Monthly Archives: February 2015

VM_365 Day 224 Comb decorated Late Iron Age vessel from Margate

Archaeology, In the Store, Iron Age, Margate, Prehistoric pottery, Uncategorised, VM_365 Project

VM 224

The VM_365 post for Day 224 is of the reconstructed upper body of a comb decorated Late Iron Age vessel, found in an excavation at Hartsdown, Margate.

The post for Day 223 showed how a new trend for comb decoration on vessels made of fabric tempered with grog emerged in the Late Iron Age and continued into the Roman period. Typical vessels of the new ‘Belgic’ style pottery were cooking and storage vessels like the bead rim jars shown in yesterdays post and the reconstructed jar shown today.

The jar rim is everted, a term that describes a curved or straight rim that leans outward from the upper edge of the vessel. The  vessel has been decorated with three shallow horizontal grooves at the upper shoulder, which create the impression of  raised beads. The rim and upper body are burnished to a low sheen and the lower part of the body is decorated all over with oblique curved stripes, formed with a narrow toothed comb.

Close examination of vessels of this type help to reconstruct the range of potting techniques and decorative schemes that were introduced in the Late Iron Age.

VM_365 Day 223 Late Iron Age comb decorated pottery

Archaeology, In the Store, Iron Age, Prehistoric pottery, Thanet, Uncategorised, VM_365 Project

VM 223

For Day 223 of the VM_365 project we have a series of images of pottery sherds whose surfaces have been decorated using a comb. All the sherds are from sites in Thanet and date to Late Iron Age, around 50  to 43/50 AD, although the comb decorated style lasted well into the Early Roman period after the conquest in 43 AD.
The post for Day 192 of the VM_365 showed a range of Early to Mid Iron Age vessels decorated using combs and other tools to create regular surface impressions. All the examples that were shown were from vessels were flint-tempered, where fragments of crushed flint were incorporated into the clay used to form the vessel improving its working and firing properties.
 The tendency for potters to decorate coarsewares with linear comb-dragged finishes almost died out after around 350 to 300 BC.  The style did not re-appear until the introduction of ‘Belgic’ style pottery from the continent around 125 to 100 BC. However, the clay used to make the new style of vessels was tempered with grog, ground fragments of pottery which served the same purpose as the flint in improving the working and firing properties of the material.
Comb decoration only became a regular feature in local domestic assemblages from around 75 to 50 BC, mostly used on kitchen cooking or coarsewares. A frequent style trend is for a narrow horizontal band of combing near the top of the vessel, with diagonal or vertical combing down the rest of the body (bottom left). Sometimes the combing was shallow (top left) and sometimes the pattern was deeper and bolder (bottom right). Often the direction of the combing combined to form complicated cross patterning (top right). Jars with a small rounded bead-rim, (bottom left) are a characteristic of the period. The reconstructed profile of a typical comb decorated bead rim jar from Hartsdown, Margate was shown on Day 170, a large comb decorated storage jar from Broadstairs also featured on Day 105.

VM_365 Day 222 All at sea – St Mildred’s Bay Bronze Hoard

Archaeology, Birchington, Bronze Age, Bronze Hoards, In the Store, Uncategorised, VM_365 Project

VM 222

The image for Day 222 of the VM_365 project shows all of the the hoard  of ten Early Bronze Age palstave axes that was found in 1988 on the wave cut shelf on the foreshore at St Mildred’s Bay.

The unusual pattern of corrosion on the surface of the axes is due to the sea-waterlogged deposit the bronzes were found in. A detailed image of one axe from this group (second from the right of the top row) was previously featured on Day 219.

The bronze hoard was excavated by Dr Dave Perkins, the first Director of the Trust for Thanet Archaeology, during an extensive survey of archaeological features that were revealed in 1988 after a storm had scoured the covering of sand from the chalk of the wave cut shelf.

Several truncated features were excavated and recorded,including pits ditches and a small remannat of preserved Brickearth geology. The archaeological survey preserved a small sample of the prehistoric settlement in the landscape that had been destroyed by the encroaching sea.

 

VM_365 Day 221 Early Bronze Age Copper flat axe

Archaeology, Birchington, Bronze Age, Uncategorised, VM_365 Project

VM 221

Today’s VM_365 image for Day 221 shows an Early Bronze Age flat axe that was found at Gore End, Birchington. The earliest prehistoric metalworkers used pure copper, which has been used to make this axe, making it one of the earliest examples of prehistoric metal working from Early Bronze Age Thanet.

Copper is quite a soft metal and it was later replaced by Bronze, an alloy of copper and tin,  which was much harder and could be reliably used to make a more versatile range of tools and other objects.

VM_365 Day 220 The Ebbsfleet I Late Bronze Age hoard

Archaeology, Bronze Age, Bronze Hoards, Ebbsfleet, From the Archives, Uncategorised, VM_365 Project

 

The Ebbsfleet I Hoard after Jessup
The Ebbsfleet I Hoard after R. Jessup

Today’s  image for Day 220 of the VM_365 project shows another of the Bronze Age hoards from Thanet, consisting of 181 pieces, weighing approximately 27.21 kg (60lbs).

A description of the Hoard was  given by George Payne in Archaeologia Cantiana after it was passed to him by Mr W.H. Hills of Ramsgate. The hoard was found on a farm at Ebbsfleet near Minster sometime before 1895.

The objects include socketed axes, spear-heads, parts of swords and axes, belt fasteners or ‘bugle’ fittings, portions of a dagger, a knife, and a quantity of ingots.

George Payne suggested that ‘These objects formed the stock in trade of a bronze founder, who went about from one settlement to another casting implements on the spot and taking old worn and broken ones as payment for new’.

This interpretation persisted in the classification of hoards like this containing a mix of complete and broken objects as well as ingots of bronze as a Founders Hoard.

Several of these Founders Hoards have been found on Thanet, some previously featured in VM_365 including nr. Manston (Day 194, Day 196 and Day 197), The Beck Hoard and Birchington III hoard.

Reference

Payne, G. 1895, Researches and discoveries in Kent. Archaeologia Cantiana 21, xlvii-lvi

VM_365 Day 219 The toll of tide and time

Archaeology, Birchington, Bronze Age, In the Store, Uncategorised, VM_365 Project

VM 219The image for Day 219 of the VM_365 project shows one of the bronze palstave axes that were found packed together in a hoard found at St Mildred’s Bay near Birchington. The conditions of the axe is very poor, the cast metal is crumbling and discoloured and it has broken into several pieces.

The wave cut shelf on the north coast of Thanet has been the site of the discovery of many truncated prehistoric and medieval  pits, exposed as the tides cut down the chalk cliffs along the coastline. These archaeological features are known to be remnants of settlements that once occupied the rolling hill tops that occupied the surface of the land that was broken down by the sea.

The unique conditions of the preservation of the features below the sea and the sand of the foreshore has created a very different level of archaeological preservation than is generally found on the sites within Thanet’s present landmass. A woven timber pit lining preserved in one of the truncated pits at St Mildred’s Bay was shown in a previous post for VM_365 Day 65.

On the other hand, the saturation of the fills with sea water has taken a heavy toll on the bronzes that were discovered in one of the St Mildred’s Bay hoard. Unlike some of the stunningly well preserved bronze hoards that we have featured in previous VM_365 posts, the metal in the St Mildred’s Bay bronzes is decayed, discoloured and fragmented, a state that was particularly advanced in the palstave shown in today’s post.

VM_365 Day 218 Roman Painted Plaster from Broadstairs

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

VM 218

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.

 

VM_365 Day 217 Art and Anglo-Saxon archaeology

Anglo Saxon, Archaeology, From the Archives, Lord of the Manor, Ramsgate, Uncategorised, VM_365 Project

VM 217

The image for Day 217 of the VM_365 project continues yesterday’s series of images showing artistic interpretations by Len Jay of the archaeological investigation of Anglo-Saxon archaeology in Thanet .

The picture in the top left shows a series of Anglo-Saxon graves under excavation. Two archaeologists are shown in the top right, in the familiar but somewhat undignified posture that is often adopted to excavate a grave with care, without standing on a significant find or on the skeleton itself.  Anglo-Saxon cemeteries usually contain many graves, laid in groups or rows. In the Ozengell Anglo-Saxon cemetery which inspired the drawings, the graves were cut into the chalk geology and had been disturbed by many centuries of ploughing over the fields.

The grave in the centre of the image is the one shown in the previous set of pictures, which was robbed soon after it was created by the excavation of a pit through the middle of the mound.  In the centre of the grave the stratigraphy of the later cutting through the grave is demonstrated, with the brown soil of the later robber cut shown sectioned within the lighter grey fill of the earlier grave fill deposit. It is through this careful unravelling of the sequence of events represented by changes in soil colour that allows us to tell the story of the robbing of the Anglo-Saxon graves.

The lower right image shows the grave after the original fill has been removed, with the skeleton lying on the base. The clothes and weapons shown in the first image from yesterday’s post having been laid with the person who was buried, now only exist as corroded metal objects which have to be carefully excavated and conserved. The excavation is recorded in detail in plans and written descriptions and photographs are taken of the objects in place. Overhead shots of the whole grave are taken from the vantage point of the step ladder shown on the right.

The skeleton in the excavated grave is incomplete, the pelvis, lower spine and upper legs have been cut away by the robbers digging their pit into the middle of the mound. By carefully recording the location of the robber pits and comparing their position with the typical grave goods found in complete burials, it is possible to explore the targets of the grave robbers and the types of artefacts they may have been looking for.

The four reconstructions drawn by Len Jay describe all the processes that have occurred to give us one of our most valuable sources of evidence for the lives and habits of the Anglo-Saxon period. The first set of drawings trace the creation of the graves, their alteration by the intervention of other people  and the effect of the natural processes of decay. The second set of image shows how methods of archaeological investigation can explore all these previous events and processes and generate knowledge about life and death in the Anglo-Saxon period.

Like his colleague and friend Dr Dave Perkins, Len Jay wanted to convey to ordinary people how archaeologists carried out their work and to reconstruct the events that their discoveries were revealing. Both Dave and Len achieved this through their considerable artistic abilities.

Further reading:

The subject of grave robbing in Anglo-Saxon cemeteries in Kent is explored in detail by Dr. Alison Klevnäs in her theses titled ‘Whodunnit? Grave-robbery in early medieval northern and western Europe’ which can be downloaded as a PDF from the University of Cambridge website.  The important records of excavations in Thanet contributed evidence for this work.