iron clench bolts and roves from a structure covering an Anglo-Saxon grave

The image for Day 140 of  VM_365 is of a group of iron clench bolts, found in the excavation of an Anglo Saxon grave near Thorne Farm, Minster between 1983 and 1984. Each bolt has a domed head at one end and at the other end the shank passes through a flat lozenge shaped plate, called a rove. The plate held in place by bending and flattening the shank to cover the hole, preventing it from sliding off the shank. Bolts of this type were used as fixings in early  planked ships of clinker construction where the covering boards overlap. Perhaps the most important and well known archaeological discovery of an Anglo-Saxon ship  built in this way is the Sutton Hoo ship.   The bolt and rove act as a clamping rivet, holding two overlapping planks tightly between the domed head and the tightly clamped plate. Eighteen bolts of this type were distributed throughout the fill of the grave and in the soil in the wider area around the grave.

The gaps between the bolt heads and the roves from the grave measure approximately 60mm and appear to have been used to fasten wooden planks together in some form of structure that was used to cover the grave, impressions of wood  were visible in the corroding iron of the bolts.

It is difficult to reconstruct what form the grave covering took, whatever covered the grave was bigger than the cut containing the burial. It has been suggested that because these bolts were commonly used in shipbuilding, the covering structure could possibly have been a small wooden boat, or a piece of a larger boat.  Another possibility is that a sort of sea-chest, which a sailor may have kept his personal equipment in, might have been constructed with clench bolts in the same way as ships were. Perhaps old sailors were finally laid to rest with under the weathered and worn fragments of shipwrecks, small boats and even the sea-chests that would have formed such an important part of their lives.

Reference

Perkins, D. R. J. 1985. TheMonkton Gas Pipeline: Phases III and IV, 1983-84. Archaeologia Cantiana Volume CII, 43-69.

Brookes S. 2007. Boat-rivets in Graves in pre-Viking Kent: Reassessing Anglo-Saxon Boat-burial Traditions, Medieval Archaeology, 51

You can read the PDF report of Stuart Brookes’ article here

VM_365 Day 139 Roman lock fastener from Minster

Archaeology, In the Store, Minster, Roman, Uncategorised, VM_365 Project

VM 139-1Day 139’s VM_365 image shows a Roman lock fastener from the villa at Minster.

This lock fastener is made of copper alloy, cast around an iron shank and was used to hold the lock plate to the front of a chest or door. A number of these decorative lock fasteners would have been used around the edges of the lock plate to hold it to the wood.

The cast bronze knob was visible on the front of the lock and was probably highly polished, while the iron shank passed through the lock plate and the wooden casket or door and was held in place at the rear by a pin inserted through the hole in the shank at the end.  In our example the shank has broken across the hole that the pin would have passed through.

Our example was probably used to hold the lockplate to a chest as the measurement between the knob and the hole in the shank suggests a total depth of lockplate and wood to be 15mm, too shallow for a door.

 

VM_365 Day 138 Roman Window Glass from Minster

Archaeology, In the Store, Minster, Roman, Uncategorised, VM_365 Project

VM 138

Today’s Day 138 VM 365 image shows our largest fragment of Roman window glass from the villa at Minster dating to around the 1st to 2nd century.

This fragment of clear glass is a pale olive brown, growing pinkish in colour toward the broken edge. You can see many tiny air bubbles throughout the fragment. The glass appears to have been poured as a single sheet into a mould, onto a flat, slightly rough surface, possibly compacted sand, as the underside is also slightly rough in texture. The upper side is shiny and wavy rather like the surface of poured toffee and is thicker along the rounded edge which would have been formed against the edge of the mould.

VM_365 Day 137 Two Beaker sherds from Lord of the Manor Ramsgate

Archaeology, Beaker, Lord of the Manor, Ramsgate, Thanet archaeology, Uncategorised, VM_365 Project
Two Beaker sherds from Lord of the Manor, Ramsgate.
Two Beaker sherds from Lord of the Manor, Ramsgate.

Toady’s image for VM_365 Day 137 is of two admittedly small, but important pottery sherds of Beaker vessels,  like the  Grooved Ware sherd from Day 136, the two Beaker sherds were found together in the 1976 excavations at Lord of the Manor, Ramsgate.

The sherds are from Phase 2 of the development of the Lord of the Manor 1 monument, a period of Early Bronze Age activity associated with the re-use of the earliest ring ditched enclosure as a burial site. In this phase a burial was placed within a smaller ring-ditch that was cut inside the circuit of the earlier large causewayed enclosure ditch, to create a round barrow.

The smaller sherd on the left of the image is decorated with a cord impression, which would have extended over the whole body of the vessel. The second sherd on the right is decorated with a pattern in zones, created with impressions from the teeth of a comb.

The first cord impressed style is the earliest, dating between c.2300-200 BC. The second comb decorated sherd is marginally later, around 2100-1900 BC. Both sherds are made of an identical fine oxidised fabric, with a fine silty fabric matrix and fine crushed pot grog tempering. Both have a similar neat, finely executed  decoration and so can reasonably be thought of as contemporary vessels.

Both sherds were found in a small pit, located  outside the ditch enclosing the central burial. The two sherds indicate a date between c.2100-2000 BC for the feature, although this has not yet been confirmed by Carbon14 dating.

Once again today’s VM_365 image and information on the pottery has been provided by ceramic specialist Nigel Macpherson-Grant.

VM_365 Day 136 Ramsgate Late Neolithic Grooved Ware sherd

Archaeology, From the Archives, In the Store, Lord of the Manor, Neolithic, Ramsgate, Thanet archaeology, Uncategorised, VM_365 Project
Late Neolithic Grooved Ware sherd
Late Neolithic Grooved Ware sherd

Today’s Image for VM_365 is of a small scrap of Late Neolithic pottery from 1976 excavation of the ring ditch of one of the ceremonial enclosures at Lord of the Manor, Ramsgate.

The sherd is a rim fragment from a tub-shaped vessel with a small-diameter. The exterior of the rim is decorated with incised grooves, the inner edge of the rim has a distinctive bevel, similar to the rims of other examples of this type of pottery. The typical decoration of the sherd with a pattern of grooves in the surface, provides the name that has been given to this ceramic tradition; Grooved Ware.

Before flat based grooved ware vessels began to manufactured, all Early and Middle Neolithic pottery in this country was made with round bases. Grooved Ware is believed to have been first used in the Orkneys, spreading southward across Britain and seems to represent the only truly ‘homegrown’ tradition in the entire history of British ceramics.

The style of decoration on this sherd, coupled with the beveled rim,  places the sherd into the Durrington Walls style, which was current during the main building phases at Stonehenge and is dated to c.2800-2300 BC

To date the tiny sherd pictured here seems to the best example of Grooved Ware archaeologists have recovered on the Isle of Thanet. Although it is small, the sherd  is a valuable hint that there may be more evidence of this important period of settlement to discover in the future.

The image and information for today’s VM_365 post were kindly provided by a guest curator, ceramic specialist Mr Nigel Macpherson-Grant

In 2007 a group of potters experimented with manufacturing Grooved Ware vessels, follow this link to the Prehistoric Ceramics Research Group website article on the process.

VM_365 Day 135 How to carve a spindle whorl.

Archaeology, Broadstairs, In the Store, Iron Age, Uncategorised, VM_365 Project

VM 135-a

Day 135’s  VM 365 image shows the two sides of an unfinished spindle whorl of Late Iron Age or Early Roman date, which was found at in 2005 at Dumpton Gap, Broadstairs .

This particular object is  interesting because it shows the different stages that the maker went through to carve the spindle whorl from Chalk. The first stage would have been the selection of a suitable sized piece of hard chalk, probably picked up from the beach nearby, and carve it roughly into shape.  It seems likely that the outline was then scored in the chalk using a pair of compasses, marking the location of the central hole at the same time. The central hole would then have been drilled through the chalk and the finished object was shaped and finished more carefully using the scored circles as a guide.

We do not know why this object was abandoned part way through the manufacturing process, it may have been because the fragment was damaged, a large chip that had been removed from one side (left image) may have been the cause.

Although many of the objects archaeologists examine have been broken after use, it is rare to see one that gives such an insight into the manufacturing methods, because it has been abandoned while it was being made.

VM_365 Day 134 Flint butcher’s knife from Lord of the Manor, Ramsgate

Archaeology, Bronze Age, In the Store, Lord of the Manor, Neolithic, Ramsgate, Uncategorised, VM_365 Project
Flint knife of Late Neolithic to Early Bronze Age date
Flint knife of Late Neolithic to Early Bronze Age date, suited for butchering animal carcasses.

Day 134’s  VM_365 image is of a flint knife, a prehistoric flint tool, that had been re-deposited in the fill of a chalk quarry pit dating to the medieval period and sectioned in excavations carried out in 2013.

The knife  has been carefully flaked on both sides, it is slightly thinner and curved on the cutting edge. It is comfortable to hold in the hand and could have been used without being set in a wooden or bone handle or haft.  The manufacture and use of this type of flint tool spans the  Late Neolithic to Early Bronze Age c.2800-1700 BC.

The knife would have been used for everyday meat processing tasks, although it is definitely not a skinning knife, which are usually thin and often polished for the careful task of smoothly separating hide from flesh. Because it is a thick and heavy tool,  it would have been ideal for butchering tasks; cutting joints; separating limbs and other heavy tasks.

VM_365 Day 133 Decorative Stone from lost Medieval Parish Church of All Saints, Shuart

Archaeology, Churches, In the Store, Medieval, Places, Shuart, St Nicholas, Uncategorised, VM_365 Project

VM 133

VM 365 Day 133’s image shows two fragments of decorative stone from the lost medieval parish church of All Saint’s, Shuart, which was excavated between 1978 and 1979 by the Isle of Thanet Archaeological Unit.

The image shows the fragments of delicately carved Caen stone dating from the 12th century. The carvings represent fragments of a piece of carved foliage, used to decorate the interior of the church. The pieces were found along with other contemporary fragments of decorative stone in deposits associated with the much later demolition of the church building.

 

VM_365 Day 132 Roman glass from Minster Villa

Archaeology, In the Store, Roman, Thanet archaeology, Uncategorised, VM_365 Project
Roman window and vessel glass
Roman window and vessel glass

The image for day 132 of VM_365 is a selection of the fine glass fragments that were found in the excavations at the Roman Villa at Minster in Thanet.

No complete vessels were recovered from the site, but the fragments of sheet glass and the small pieces of vessel glass, including body sherds bases and rims, tell us that glass was as common on this site as it was on any other Roman building, where glass is sometimes better represented more completely in the archaeological record.

The glass sherds are in a range of colours, most commonly blues, greens and clear. One rare sherd is made from canes of glass in different colours welded into a muti-coloured pattern on the body of a vessel.

Typically for glass of this period the sherds are hard and clear, demonstrating the Roman’s mastery of glass making and the frequency with which glassware was used on the table and windows were used in their buildings.

Large sheets of glass were difficult to make and the windows in a building like the Minster Villa would have been composite structures with the glass held in place with a metal framework, like the one from the Tivoli Villa which was shown in VM_365 Day 78.

The small sample of glass vessel sherds shown here represent one of the most important pieces of evidence of the Roman way of life in Thanet from the 1st to the 3rd century AD.

VM_365 Day 131 Roman water Pipe

Archaeology, In the Store, Roman, Uncategorised, VM_365 Project
Second century AD Roman water pipe
Second century AD Roman water pipe

The  image for Day 131 of VM_365  is of a Roman ceramic water pipe dating to the second century. Like the perforated lead drain cover that was shown in Day 130, the pipe was excavated  from the area near a bath house at the Roman Villa at Minster.

Ceramic pipes like this one were manufactured to have an extended collar formed at one end, which would fit into the opening of another pipe, forming an interlocking series that could be made as long as was needed. The joints may have been mortared to prevent leaking. Water would flow through the pipes under gravity. Similar systems of pipes were even used by the Romans to lift water across valleys and even to raise water from one level to a higher elevation.

The pipe at Abbey Farm was found on its own, used in part of the drain leading from the lowest of a series of rooms of the bath house (Room 41 of Building 6A), which conducted the water that was discharged from the bath house into a drainage ditch.

Room 41 had originally been a cold plunge bath (room 41a) but it  was later adapted to become a hot plunge bath through the construction of a hypocaust  below the floor. A new tile lined drain measuring 2.65 metres long was assembled to discharge the  water into the  ditch. It was  later extended using more tiles and this ceramic pipe which may previously have been  used in another part of the site.

The ceramic water pipe is one example of the distinctive,  mass produced and specialised building materials that the Romans introduced to Britain.