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Left:
Ringlemere 2003, Late Neolithic Grooved Ware found under the prehistoric
mound.
Right: work on site in 2002 |
Ringlemere:
The Story So Far
In early November 2001 Cliff Bradshaw of Broadstairs was metal-detecting
in a recently harvested potato field at Ringlemere Farm, near Sandwich
in Kent, when he discovered a spectacular gold vessel buried at a depth
of about 0.40 m. below the surface. Recognising this as a highly important
find, he was able to provisionally identify the piece as being broadly
similar to the celebrated Rillaton gold cup, recovered from an early Bronze
Age burial mound on Bodmin Moor in Cornwall during the nineteenth century.
The Ringlemere vessel had been discovered on a low, but quite distinct,
mound in the middle of the field, which Mr Bradshaw suspected might be
the remains of an otherwise unrecorded prehistoric burial mound or round
barrow, just like the one at Rillaton.
With the aid of grants from English Heritage, the British Museum, the
BBC and the Kent Archaeological Society, the Canterbury Archaeological
Trust has been excavating at Ringlemere since 2002 and a great deal of
interesting information has been recovered. We can now see that the mound
is a man-made prehistoric structure, although no burials have yet been
discovered. Many centuries of ploughing have removed all but the base
of the mound; originally it might have stood to a height of as much as
5 metres. This would have made the barrow one of the very largest in southern
Britain.
The mound was enclosed by a massive circular ditch, with an internal
diameter of about 41.50 metres. Where excavated, the ditch itself has
been found to be between 4 and 5 metres across and about 1.35 m. deep,
with a broad, flat bottom. On the northern side, a deliberate break in
the circuit of the ditch formed an entrance causeway at least 3 metres
wide.
Survival of the mound had served to trap evidence of earlier activity
below and it can now be seen that a major late Neolithic (Late Stone Age)
settlement had existed on the site of the mound around 700—1000
years earlier. The inhabitants of this settlement used highly decorated
Grooved ware pottery and the assemblage of such pottery from Ringlemere
is now by far the largest from Kent and one of the largest from anywhere
in south-east England. Whether this coincidence of location is purely
fortuitous remains unclear.
The site at Ringlemere is so large that it can only be excavated a bit
at a time, as the farming year allows. The 2004 season will be our fifth
and we have a whole series of ideas, theories and questions that we can
only answer through excavation. Everyone is very excited about our return
to work on this important site.
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What
are we looking for this time?
Each season adds to the growing picture but also throws up new questions
which need to be answered.
When we first started on site, the Ringlemere mound it looked like a
very large but straightforward round barrow of Bronze Age date (say 1700—1500
BC). Now we are not so sure. A number of details combine to suggest that
the site could have started life much earlier. It may be that it began
as some sort of ceremonial circle (perhaps what archaeologists call a
‘henge’ monument) during the preceding Neolithic period (say
2800—2300 BC) and was only later ‘converted’ into a
barrow. One of the main aims of the 2004 excavation will be to gather
further information about the beginnings of the site. If it turns out
to be a henge, it will be the first definite example to be recorded in
Kent.
A great surprise at the end of the 2003 excavation was
the discovery of the remains of an Anglo-Saxon hut cut into the top of
the barrow mound. This building is hundreds of years later than the prehistoric
monument and dates to about 600 AD. It provides rare evidence for Anglo-Saxon
settlement in the area. Are we going to find more evidence for Anglo-Saxon
buildings here? Was there once a village or hamlet on this already ancient
site? Only further excavation will tell.
Look at the Director’s
Diary to see how our ideas develop and change as the excavation
goes along.
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. Why not follow progress here on our
web site. Take a look at the Director’s Diary for regular updates.
Back to Top
The Director’s Diary
Friday, 30th July: Getting set
to start
After a hectic week in the office, things
seem to be coming together for the start of the main dig.
The barley was cut in good time so the field is clear and
we have been able to mark out the site of this year’s
excavation. A team of volunteers has been arranged for the
weekend. They are going to cut some pilot trenches to check
on the depth of the buried archaeology. This is important
because next Tuesday we bring 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.
Machine work is a delicate operation and ancient remains could
get damaged. The hand-dug pilot holes will let us determine
where it is safe to dig with the machine and where we should
not. Everyone is greatly looking forward to getting back on
site and the weather looks good. I need to carry on sorting
out equipment now, so more in a few days.
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Ovenden's machine carefully removes
topsoil to expose
buried archaeology.
The black plastic sheeting
helps to retain moisture in
the summer heat. |
Friday, 6th August:
Up and running
Our first week on site; very hot and sunny.
We used a machine to carefully clear a large area of topsoil
down to the buried archaeology and everyone has been busy
preparing the site for detailed excavation. Local civil engineering
firm, Ovenden, very kindly provided us with a free machine,
which will allow our limited excavation funds go that much
further; so many thanks to Ovenden.
We hadn’t been working long before
we our first surprise occurred — the discovery of five
late Iron Age cremation burials cut into soils adjacent to
the main prehistoric mound. These burials were completely
unexpected and belong to period not previously represented
on the site. It would now seem that the area of the ancient
barrow had been re-used as a burial ground sometime between
50 BC and 50 AD, perhaps 1500 years after the mound was first
erected!
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The top of the great ditch
enclosing the mound has just been exposed and the team is
preparing to start its excavation — there will be a
great deal of heavy work involved with this and it is going
to take several weeks. However, we are hopeful of some interesting
finds.
Tuesday, 10th August: All washed
out
Over the last 24 hours we have had 14
hours of heavy rain and the site is now totally waterlogged.
There will be no digging today and the site has been temporarily
abandoned. The team is rather despondent. Before the rain
set in we had made a start on digging out the great barrow
ditch and a geophysical survey team had begun work in the
field adjacent. Hopefully, things will improve for tomorrow;
we really didn’t need this, just when things were just
starting to gather momentum. I’m off to get dried out
and check the weather forecast…
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Friday,
13th August: Back on track
The site has now been de-watered and tidied
up after the rains — some slight damage occurred to
certain prehistoric deposits but we are now back on track,
without any serious losses. Our initial trench across the
great barrow ditch is well underway. Lots of hand digging
has to be done before anything much will make sense —
so back to the trench.
Friday, 20th August: The Britisn
Museum team arrive
We have been joined this week by a team
from the British Museum, led by my colleague Stuart Needham.
We are very glad of this extra help. The excavation of the
barrow ditch is going quite well but heavy rain showers most
days have slowed our progress. |
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| A Bronze Age flint arrowhead from the
excavations. One of many hundreds of pieces of prehistoric flint
work from the site. |
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And so to our unexpected
discovery of the week — the grave of an Anglo-Saxon
lady, dating to around AD 500, provided with a decorated bead
necklace. She was discovered buried in the top of the barrow
ditch, showing that the ditch had been infilled long before
this time. Previously, we had discovered what we believed
to be several late Iron Age cremation burials also cut into
the top of the ditch (see entry for 6th August). Now we have
found the Anglo-Saxon burial, this all seems a bit odd - Anglo-Saxon
and late Iron Age graves found together at the same level?
Could it be that we have wrongly dated the cremations? Might
they be Anglo-Saxon as well?? The more I think about this,
the more I suspect that this is the case - but Saxon cremation
burials are extremely rare in east Kent, so this could be
a very significant discovery indeed. I will need to consult
with other colleagues on the matter, so more thoughts and
ideas later.
Friday, 27 August: Another week
of wet weather
More heavy rain showers every day have
led to the site becoming flooded (again) — so much for
the great British summer! Excavated sections of the barrow
ditch now look more like a castle moat. Nevertheless, the
team have carried on as best they can. During the course of
digging out the ditch we have noted laminated sediments in
its base which seem to have been water laid. We now completely
understand these — as we emptied out the sludge that
had collected in the bottom of our own trenches we noted how
these had a similar laminated appearance — clearly the
efforts of the original prehistoric barrow builders had been
affected by wet weather too, with rain-washed silts collecting
in the botton of their ditch — so nothing much has changed
over the centuries!
We said good-bye to the British Museum
team at the end of this week — they returned to London
rather wet and muddy but I think they all enjoyed themselves
and several hope to return later on.
Back
to Top
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Tidying up after the initial machine
work. Plastic sheeting keeps in the moisture.
The ditch digging team in action
(team leader Grant Shand in black
T-shirt).
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Friday, 3rd September:
A new month and the dry weather returns
It was a slightly curious thing but on
the very first day of the new month so the weather settled
down and we got a week of hotish, dry weather (usually accompanied
by the infamous Ringlemere wind). The team yet again spent
time cleaning and tidying the site after the rains; we are
now several days behind schedule due to the weather. Having
passed through a phase when the excavations looked more like
part of the Somme battlefield, rather than an archaeological
investigation of a crucial prehistoric monument, the site
is now looking much better. We have started to excavate the
turf core of the barrow mound. We do this using a one metre
grid and everything is sieved to make sure that no prehistoric
flintwork or pottery fragments get missed. Meanwhile, Grant
Shand and his team have been forging ahead with the ditch
digging and we are now beginning to see just what a substantial
thing this really was. |
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Friday,
10th September: A proper looking excavation
The whole site is now quite dried out and
is looking really neat and tidy. Three sections of the barrow
ditch have been completed and we are still hoping for an entrance
causeway in the undug sections. Work has just started on the
fourth section without any evidence of an entrance as yet
— but there is still plenty to dig. |
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A section of the excavated ditch. Note the laminated prehistoric
water laid sediments
in the base (rod, one metre long). |
The dry weather has also allowed us to get
on with the vital task of recording. Detailed plans have been
drawn; sections through the ditch showing all the different
layers of infilling have been prepared and a series of notes
and record sheets have been filled out. Such work is crucial
because all excavation actually involves the destruction of
the deposits that are being investigated. Effectively, we pull
the site apart to see how it works — but we cannot put
it back together at the end, so all our notes, drawings and
photographs have to serve as the lasting record of the site
as we found it. |
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the good weather is with us I hope I will be able to get some
nice pictures of the site to illustrate this diary. It has
been difficult to do this of late because we have no underwater
cameras! Watch this space as they say.
The Sunday team settle down for lunch (keep well clear!).
| Friday,
17th September: The end is in sight After
a wet start, work has gone well this week. The ditch
digging team is now about half way throught their last
section so the end of this major piece of excavation
is in sight. Despite our early hopes for some interesting
finds, it now seems that the ditch silted up rapidly,
mostly with rained-washed silts and very little was
deposited in it. Meanwhile, work has continued on digging
and sieving the turf core of the mound. This has produced
the usual large collection of prehistoric flintwork,
including several nice scrapers and a number of pieces
of decorated prehistoric pottery. Back at base, some
careful excavation of the filling of the cremation urns
is being undertaken but we have discovered no new information
on their date.
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| Friday, 10.9.04.
Live TV interviews done from the site. |
Saturday, 11.9.04.
Canterbury Young Archaeologist's Club visit the
site. Cliff and Don working the sieve. |
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Sunday, 12.9.04.
The big team push the
site along. |
Trowelling the
pre-barrow land surface. |
Sunday, 26th September: The
ditch is complete!
Another week of sunshine, showers
and the usual strong winds. Nevertheless, the ditch
digging team has completed its task and the full length
of the barrow ditch has now been excavated. One of the
main objectives of this year's excavation was to determine
if there was a southern entrance causeway across the
ditch, opposite that found on the north side last year.
We can now see quite clearly that this was not the case.
The ditch in the southern quarter was continuous - which
has meant that we have had to hand-dig a total of about
25 metres of infilled ditch. Well done to all the ditch
diggers!
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The team hard at it. |
Work has
also continued on the barrow mound and all the mound
deposits have now been excavated and sieved. There has
been more prehistoric flint work found, with no less
than three fine scrapers recovered today. We are now
excavating the pre-barrow top-soil, buried and preserved
when the Bronze Age mound was thrown up. We are hopeful
of some more good Neolithic finds from this level and
already quite a nice collection of flints and pottery
fragments has been recovered. |
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As you might have noted
by now, it is usual to discover something unexpected
when things seem to be becoming a bit routine. So it
was today. One small block of mound soil remained to
be removed on the east side before we could start on
the pre-mound deposits. Hiding within the block was
another Anglo-Saxon grave (Grave 9) - very shallow,
heavily disturbed by burrowing animals and very difficult
to spot. Virtually no trace of the occupant remained
but a large iron buckle with textile remains preserved
in its corrosion products provided some very useful
information.
And so we move on to the final stages
of the excavation which will hopefully include some
more interesting discoveries. More next week ....
Back
to Top |
Sunday, 3rd October: Cracking on
Work has gone well this week, although
things did get a bit hectic at times. We have located, recorded
and carefully lifted three more Anglo-Saxon graves. Work has
also continued on the prehistoric layers and a very nice early
Bronze Age flint arrowhead was recovered yesterday. Meanwhile,
back in the office we have been checking through our field
records. This is very important; all the paperwork must be
complete in every detail before we finish — once the
hole is backfilled it will be too late to check any outstanding
points.
Monday, 12th October: Busy Director
falls for it
Another busy week with lots of digging
and recording having to be fitted around more heavy rain showers.
Word had got about that we were looking for additional volunteers
to help with the excavations and several people had phoned
in for details. Late on Wednesday I received another phone
call. It was at a particularly inconvenient time. We were
trying to finish a difficult section drawing and rain was
fast approaching from the west. Anyway, here on the phone
was a Greek gentleman called ‘Stavros’; he was
apparently a ground-worker in the construction industry and
was heading down to the site ‘with all his men and equipment’
in two builder’s trucks. They had heard we needed some
help and were on their way. ‘We will get the whole site
cleared in two or three hours’, I was informed (in rather
poor English). What an earth is going on here, I thought,
dividing my attention between this stupid man on the phone,
the difficulties of the section drawing and the impending
rain. I had a longish conversation with ‘Stavros’
in which I got more and more irritated. It was only at the
end that the man on the other end of the phone informed me
that he was actually from the local radio station. The whole
thing was a wind-up. Looking back over the conversation there
had been several obvious clues to this but I had been more
concerned with the section drawing and the weather. Silly
me! However, this will be a good tale to tell on wet days
in the tea-shed for years to come.
Sunday, 24th October: Must get finished
Working hard to get everything finished
off. Yet another Anglo-Saxon grave has turned up (Grave 13).
This was poorly preserved but seems to have contained an iron
knife and a buckle. Looking at the distribution of these graves
on our main site plan, we can now see that they actually form
a rather neat little group, all on the south side of the barrow
mound and extending across its in-filled ditch. They represent
a completely new and important dimension to this otherwise
prehistoric site.
Sunday, 31st October, The end at
last
This final week on site has been hectic
but at last everything has been completed, both in the excavation
and the recording office. Remember those cremation burials
that came up right at the beginning of the dig? They have
now been emptied of their contents and cleaned. Yesterday
I took them to show my friend Nigel who is extremely knowledgeable
about ancient pottery in Kent. As I was bringing the pots
in from the car and laying them out on his office table, he
said they looked a bit Roman, but once he had a chance to
study them more carefully he declared that they were indeed
Anglo-Saxon in date, probably around 450—550 AD; in
short the same date as the inhumation graves we have been
excavating. All very interesting, and with some very significant
implications for local Anglo-Saxon studies.
One final, important job remains to be
done — backfill the excavations so that the farmers
can prepare the field for next year’s crop. Since the
excavation funds are all but exhausted, our friends at the
local civil engineering firm, Ovendens, have very kindly agreed
to provide us with a free machine to backfill, so many thanks
to them, once again.
The finished excavation —
note the
ancient animal burrows in the
foreground.
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Filled in, packed up and
ready to go. |
Cheers,
Keith Parfitt
Back
to Top
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Final Comments
The excavations at
Ringlemere this year have been our largest ever and typically for Ringlemere
have revealed a series of unexpected new discoveries. Of particular interest
were the Anglo-Saxon burials, including a number of cremations —
a rite almost unknown in east Kent. These finds open up a whole new direction
for our Ringlemere researches and clearly demonstrate that the barrow
site has a significant post-Bronze Age history.
One of our main objectives
this year was to ascertain whether there was entrance causeway across
the Bronze Age barrow ditch on the south side, to match that discovered
last year on the north. We can now see that the ditch was continuous on
the south — an observation which itself needs careful consideration
as we settle down to look at the excavation results in detail.
We have to thank the
great many people who have assisted with the project this year; especially
the many diggers, from near and far, who have helped on site. Special
mention should be made of Grant Shand and the ditch diggers — sorry,
if I led you to believe that it was going to be mostly undisturbed causeway
that would require virtually no digging!
As always, the Smith
Family, who farm the land, have made us very welcome and taken a keen
interest in the progress of the work. The excavations have been funded
by the British
Museum and the Kent
Archaeological Society but much of the work was undertaken by unpaid
volunteers, following a long-established tradition in British archaeology.
Finally, Ovendens have greatly assisted us by loaning
expensive equipment free of change, both at the beginning and the end
of the excavation.
And next year? Well,
there is certainly more to dig and some initial enquiries suggest we will
be able to do something on the site. We have the long winter months to
plan the details. Look in on the Canterbury Trust web site from time to
time for more news.
Cheers,
Keith Parfitt |
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