| Where
is it?
The
site lies on private land at Ringlemere Farm, Woodnesborough,
near Sandwich, Kent.
Why
were we there?
In
November 2001, the owners of Ringlemere Farm had allowed Mr
Cliff Bradshaw, a local metal detectorist, to walk their land.
While scanning the middle of a field he made a spectacular
discovery - the gold cup seen here. Although it had been damaged
by the plough, Mr Bradshaw could see that it was very similar
to the Bronze Age cup excavated at Rillaton, Cornwall in 1837.
He contacted Keith Parfillt, a site director at CAT with considerable
experience of working in this part of the county. An excavation
followed and Cliff Bradshaw participated throughout the work.
The Ringlemere story is a splendid example of what can be
achieved by detectorists and archaeologists working sensibly
together.
Fragment
of carved amber from the barrow site.
The Ringlemere
Bronze Age Gold Cup
The
cup was discovered on the edge of a low mound, lying in the
middle of what was then a recently harvested potato field.
Mr Bradshaw suspected that the mound might be the remains
of an unrecorded round barrow (burial mound) and Keith Parfitt
agreed that this was probably the case. A subsequent geophysics
survey by English Heritage located an enclosing ring-ditch
and confirmed this as a very large round barrow site.
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Surviving
barrows are rare in east Kent. Extensive farming across
the landscape has meant that many have unfortunately
been ploughed flat. At
Ringlemere the base of the mound actually survived -
the last remnants of a great barrow mound that must
have originally risen to a height of perhaps 20 feet.
Following
extensive field-walking, excavation work began with
the specific aim of locating the cup's original context
in the ground. Initially it seemed likely that the vessel
came from a Bronze Age grave within the barrow but this
proved not to be so. We now think that the cup had been
placed in the mound's core - but not at its centre and
not with a burial. Perhaps it was deposited here as
some sort of offering to the Gods during the actual
construction of the mound. However, the soil at the
core of the mound had later been extensively disturbed
by burrowing animals, possibly causing the cup to be
moved from its original position. |
| ©
Trustees of the British Museum |
Survival
of the base of the barrow mound meant that evidence of earlier
activity had been 'trapped' below it. Extensive collections
of prehistoric struck flints and pottery indicate that the
site had been occupied during both the Mesolithic and later
Neolithic periods. The close proximity of a small fresh-water
stream below the site may well explain the apparent popularity
of the area with early settlers.
Acknowledgements: Thanks are due first and foremost to the
owners, the Smith family, who readily allowed access to the
site and took a great interest in the progress of the work.
Thanks are also due to English Heritage for funding the excavation
and providing substantial scientific back-up. The staff at
K.C.C.'s Heritage Conservation Group monitored the project
throughout and provided assistance in a variety of ways. In
addition to the full-time excavators from C.A.T., teams of
volunteers from the Thanet Trust and Dover Archaeological
Group were able to make a valuable contribution to the excavation
work.
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