Earliest Iron Age pottery and other finds cleaned

Washing earliest Iron Age pottery
Washing Earliest Iron Age pottery

Finds processing can be one of the most interesting aspects of an archaeological excavation project. There’s a chance to see all the finds laid out in one place and set to work with painstaking effort, many bowls of water and an array of toothbrushes to see what’s really under the dirt.

journal 3We spent the first Saturday in August processing the finds from a recent excavation in Thanet, including washing the pottery you last saw being excavated in the final image for the VM_365 project.

With a big group of volunteers from the Isle of Thanet Archaeological Society and a student from the University of Kent, we made great progress with a stack of pottery, animal bone and stone from the site. There was even a chance to be talked through the key identifying characteristics of the pottery we were washing at tea time.

All the pottery from the site seems to date to the Earliest Iron Age, spanning the period from around 950-600BC. There may be a few scrap from other periods but we’ll have to wait until all the sherds are looked at in detail later in the year.

It was a beautiful summer day, with the company of old and new friends and there were interesting archaeological artefacts too, what more could you want?

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