Day ten – into the black

 

Alex and Fay in a hole!

Time to tackle the mound material and the oven/kiln/hearth. With three days left we need to get as much information from the site as we can.

Ali, Alice and Carol carried on revealing a packed stone layer next to the mound layers in the east end of the site, Fay and Alex started to mattock out the mound layer to the west of the hearth/oven/kiln. Martin and Simon moved further west to find the edge of the mound. I was given the job of digging the kiln/oven/hearth.

Alex taking a level before bagging up a sample of the mound material

The black mound material

The black mound layer is quite thick and full of burnt flint, stone, ash and charcoal. As Fay dug into it she said she could smell the burning, a bit like when you clean out an old coal fire. It’s amazing, you can smell the past, for about four thousand years it has been locked up in the ground until Fay released it with one stroke of the mattock.

Fay digging out the mound

The girls working in the east end had a hard job defining the stony layer and were working very hard to get to the same black mound layer the others had. A healthy competition seems to have developed! 🙂 It’s funny how you become attached to an area and don’t want to move to another part of the site. Even if you are not finding anything it’s always a bad idea to change places with someone who is finding things. It’s like changing queues in a supermarket, it never works!

Carol, Alice and Ali working in the east end of the site

T`he stony layer on the left and the mound layer on the right

I half-sectioned the kiln/oven so we can record the different layers within it. This section will be drawn and then the other side will be excavated. One sherd of pottery came from within the kiln/oven and three more pieces from where the flue may be.

The kiln/oven after the first layer is cleaned down

 

The clay layer removed and the pottery sherd is near the bright orange area

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

A piece of charcoal. You can see the burnt twig

 

The shallow section of layers in the kiln/oven

The clay base of the kiln/oven

Everyone has been working very hard. Alex and Alice are sixth-formers who couldn’t keep away from the trench, their breaks got shorter and shorter!

Alex and Alice doing a brilliant job digging the mound

Day nine – Busy, busy, busy

Martin on TV

Today was a great day for many reasons. We had visits from the media, 13 students from the local school at Beaminster, and environmental archaeologist Mike Allen (Allen Environmental Archaeology) on site. The students took turns excavating, sieving the material from the mound and searching the soil heap for missed finds the digger machine had dug up.

Students excavating on site

Students sieving the mound soil

Students searching the spoil heap

Mike came to site to take environmental samples and to look at the soils on site, to help tell the story of the processes of burial of our features – the burnt mound and kiln/hearth.

Mike preparing his samples

He took soil columns to provide uncontaminated samples. He will take smaller samples from them to look for pollen. Also Mike will look at the structure of the soils to see how they were formed, for example by down-wash of soil from cultivated land further up the hill. We will up date what Mike finds in a future post over the next few months 🙂

In the foreground one of the columns of soil wrapped in cling film

Martin and Rob carried on removing the orange yellow soils on the west side of the kiln/hearth, and at about 11 o clock the whoop went up as they found the burnt mound layer. Hurrah! More worked flints had been found just above the mound layer, more blades and scrapers, and pottery.

Prehistoric pottery – very crumbly!

A lovely flint scraper, perhaps used for taking hair off hides or meat from bones

Day seven – Misty morn

Golden Cap hidden by the rain clouds

The rain stopped play for the morning, but there is always something to do even if not on site. I had time to sort out the finds and separate the pottery from the flint. I also reorganized the tool boxes ready for the next week of digging.

On a rainy day there is always the porta-cabin to hide in

When the rain stopped I headed up to site and was soon joined by Allan. We carried on digging out the layer on the west side of the hearth/kiln/oven feature, even though it was tempting to start to excavate the possible burnt mound layer.

Allan hunting for flint tools

We were joined by a friendly visitor for the afternoon, looking for food!

A Lesser Black-backed Gull, hoping for another biscuit crumb

We found lots more flint and this time it was very good quality, including reworked tools. We also found another sherd of pottery, this time very orange with a black core, quite different to what we have found already.

A lovely long blade

A tool called a scraper

A small sherd of pottery

Day Five – WOW!

The flutter of anticipation has been released into the blue sky 🙂 we have had a brilliant day, the site is blooming, struck flint and pottery coming out thick and fast! But the real star is the round yellow feature filled with deep orange with hints of black, more on this later 🙂 The picture below shows it just appearing as Martin mattocks gently the hard surface.

The feature can be seen as a red and dark brown black area next to the side of the trench

The pottery that is being dug up at the moment looks more like Iron Age pottery than Bronze Age. It seems a bit different to the pottery we are used to finding in Dorset and may have more in common with pottery from Devon and Cornwall. At the site we excavated just over the hill, at Dog House, we found Bronze Age pottery from near Bodmin, in Cornwall. One piece that came from the feature described earlier, was an exciting surprise, showing a deep incised decoration of hatched lines (see picture below)

The small piece of decorated pottery, hopefully we will find more

Now back to the feature, it was very dry and did not look very impressive, so it was down to the garden center to get a water spray and Tommy went off to the rangers office to get some water. It was well worth the journey through the holiday traffic, as the spray soon highlighted what could be a hearth or kiln of some kind!  It was definitely a Wow moment 🙂 The yellow is the sides or wall with orange clay in the middle and a charcoal layer just appearing lower down.

The outer yellow of the ‘wall’ of the hearth/kiln/fire pit

The feature is right in the middle of the trench

We said goodbye today to Ray, our barrower supreme. Thanks for staying to help, you were a valuable member of the team, especially as I am out of action due to a  dodgy shoulder.

Ray ‘Mr Barrow’ Lewis take a bow 🙂

 

 

 

Day Four – and there’s more

 

The site looking East

The trench is holding on to its secrets, we are still going down, but it’s slow, exhausting work, as the ground is so hard and the weather so hot. But progress has been made by the diggers, and there has been more pottery and some lovely quality flint tools found today. The flutter of anticipation is still there and with every mattock swing we may just uncover the ashy charcoal layer filled with answers to the many questions we have about the site.

The mattock gang

Today we were joined by Robin who was on his holidays but very interested in what we were doing. He came to help find any objects the diggers had missed. He set to work on the spoil heap and found a piece of prehistoric pottery and some struck flints. Sadly soon his Dad came to get him as the car was packed and they had to wend their way back home to Scotland. Hope to see you again Robin when you are older and we can come and help on a dig you are running 🙂

Robin and his Mum finding archaeological finds on the spoil heap

A very happy Robin

 

Possible Bronze Age pottery found today

 

 

 

 

 

Day Three – spades, mattocks and dust

 

Martin and Fay mattocking

We have finally straightened our sections (the sides of the trench) and have troweled down to the top of the layer that looks burnt and seems to have more pottery in it. Tomorrow is the start of the exciting phase of the dig, a little flutter of anticipation builds……

Recording the level and position of the worked flint and pottery

We have had lots of wildlife visitors on site, beetles, small bees, butterflies, biting horse flies and this very small moth, hiding from the wind.

Small moth

We had a lovely surprise this afternoon 🙂

Thank you for the afternoon tea provided by the Anchor Inn at the bottom of the hill

Day two – someone turn the fan off!

A clear day and a good view of Golden Cap

Still windy on the hill, so the goggles were handed out, as we had the site to tidy up and to remove  the loose soil left in the trench  by the mechanical digger. Sections (the sides of the trench) were cut back and straightened, and the layers numbered. We were joined to-day by Alex and Tasha two sixth formers from Warminster and Antony who originally found the site.

Tasha, Alex, Carol and Antony working on straightening the section

More objects have been found including some 18th century pottery, that maybe came  from a jug of drink brought out to workers in the fields,  deeper down we came across some prehistoric pottery and some classic struck flint.

Prehistoric pottery

Struck flint

Alex cleaning the section

 

 

 

 

 

Day One – Down, down deeper and down ….

The day started with a cool breeze and a geophysics survey, Martin and Charlie were already on the hill, my duties were to sort out the porta-cabin  and open the gate for Clive the wonderful digger driver, who did a fantastic job when we dug on Golden Cap. With the arrival of Fay and Carol we had most of the coastal team back together 🙂

Martin and Charlie in the distance

Having measured how far down the cliff the burnt material was, we knew we had to get Clive to keep going untill we found the burnt layer, at least a meter and a half deep. We started to find worked flint and even some pottery in the softer charcoal flecked layer, we had evidence of human activity, hurrah! There was even a chunk of Kimmeridge shale from about 45 miles further east along the coast. Tomorrow we will post pictures of the finds.

The turf is removed Golden Cap n the distance

We dug a test hole to see how far down we still had to go

We decided to only go down deeper in half the trench, with an option to extend if we needed to

An amazing place to dig!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

If you go down to the cliffs again…

 

Golden Cap in the distance and the cliff at Seatown in the foreground

Three more sleeps until we are back excavating next to the cliff edge in West Dorset. A mysterious mound of burnt material was spotted eroding from the cliff face by local archaeologist Antony who drew our attention to it. It is buried about 1m down and therefore was not visible on the surface.

This kind of feature is called a ‘burnt mound’ and are more commonly found in the Midland of England and in Scotland. There are sites in Hampshire, Wiltshire and North Dorset, but this is the first found in West Dorset. Burnt mounds can date from the Neolithic right up to the Iron age, with many Bronze age in date.

We don’t know if this burnt mound was something used for ritual feasting, a sweat lodge or an industrial site but hopefully over the next two weeks we will may be able to shed more light on its purpose and age. So watch this space 🙂

The layer of burnt flint and stone can be seen in the middle of the picture

 

Lt. Twisden and ‘Golden Cup’ Signal

Rescue excavation at Golden Cap cliff edge 1992Taken by a Royal Navy helicopter from HMS Osprey, Portland.

Once, before we started to dig, there were clouds of tiny black insects that flew into our faces like sand.

When the wind blew, the golden sand was blown from the cliff face, it gradually covered everything. Over time, it had buried the 2m high line of stone cairns, converting them to vague undulating mounds.

When the fog came down, you couldn’t see a thing, you needed to watch your step, you could be anywhere.

On the wet days, we looked out to sea and waited for the next black bank of cloud to roll in. There’s nowhere to hide, a tepid thermos crouched beside a gorse bush is a bit hopeless, better to keep working and keep warm.

But on the warp factor 10 days, when the world is gin clear and the sun bakes Golden Cap, the views are breathtaking. The distant, curving sweep of Chesil Beach, lures the eye to the axe-head profile of Portland. And to the west, Lyme Bay fades out to Devon’s Start Point.

The view from Golden Cap east to Portland on a good day

The micro-macro shift of concentrated measuring, at the section face, of individual stones, and then looking up to be surprised by the Marshwood Vale and the vista across Dorset into Somerset.

I’ve never worked here in winter. My daughter was still a baby the first time. She was at university the second. In this equivalent span of years, John Twisden had occupied and experienced Golden Cap. He and his crew and his family. We found their loose change,a button, remains of meals and the vessels they ate from.

Discovery of a mixing bowl belonging to John Twisden’s signal station

Napoleonic signal mast like the one erected into the Bronze Age cairn at Golden Cap

From 1796-1814 they lived in a little wooden signal hut, its foundation cut into the sides of the cairns for shelter. Their job was to watch for French invasion, for Napolean’s army, and to signal with an arrangement of flags and black canvas balls to neighbouring stations on equally isolated hill tops miles away. The signal mast was erected in a deep pit cut through the centre of one of the Bronze Age cairns.

Once or twice when the fog came down, there were false alarms. Rumours spread, riders were sent and the militia were assembled but the enemy soldiers never came.

 

 

Every few years, John, his wife Anne and family marched down the hill to Stanton St Gabriel Chapel and baptised their latest baby. It’s now a ruin but its good to stand where they stood. He was just a name for a while but it turns out that he came from a wealthy family, a disinherited orphan. He joined the Royal Navy at 12 and sailed on the ‘Victory’. Journeyed to America and the Carribean and commanded gun boats guarding the English Channel. His Admiralty letter to go to Golden Cap must have seemed like a career set-back, and as it turned out, he was retired from there when the war ended.

Stanton St Gabriel Chapel

He worked on the canals in Devon, even invented and patented a new canal lock device before he won a court case and regained his family’s ancestral home and estate. Bradbourne House in Kent. A good Jane Austen novel perhaps, probably not enough balls and socialising.