I have just finished what will probably remain the most interesting site of my career. It has been intense and incredible.
This site started out as a tad headache, initially having to machine it in two phases because the evaluation trenching identified two archaeological horizons. So a couple of months ago I conducted an excavation of the ‘higher’ or shall I say latest archaeological features, to do this I had to spend 9 days in front of a machine while a tiny field was stripped of its topsoil. A lot of spoil was created for not much reward, I had a dry stone wall, a minor earth work and the remnants of a ditch. All of which could not be more than 200 years old.
So from that initial survey I held out little hope for the second phase. BUT me of little faith!…. Turns out in that second horizon of archaeological features there was a total platter of amazing stuff.
Firstly there were some big neolithic pits and a few meandering ditches.
Then came an early Bronze Age barrow – containing this beauty:
a lovely collared urn
Into that narrow some Anglo-Saxons dug some graves and deposited some fabulous treasures.
some brooches and some beads
And although the preservation of the human remains was pretty poor, there were some little pockets within the sand (stuff must have miraculously created its own micro-climate and managed to outlast 1400 years) where true treasures lay.
Below are pictures of some weave, believed to belong to a purse and something wooden, having collapsed and sealed its copper alloy grave goods. This is the true mystery, is it a box? is it a ladle? only time (and conservators) shall tell.
Digitally my site resulted in this:
