Another company name change to Bardon Aggregates did not affect the archaeology but necessitated a further change of hard hats!Another company name change to Bardon Aggregates did not affect the archaeology but necessitated a further change of hard hats!
The Work on the Mesolithic area continued. Luckily the winter was mild and few days were lost through adverse weather. The site was painstakingly excavated, uncovering a series of pits where flint nodules had been extracted for working into tools.
Actual flint knapping had taken place close by leaving behind large quantities of debris in the form of discarded cores, blades, flakes and spalls. A few tools including scrapers and microliths remained but we have to assume that most of the finished tools were taken away and used elsewhere.
Nationally, evidence for Mesolithic activity is sparse and the Bestwall site adds valuable information about this relatively little known period. The flint has been dated to the later Mesolithic between 6000 - 4000 BC and the 'site', which overlooked the River Piddle, would have been ideally situated as a base to hunt for deer, wildfowl and fish.
Later in the year, Field F was cleared for the archaeological work and there proved to be a wealth of prehistoric features. Most unexpected were four pits which produced highly decorated Early Bronze Age 'Beaker' pottery. Charred grain (probably wheat) was recovered from one of the pits and hinted at arable farming.
Middle Bronze Age material predominated with evidence for domestic, agricultural and small-scale industrial activity. The most spectacular features were two large storage pits, measuring over two metres in diameter and over one metre deep and cut into the gravel. A layer of carbonised grain was still in situ on the base of one of the pits. Large numbers of finds were retrieved from the fills including the now, ubiquitous pottery, worked and burnt flint, waste shale, and raw and fired clay.
A shale spindle whorl indicated wool processing. Parts of a broken white granite quern came from one of the pits. This not only confirmed grain processing on site, but the 'foreign' nature of the stone, with a west country or French origin, suggested long-distance trade or exchange. The large size of the pits intimated that grain production was probably on a large scale. Further lengths of ditches defined field systems and although bone does not survive well in Bestwall's acidic soils, spindle whorls and loom weights suggested that sheep and/or goats were part of the farming economy.
Large amounts of Middle Bronze Age pottery were retrieved from this field. Dumps of raw clay and burnt flint were a strong indicator that much of the pottery was produced on site.
There was now good evidence for Late Bronze Age/Early Iron Age activity, mostly in the form of pottery and 'industrial debris'. Numbers of pits produced large amounts of burnt heathstone, which may have been used both in pottery and iron production. Large boulders of mudstone were also identified; the use of the material is as yet a mystery. A small ceramic crucible was probably used in bronze working. A further 143 charcoal-filled pits were excavated; those with ceramic finds dated these features from the late Iron Age to the end of the Roman period.
Over the winter, work began on cataloguing the large prehistoric pottery archive. Excavation skills were now honed to a fine art, new skills on pottery identification, fabric analysis and drawing techniques had to be mastered.
Those involved:
