This excavating season is remembered for periods of extreme dryness and high winds when the site resembled the Sahara desert! Features excavated in the morning had totally disappeared under centimetres of sand by the afternoon!
A Neolithic stone axe was recovered from the Roman fill of a Bronze Age ditch; this Cornish granite tool had been broken in antiquity and hinted at trade and exchange with areas of the West Country. This find prompted a fresh look at some of the 'foreign' stone, and sure enough, some of the 'exotics' were also of Cornish and Devonian origins.
A flint-knapping area was located and consisted of scatters of worked flint comprising tools and waste. In total, 2320 pieces of worked flint were retrieved and dated to the Middle Bronze Age. Other contemporary features were excavated and consisted of ditches and pits. Two of the pits had dense fills of burnt flint and were likely to have been associated with pottery production.
Medieval finds are far and few between at Bestwall, so it was exciting to find a large part of a hand-made 12/13th century pot in a shallow pit.
A further 86 charcoal-filled pits were excavated and as usual varied from thin ashy spreads to thick deposits of charcoal.
A 'dump' of post-Medieval pottery dating to the 17th/18th centuries was found on the top of a ditch fill. There were sherds from 37 different vessels and the pottery was mostly from the locally made 'Verwood' kitchen and dairy wares.
The project was submitted for the Pitt Rivers Award at The British Archaeology Awards 2000. We were pleased to be awarded 'Runner-up'. Lilian Ladle received the award from HRH Prince Hassan of Jordan in the splendid surroundings of Edinburgh Castle in November 2000.
Those involved: