Hello, my name is Keith Parfitt. I am a Field Officer with Canterbury Archaeological Trust and I will be directing the 2005 season of excavations at Ringlemere with my colleague Dr Stuart Needham from the British Museum. We will be assisted by our two stalwart supervisors, Grant Shand and Barry Corke, together with a willing band of hard-working volunteers. Last year we put the Director’s excavation diary on the Canterbury Trust’s web-site and this proved to be quite popular, not least with the people working on site! We thought we would do the same thing again this season.

We are running annual excavations to investigate this important archaeological site which was only discovered in November 2001, when local metal-detectorist Cliff Bradshaw was searching a recently harvested potato field near Sandwich. It was here that he discovered one of the most important pieces of early Bronze Age metalwork ever to be found in Britain – the now famous Ringlemere gold cup. The cup was found buried in a mound that we now believe to be a Bronze Age burial monument of around 1600 BC.

As the 2005 dig progresses we hope to bring you some interesting site pictures and up-date you about our latest discoveries and ideas. Visit the 2005 Director’s Diary regularly and follow progress on what continues to be one of the most important prehistoric sites currently being excavated in south-east England. Have a look at our Diary for 2004 for some extra details and an account of last year’s work on the site.

Can I join in with the excavation?

Yes, if you are fit, over 18 and prepared to work hard all day, for no money, whatever the weather. No accommodation or food/drink is provided and you will need your own transport to get to the site. No funds are available for travel expenses, etc. The site is a long way out in the countryside, it is always windy and site facilities are very basic. If you are still interested phone the Canterbury Archaeological Trust (01227 462062) for further details.

Can I visit the site?

No, not easily. The site is situated on private land, on a busy working farm. There is a lot of digging to be done this year and too many visitors could disrupt our busy programme, together with the daily routine of the farm. Why not follow progress here on our web site. Take a look at the Director’s Diary for regular updates.

The Director's Diary

Tuesday, 30th August: Getting set up

Setting up an excavation takes quite a lot of work and the last few days have been rather hectic – sorting out a variety of material, equipment and staff. Much of our site equipment is stored out-back, in the dreaded 'Spider Hole' – I have had to venture in there several times in order to retrieve everything we need. The tool shed and office have now been erected on site and were tested for leaks during a brief thunder storm (all OK).

Yesterday we hand–dug some pilot trenches on the site to check on the depth of the buried archaeology and to relocate the limits of previous excavations. In the next few days we will be bringing in a large machine to clear away the disturbed ploughed soil in order to expose the prehistoric levels – then we can start carefully excavating by hand.

There is a slight complication for the machine work this year in that we are digging very close to some overhead power lines. This has required special Health and Safety arrangements to be sorted out but everything has been agreed now.It seems like the weather has settled down a bit, so we are looking forward to some nice sunny days over the next week. Meanwhile, I have to arrange some final details – more soon.

Cheers,

Keith Parfitt

Friday, 9th September: The end of a hectic first week on site

With everything set for the off, we called in a machine from Ovenden, our friendly local civil engineering firm, to help us move away the overburden and expose the buried archaeology. We have cleared an area immediately to the north-west of last year’s dig, intending to look at further sections of the barrow mound and its associated ditch. During the process of clearing the site we came across another three Anglo-Saxon cremation burials, similar to those we discovered last year. Once the machine had gone, we discovered yet another cremation, as we were hand-cleaning across the new area. The same process has today located two or three soil discolorations which are likely to represent the tops of further graves. In short, the Anglo-Saxon cemetery that we discovered last year around the prehistoric monument now seems to be rather larger than it originally appeared. Some interesting finds are likely to be recovered over the next week as we excavate these new graves. More later...

Wednesday, 21st September: More Anglo-Saxon Discoveries

A lot has happened since I last found time to write. Anglo-Saxon graves, both cremations and inhumations, have continued to be discovered on an almost daily basis and we have now recorded a dozen burials, with no suggestion that we have come to the end of them. Few of the graves have produced many grave-goods, although some of the urns associated with the cremations look interesting and there is a nice decorated bead from one of the inhumations. Clearly, the Anglo-Saxon burial ground was of a substantial size – much bigger than we originally thought. A few days ago we were visited by Dr Birte Brugmann and Dr Andrew Richardson, both specialists in the study of Anglo-Saxon Kent, who came to view our latest discoveries.

Work has also continued on the prehistoric remains at the site and we have now started to excavate a portion of the surviving barrow mound. This is being dug in one metre squares, then sieved through a one centimetre mesh so nothing is missed. Some prehistoric pottery has been recovered, together with numerous worked flints, including several fine scrapers. The next couple of weeks should see many further interesting finds coming-up, so more as and when...

Monday, 3rd October: The British Museum team arrives

Things are progressing well and the regular site workers have now been joined by Dr Stuart Needham and a team from the British Museum. They will be with us for the next two weeks and we should see things moving along more quickly. We have located further Anglo-Saxon graves and have made a start on excavating another section across the great circular ditch that encloses the site. There have been some further interesting finds including more flint tools and decorated prehistoric pottery. The weather has remained quite good but winter is approaching and we will be working in the cold and the wet soon enough.

Sunday, 9th October: No one said we would be digging a major Saxon cemetery

A fine sunny day today and with twenty diggers on site things were decidedly hectic. Anglo-Saxon graves continue to turn up, although the grave pits are extremely difficult to spot. We had just one grave to complete today (number 25) but before work had got underway another, previously unknown grave was discovered close-by. This was very near the surface and contained some lovely decorated glass beads and a rare fifth century brooch.

It is now quite clear that we are dealing with a major cemetery – far larger than we had previously supposed. Most of the graves seem to be fifth century in date – a period for which graves are generally rare in Kent. Here then is a problem - the Saxon graves are interesting and important but as we put more effort into dealing with them our work on the earlier, prehistoric remains falls behind. There is nothing we can do about this except get on with it, but I fear we will pay the price in a few weeks when the weather breaks and we are digging prehistoric levels in the rain.

We said farewell to the British Museum team on Friday – but not before the ‘end of dig party’ had occurred in Deal. I believe Dr Needham may have had one or two small glasses of beer but I certainly didn’t. The whole affair lasted until almost mid-night but everyone was on site early the next morning, bright-eyed and bushy-tailed (possibly).

More next week...

Friday, 14th October: The excavation continues, despite the weather

A fairly poor week weather-wise with a lot of rain and cloud about – and with the British Museum team gone, the excavation has seemed rather quiet. Autumn appears to be upon us now and the sun-baked clay of the site is starting to turn into mud - but the work must continue. We managed to record and lift two Anglo-Saxon skeletons this week but these have been replaced by two, perhaps three, other new graves.

We are taking bets as to the exact final number of graves that will turn up this year. Being Director I have been allowed two guesses; my first, 21 burials, has already been over-taken. My second guess is 245 graves - one more than the number contained in the last big Anglo-Saxon cemetery I worked on. I am sure we won’t get this many in our present dig, however, because the hole is not big enough – but I keep looking out across the field and wondering just how far this Anglo-Saxon burial ground might extend.

We have continued working on the prehistoric levels as and when we can. Several good flint scrapers have come up in the last few days, together with some nice decorated pot-sherds. Hopefully, there will be a good team out on Sunday and we can push on with examining these prehistoric layers...

Saturday, 22nd October: Steady progress continues

Another week of sunshine and showers but some steady progress has been made. Both trenches across the outer ring ditch are now complete and three measured sections of the ditch profile have been drawn. Yet another Anglo-Saxon grave was discovered on Tuesday and we have spent most of today exposing the bones and grave goods – hopefully, we can complete this work tomorrow because wet weather is forecast from Monday onwards.

It’s interesting to stand back and see how our thoughts and research at Ringlemere have developed over the years. When Cliff Bradshaw discovered the gold cup back in 2001, he had already found a number of Anglo-Saxon artefacts in the area and initially suspected that both the cup and the mound upon which it was found were of this date. But it soon became apparent that the cup was much earlier. As subsequent archaeological work on the site progressed it was established that the mound was also prehistoric, not Anglo-Saxon, in date and the Neolithic (late Stone Age) and Bronze Age periods came to dominate our thinking about the site. Then excavations in 2003 and 2004 brought the Anglo-Saxons back into the picture. This year’s work has brought them to the fore again; clearly the Ringlemere area has a long and complex landscape history, which even now we are only just beginning to understand.

Sunday, 30th October: Ancient grass

A good sized team of volunteers today allowed us to undertake work on several different parts of the site. Thus, the ‘bone-diggers’ continued excavating Saxon graves, while the rest of us trowelled over the surface of the main mound in search of prehistoric remains. This work allowed us to identify and plot the limits of the central turf core of the barrow. We were particularly interested to note dark brown streaks in the soil here which represented the last remnants of the grass of the individual sods where they had been piled up in the Bronze Age to make the mound – this is something we rarely see in Kent since such evidence has usually been destroyed by centuries of ploughing.

Monday, 7th November: The last of the Anglo-Saxons?

A nice sunny day today and a definite improvement on yesterday’s drizzle. We finished recording no less than four Anglo-Saxon graves today, bringing our overall total to 47. At three o’clock I turned to Grant and asked where the next one to do was. He replied hesitantly, ‘I don’t think there are anymore’. Could this be the end of them at last? (I doubt it, because there is always one more grave outside the main group). Nevertheless, at present we seem to be clear of them and we will soon be able to concentrate our efforts on looking at the prehistoric levels again. That’s not to say that the Saxon remains have not been interesting; in fact, we have had some very nice finds indeed, including beads, buckles and brooches. What is particularly significant is the date of these finds because they all seem to be around AD 500 or earlier and so ought to belong to some of the earliest Anglo-Saxon settlers in this part of Kent. Overall, it looks like this is going to prove to be a very important collection of early Anglo-Saxon material when we get around to studying it in detail.

Saturday, 12th November: Not a Saxon in sight

We have gone for a whole week without encountering any more Anglo-Saxon graves, the final number allocated being Grave 47. This has allowed us to start dealing with the prehistoric remains. We have been able to complete both trenches across the outer ditch around the mound. We have drawn and photographed the profiles and have now turned to the interior of the enclosed area. Already we have come across a complex of Neolithic pits containing a lot of flintwork and Grooved ware pottery. Elsewhere, we are working on the turf core of the mound – this is also producing large amounts of prehistoric finds, mostly derived from the earlier, Neolithic occupation of the site. There is still much left to do and the days are now short and often wet. Nevertheless, we must push on...

Sunday, 20th November: The Saxons are back

As I suspected, we had not seen the last of the Saxons and traces of two more graves turned up early last week. They were found lurking in an odd corner of the site that had rather got left behind as work progressed elsewhere. We had already recorded a number of graves in this area back in the summer so we were not expecting these earlier ones to be lying below the level of those already excavated. Nevertheless, the new arrivals were speedily dealt with and the finds were soon sent back to British Museum. Grave 49 produced a very nice glass vessel and a number of beads.

Most of our work over the last few days has been on the main barrow mound and we have moved a good few tons of soil. Interesting prehistoric finds have continued to be made and today we recovered a flint arrowhead and a fragment of non-local stone, perhaps part of a Neolithic axe, together with numerous waste flint flakes and other fragments. A sherd of Beaker ware, a pottery type only rarely seen at Ringlemere previously, is amongst the prehistoric pottery fragments discovered recently. Things seem to be progressing quite well now and there presently seems to be some hope that ‘it will all be over by Christmas’. But let’s see what happens over the next week...

Sunday, 27th November: Real progress

It’s been pretty chilly out on site this week. Indeed, I was told that a Polar bear called round at the site-hut on Friday but he didn’t stay long - said it was too cold. Nevertheless, we have kept on with the digging and we have now removed virtually all the barrow mound. This process has produced large amounts of prehistoric flintwork and pottery. Trowelling frozen ground is impossible but fortunately we have only had this on a couple of mornings. Today we have been cleaning off the pre-mound topsoil and it is clear that there is a lot more prehistoric pottery and flintwork to be found. We have also started to locate pits and post-holes relating to the pre-mound Grooved ware settlement. We definitely seem to be clear of all the Saxons now. Working conditions may be rather unpleasant compared to previous months but I think we are going to get some of our best prehistoric finds over the forthcoming week or two. I’m off to warm up...

Sunday, 4th December: And another one…

Today marked the ninety-first day of fieldwork at Ringlemere. Way back on Day 4 we had built a wheel-barrow ramp and access point in the far corner of the site. Over the weeks this served us well and a good many tons of soil were taken out of the excavation via this route. Today, however, the ramp came to the end of its usefulness and needed to be dug away in order to gain access to the underlying deposits – untouched since the start of the dig. The operation should have been completed by lunchtime. But of course the ramp had been constructed next to what turned-out to be the most densely occupied part of our Anglo-Saxon cemetery.

The possibility of discovering further burials occurred to us as soon as we started to clear the area. Sure enough, within an hour the rectangular outline of yet another grave could be made-out cutting through the soil sealed under the ramp. This becomes Grave 50. Excavation showed it to be aligned east-west but no bones had survived. The only finds were a few iron fragments, perhaps coffin fittings.

Elsewhere on site, we have completed the removal of the barrow mound and have started to excavate the pre-mound top-soil. We have now cleared twelve square metres of this deposit, which is full of Neolithic Grooved ware pottery and flintwork, including a number of fine scrapers, probably for working animal skins. There is still plenty left to do before Christmas…

Sunday, 18th December: We will be here until Christmas

Work continues but the number of diggers is starting to get smaller as the cold weather sets in. The ground has been frozen across areas of the site for several days now. Nevertheless, we had a good team of volunteers in today and we managed to push things along on several fronts. We are mostly working on the pre-mound topsoil and this is producing large amounts of prehistoric pottery and flintwork. We have discovered two hearths or fire-places, very similar to the one we found last year and these must relate to the Stone Age settlement that existed here long before the barrow mound was built. The prize find today was a large piece of a Neolithic ground stone axe-head made of a non-local rock, perhaps from Cornwall. Oh yes, and we found another Saxon grave – but we are all used to that now. Still lots to do, although we have decided to take a few days off for Christmas. More early in the New Year…

Sunday, 1st January, 2006: Happy New Year from Ringlemere

Well we’re still here. The planned Christmas holiday dig, when volunteers from across Kent were to join us in order to work off the effects of all those turkey dinners, was a bit of a flop because it snowed for three days. Nevertheless, a small local team did manage to get out for a couple of days. We continued excavating the pre-barrow top-soil, which is still producing large amounts of important prehistoric material. Underneath this layer a series of interesting-looking pits and post-holes are starting to be exposed – these will relate to our Neolithic settlement and I am hopeful that we will discover the remains of a house or some other building relating to this settlement. When we couldn’t get out, I contented myself with working indoors on our first major report about the site. Hopefully, this will appear in print later in the year. Meanwhile, the snow has now gone and there is still a lot of digging to do…

Sunday, 15th January, 2006: Back in the Neolithic

Having cleared off the pre-mound top-soil, we are now exposing and excavating a series of pits and post-holes which are connected with our pre-barrow Neolithic settlement. Some of the pits have yielded splendid finds. Large fragments of decorated pottery have come from several, together with half a dozen scrapers and other flint tools. We have taken soil samples from a number and it may be that other minute finds, such as seeds, will turn up when we start looking at things in the lab. One pit has turned out to be huge, about 6 feet (2 metres) deep but there is very little in it. It is not at all clear what its purpose was (apart from being a test for some of our best digger’s shovelling capabilities).

The post-holes represent places where a wooden post, now rotted away, once stood and if we can identify enough such features we may yet be able to define the outline of a house or some other building relating to the settlement. Already, several suggestive post alignments have been identified but there is still a lot of cleaning to do before we can be certain that we have found everything.

Sunday, 29th January, 2006: Cold but still producing the goods

Frost and snow have made progress over the last few days really slow and uncomfortable. We are down to just two of us on site most days except Sundays, when the hardier volunteers still manage to get out. The cold, wet working conditions, however, are being offset by the quality of the information and finds recovered.

We are definitely moving into the final stages of the project now (at last) and odd bits of information recorded weeks ago are starting to be linked together to produce a really quite exciting story of activity on the site. We are still trying to identify buildings connected to our Neolithic settlement and indeed there are plenty of post-hole positions marked on the plan to work with – all we have to do is ‘join the dots’ (which is not as easy as it sounds).

There was great excitement today when one deep post-hole produced a massive piece of decorated Grooved ware pottery – the largest fragment we have ever found on the site. It measures 7 by 9 inches (or 18 by 23 cms) – I have included a picture of it just as we lifted it – it still needs to be cleaned but the grooved decoration is clear enough.

We are hoping for some better conditions over the next few days but February is not noted for its good weather so I suspect we will have to do battle with more ice and snow – I’m off to thaw out (seems to take all evening these days)...

Tuesday, 28th February: Still Here

It seems to have been a month since I reported in last – well we are still at Ringlemere, although we are now working intermittently on the site – a combination of rain, ice and snow, together with other commitments and exhausted funds has rather limited our activities but we are still getting good turn-outs at weekends. Things have progressed slowly but most of the final site planning has now been done and most of the field records have been completed. The overall result looks quite impressive. There are a few more odd things still to check and the last important job is to take record photographs of the finished dig. Details are now being arranged for the next season of work which should see the barrow fully excavated. The new dig is likely to start in May.

Tuesday, 14th March: Its all over (at least for a couple of months)

Well, we have now finished at Ringlemere. We did the final site photos on Sunday and took some aerial shots of the site yesterday. So after 160 days in the field we are all done at last – and what an excavation it has been, with more of everything in this season than we have ever had before. There are still masses of excavated finds and notes to work through but we are off site. Already we are planning the next excavation and we hope to start this in May, 2006. This should be the final season, intended to complete the excavation of the main barrow site and we are hopeful for some more interesting discoveries – and again you should be able to follow developments in a new Director’s Diary. Watch this space…