Following on from yesterday’s image of the Bronze Age barrow at Bradstow School, Broadstairs, today’s picture for Day 232 of the VM_365 project shows the crouched burial of a child which was inserted on the periphery of the Barrow.
The grave, which is cut into the chalk geology, contained the remains of a child lying crouched on its left hand side facing south. Only the child’s skull, shown on the left side of the image and some of the long bones of the legs survived.
A collared urn was placed as an accessory vessel on the southern side of the skull. Sherds from the urn can be seen as grey fragments showing up against the white bones of the skull and the brownish discolouration of the chalk at the base of the grave.
The grave was inserted on the periphery of the barrow , presumably some time after the barrow had been constructed for a central primary burial which may lie outside the area of excavation.
Round barrow excavated at Bradstow school, Broadstairs in 2009
The image for Day 231 of the VM_365 project is of the portion of the ring ditch of a round barrow which was excavated at Bradstow School, Broadstairs in 2009. The image shows the regular series of segments taken out of the fill of the ring ditch to reveal sections at intervals around the circuit.
The ring ditch is one of a group of four similar ring ditches which are distributed around the terminal of a dry valley where it meets the east facing aspect of a rounded chalk-downland hill, now occupied by the extensive grounds of the Bradstow school, formerly a private House called Valletta House.
The Bronze Age landscape of the hilltop has been revealed in a remarkably extended series of investigations that began with an excavation carried out in 1910 by Howard Hurd, who featured in the post for Day 40. Hurd revealed a double ring ditch, probably representing a barrow that had been extended or refurbished at some time during its period of use as a funerary monument. Two further ring ditches were recorded in excavations carried out by the Broadstairs and St.Peters Archaeological Society (BSPAS) with the assistance of the British Museum (BM), to the west and south west of Hurd’s excavation.
The construction of a new facility for Bradstow School within part of the playing field in 2006, resulted in the discovery and excavation of a very large causewayed ring ditch, which may have been a ceremonial enclosure rather than a funerary monument like those that had been discovered by the earlier work. Nearby an unusually small ring ditch contained four graves, an unusual feature that does not fit into the conventional classifications of prehistoric burials in Thanet.
When a former garden site standing immediately adjacent to the western most of the ring ditches recorded in the BSPAS and BM excavations was chosen as the location of a new swimming pool for the School, there was a further opportunity to explore the Bronze Age landscape of this Broadstairs hill top. Evaluation trenches revealed the circuit of another ring ditch, which was partly excavated before the pool was built. This excavation was carried out nearly a century after Howard Hurd’s discovery of the barrow under the lawns of Valleta House.
The centre of the barrow where a primary burial might be expected was not exposed in the excavation. Two rectangular graves were associated with the ring ditch, one within the circuit which was severely truncated and contained no human remains. The other grave was perhaps inserted on the periphery of the barrow at a later date, it contained the remains of a child, lying crouched on its left hand side facing south, with a collared urn placed as an accessory vessel on the southern side of the skull.
The ring ditch excavated in 2009, which had a diameter of approximately 24m continued the linear series of barrows that line the edge of the arc that is formed by the intersection of the dry valley with the hill top. Each point around the arc commanded a vista across the lower lying land and the sea, which may have been an important factor in the choice of location for these burial mounds in the Bronze Age and of the large causewayed ring ditch which stood very near to them.
The image for Day 228 of the VM_365 project is of a resource the Trust has created for teaching some of the themes of prehistory in primary school workshops, a table top Beaker burial given its first trial recently at a primary school in Broadstairs. The tabletop layout includes a skeleton in a crouched position, accompanied by a replica Beaker vessel and a contemporary barbed-and-tanged arrowhead.
One element of the workshop is a discussion of pre-history as an idea, drawing out the sense that it describes periods in the development of human societies where no stories told directly by the people themselves exist. Studying prehistoric periods requires a process of investigation, based on the observation of objects and the circumstances of discovery. To generate narratives from the evidence requires imagination to draw out associations and analogies with contemporary life experiences.
The burial and accompanying objects create a detailed scenario to provoke discussion and demonstrate how archaeologists have used the detailed investigation of the pottery, flintwork and the human remains separately to provide data. Revealing the burial from under its covering of grassy topsoil (top images) adds a sense of the theatre of discovery which is such a part of the archaeological investigation process.
The combination of the artefacts and the burial into a recognisable archaeological scenario gives the children an insight into the practical circumstances of investigation where archaeologists generate their data. They can take part themselves in creating and debating their own versions of the narrative of the burial.
For an archaeologist well versed in the complexities of theoretical approaches to prehistory and the interpretative models and debates that are generated from them, it is fascinating to see these same arguments arise among such young minds based on the first principles of observation and imagination provoked by a Beaker burial presented in their own classroom.
Beyond the educational aspects of the activity, there is the opportunity to create a great deal of fun, with much ooing and aahing as the bones are revealed followed by a flood of questions and a great deal of humour. Previous VM_365 posts on prehistoric pottery and human bone themed education activities were made way back on Day 11 and Day 12
Today’s image for Day 218 of the VM_365 project shows a selection of the painted plaster fragments from the Roman building at Stone Road, Broadstairs which was excavated in 2004.
A total of 49 fragments of painted plaster were found in an extensive demolition deposit concentrated in the north west corner of the building, suggesting that the structure was a high status house.
Painted plaster in an extensive range of colours and styles has been excavated at the Villa site at Minster in Thanet, with some of the fragments featuring in a series of previous VM_365 posts on Day 178, Day 182, Day 185, Day 188 and Day 191.
Although there are fewer fragments from Stone Road, and are generally much smaller than those at Minster, they show a wide range of panel designs painted in hues of blue and green as well as black. Some have suggestions of natural designs, with the third fragment from the left in the bottom row possibly representing a flower painted with blue pigment.
The excavated part of the building also contained a Bakers oven suggesting that the painted rooms were in another part of the range of buildings. Other artefacts recovered from the Stone Road Roman building have featured as posts on VM_365, including part of a Roman spoon and a Military style belt buckle.
On two sides of a square flat frame (top and bottom in the image) there are the remains of attachments for a central panel of decorative openwork which is now missing. The X-Ray image on thetop right of the image shows the attachments in finer detail A leather belt strap would have been hooked over the outer frame, under the patterned centre and over the frame again, creating a decorative adjustable buckle for the belt.
Although the connecting attachments of the openwork could not be matched exactly to any similar pieces, this style of buckle has been found in military contexts in Britain and across Europe.
Two variants of this sort of openwork buckle have been found at the Roman fort at Richborough, other published examples come from Dacia (modern Romania) and Osterburken in Germany. An illustration of a similar buckle from the Fort of the Roman military unit Cohors I Breucorum from their base at Pfunz in southern Germany is shown for comparison with the Broadstairs find at the bottom right.
The question is what was this buckle doing in Broadstairs?
The image for Day 212 of the VM_365 project shows an Early Bronze Age Urn found buried with a crouched inhumation within a ring ditch at the former Dumpton Greyhound Stadium, Ramsgate in 2000. It was excavated by Kent Archaeological Rescue Unit (KARU) and is now in the Trust’s stores.
This vessel presents a slight conundrum. Rather inconveniently our Ancestors did not always do things according to strict tradition. In this instance we do know that this ‘Urn’ is definitely of Early Bronze Age date, since it came from a crouched inhumation within a burial ring-ditch. However it rather obviously lacks any decoration and the form is not altogether informative either. Superficially, its rather basic form is quite untypical of any of the four main Early Bronze Age often richly decorated ceramic traditions – Beaker, Food Vessel, Collared Urn or Biconical Urn. However, its fabric is coarsely grog-tempered – hence its rather lumpy surface. This aspect and its buff-fired surface is much closer to some of the manufacturing trends associated with the Collared Urn tradition, current between c.2000-1600 BC so that, despite being a rather unimaginative creation, it can be confidently placed into this period at least.
This vessel joins the vessel shown on Day 200 as an example of an outlying variation in what are usually quite standard vessel forms.
The Virtual Museum would like to thank Nigel Macpherson-Grant for this information about the vessel.
Today’s image for VM_365 Day 203 is of aLate Neolithic/Early Bronze Age Beaker, found in an excavation at South Dumpton Down near Broadstairs in 1992, which was led by David Perkins, the first director of the Trust for Thanet Archaeology.
The beaker was found among a complex group of graves that were enclosed by the ring ditch of a roundbarrow. The graves that were excavated at the centre of the ring ditch contained the remains of seven individuals laid in a variety of orientations. Some of the burials were in crouched positions, others were truncated and disarticulated.
The complexity of the grave group led to some confusion about what the exact association was between the Beaker and any of the individuals in the grave group. The confusion was aggravated by the presence of Food Vessel type pottery within the grave group, which is not often associated with Beaker graves. Recent reflection on the exact sequence of events represented by the deposits that were excavated and the initial interpretation made of them, points to the probability that the burial sequence was not properly understood. It seems that the graves within the barrow accumulated over a period of time, cutting through earlier burials and truncating them.
The earliest of the graves appears to be that of an adult buried on its left hand side in a rectangular grave, accompanied by the Beaker. This fits recent discoveries of Beaker burials in Thanet, which generally seem have been made in well cut rectangular graves, probably enclosing a coffin or chamber.
The Beaker is quite crudely made in comparison with vessels like the one from North Foreland shown in VM_365 Day 176, with an unusual scheme of impressed decoration with possible connections to the Netherland’s ‘Potbeker‘ tradition. In the classificatory models that have been proposed for Beakers it belongs to Clarke’s Mid Rhine Group, or Lanting and Van derWaals‘ (1972) Step 3 classification.
The South Dumpton Down Beaker is currently on long term loan to Dover Museum and can be seen in the Bronze Age gallery at the Museum. More information on Thanet’s Beakers can be found in the Beaker gallery of the Trust’s Virtual Museum.
The image for Day 195 is of another vessel from the Roman Kitchen found in the remains of a Roman building excavated at Broadstairs, a Knife-trimmed necked-jar in a grey-black Native Coarse Ware with grog and sand filler. The diameter around the exterior of the rim is 240 mm. and the surface is fired grey with patchy black and pink surfaces. This particular style of vessel can be dated to around 170-250 AD.
One hundred and twenty fresh sherds from the vessel were recovered from the thick deposit of pottery, making up nearly three quarters of this pot. Previous VM_365 posts have shown how vessels from the thick layer of pottery in one context have been reconstructed and this is the last of large jars that has been carefully pieced together by one of the Trust’s volunteers.
Like many of the other pots recovered from this deposit, the vessel appears to have been deliberately destroyed. A series of holes has been punched along the widest part of the body, as if the pot was systematically pierced with a thin rod or blade. Reconstructing the vessels has shown this pattern of holes punched with sharp object to be preserved in the distribution of sherd breaks in several of the larger pots and a moratorium recovered from the deposit.
Comb and impress decorated Middle Iron Age sherds from Thanet
Today’s image for Day 192 of VM_365 shows several sherds of decorated Early-Mid Iron Age ceramic vessels, dating from c.550-350 BC.
All the sherds are from relatively high quality vessels, finewares or sub-finewares , which have been decorated with either comb-point, comb-finished or impress-decorations.
The sherds were all found on excavations in Thanet, (shown clockwise from top left) from Margate, South Dumpton Down near Broadstairs and two from Fort Hill and Trinity Square in Margate.
The images illustrate the variety of decorative styles that could be created using a comb, or with a regular impressed pattern,
and illustrate the care that was taken over decorating the better quality pottery vessels in this period in prehistory.
The VM_365 image for Day 183 shows a sherd of samian pottery from the excavations at the site of a Roman Buildings at Broadstairs which has had a hole drilled through it, so that the vessel could be repaired.
The sherd is from a first century Dragendorf 37 form bowl. made at the La Graufesenque workshops in Southern Gaul. The decoration on the bowl showed a bead border with a running animal motif, but it was poorly impressed.
The vessel must have been broken at some point and the area represented by the sherd in the picture was drilled through so that a lead rivets could be used to repair it. Lead wire was passed through two holes and either joined in a loop, or the ends may have been cut off and hammered flat on the inside of the bowl.
The image for Day 228 of the VM_365 project is of a resource the Trust has created for teaching some of the themes of prehistory in primary school workshops, a table top Beaker burial given its first trial recently at a primary school in Broadstairs. The tabletop layout includes a skeleton in a crouched position, accompanied by a replica Beaker vessel and a contemporary barbed-and-tanged arrowhead.
