Whitehawk Hill Excavations

I was not planning on joining this new Brighton dig that began last week (only for the month of August) but curiously, I found myself out there two days ago on my day off. And I'm glad I went. The view of Brighton and the sea is absolutely stunning from this site. The day started off with a glorious blue sky only to abruptly change to storm clouds by mid afternoon. The storm hit just as I got home to Lewes around 16:30, so we were quite lucky to get in an entire day of excavations unscathed by inclement weather.

There were plenty of volunteers from the BHAS and professionals from Archaeology South-East as well as a few newcomers. The newcomers including myself were given an induction to the site. From what we were told this site dates back to the Neolithic (different from the Neolithic period anywhere else in Europe since it started later around 4500 B.C.E. - 2500 B.C.E.) when a new wave of European immigrants brought farming technology to this island and settled in communities, most likely greatly impacting the status quo of the indigenous people as hunter-gatherers.

A reconstruction by Ian Dennis of the
Whitehawk causewayed enclosurec. 3,600 cal BC
(reproduced from Whittle, Healy and Bayliss
2011; fig. 1.3)

Whitehawk hill is an ancient habitat designated as a Local Nature Reserve (LNR) and is recognized as being the first Scheduled Ancient Monument (SAM) in Sussex (Brighton-Hove.gov.uk). The ancient monument, Whitehawk Camp, is one of Britain’s earliest stone age monuments.  The hill was chosen some 5,500 years ago as the site for a series of circular ditches and banks which marked the hill as an area for feasting, burials and other activities of a ritual nature. This curious and obviously non-defensive arrangement gives these sites their name: causewayed enclosures.  They represent the earliest ritual circles in northern Europe and predate later stone age enclosures like Stonehenge and Avebury by up to 1000 years.  They all appear to have been built around 3500 B.C., predating Stonehenge by about 500 years.

Archaeologists have explored only a small portion of Whitehawk Camp.  Within the fill of the surviving ditches the remains of four complete burials have been found alongside huge numbers of stone age flint tools, pieces of pottery and the bones of ox, cattle, pig, deer and other fragmentary human remains.  These suggest the consumption of large amounts of meat as part of the activities which took place on the hill.  The site was important enough to become the final resting place of members of the local tribes and these included the bodies of an eight year old child and a young woman buried alongside the remains of her new born child.  The details of Stone-age religion are largely unknown, but the archaeology suggest an emphasis on seasonal gatherings, the importance of the ancestors, tracking of the seasons through astronomical observation and the marking of territorial ownership. (http://www.brighton-hove.gov.uk/content/leisure-and-libraries/parks-and-green-spaces/whitehawk-camp)

BHAS members, ASE archaeologists, and volunteers.

Our focus was to get down to the Neolithic layers in the trenches and continue what the excavations in the 1920s and 1930s had uncovered, even though a majority of debris was modern. On this particular hill, allotments were established during WWII and after. These are now gone, but remnants still exist in the plethora of broken glass everywhere, modern porcelain, nails, and bits of plastic.

The main trench just had it's turf removed this week, so we were each given slots to trowel back. I discovered no features amidst the chalky and flint infested top soil and the annoying roots that kept interfering with the troweling. Unlike Ovingdean, where the soil is also very chalky, there were finds aplenty. Besides the usual piece of broken glass, I filled my tray with two and a half rusty nails, blue and white decorated porcelain fragments, two or so bits of CBM, charcoal bits, possible pottery fragments but methinks I just filled my finds tray with some sort of stone that looked like IA pottery, possible slag chunks, fire-cracked flint, fragments of oyster shell, snail shells which I chucked out later, two small echinoids (Cretaceous fossils - 145-66 million years ago) and small bone fragments. Not bad in a day's work.

Hope to get up there at least one day a week until the project is finished at the end of August.

Ovingdean Round Two!

Excuse the shadow. My lovely, clean slot. Not entirely sure what all the chalk symbolizes.

My slot right in front. Carol was excavating a half circular unknown feature.

 The trenches at Ovingdean have changed greatly this past week to reveal post holes and hard chalk features, as well as a few special finds. I was placed in a new slot in the same trench that I excavated on April 27th. After clearing away quite a bit of dirt, there lay a hard chalk packed feature.  I brushed it up as you can see in the photograph. There were no visible post holes but may be part of a building or wall? I will leave that one up to the experts to debate. Not many notable finds - a few fragments of pottery, fire cracked flint. When that slot was cleaned, I was relocated to a square shaped test pit just northeast of where I was working previously.

Unfortunately I have no photographs to display of this test pit. I excavated a square section (since it was a fairly large test pit) and whilst, it was mainly dirt that was coming out of the ground, I did chance upon a gorgeous piece of blue flowered porcelain - possibly 18th century? Also fragments of yellow porcelain, one fragmented oyster shell, bits of pottery and flint, and three pieces of glass.

Director "Big" John drawing features.

Surprisingly until yesterday, I did not own an archaeological trowel. Why buy one when I could borrow? (Student mentality still kicking in). Brenda was kind enough to give me a used trowel for keeps, likely out of exasperation of my continuous borrowing at Rocky Clump. Up until now, my archaeological kit had only consisted of a green garden mat and durable gloves. But now I am thinking I really need to invest in a few good brushes as well until someone invents an archaeological vacuum that will suck up the troweled dirt. At the same time this vacuum will all the while be analyzing the contents and transferring any fragmented artifacts into a special compartment. Ingenious? I had a lot of time on my hands to think up this one yesterday. Maybe I will patent this invention. "The Sweeney Hoover," it shall be forever known as.

The bullies plus one (missing the chocolate brown new inmate.)

Oh, yes. Cannot forget the horse drama either. The three rescued horses in our field decided to bully the newest "inmate" by chasing him around the field and rear-kicking him. He eventually kicked back, covering the front of a gorgeous white horse with hoof marks. Naturally, we were all distressed watching this event continuously repeat itself throughout the afternoon. I half expected the four horses to charge our flimsy fence separating humans from animal.

Ovingdean

Ovingdean

One of BHAS's new projects this year is located in Ovingdean, just north of Brighton. Situated in a field shared with rescued horses, next to a charming 13th century church, Ovingdean is a medieval enclosed site (for some reason I was under the impression that it was a Roman site before I went up there last Saturday).

My section.

Post Hole

Ladies busy at work.

It has been under excavations for the past twelve-fourteen years or so by the BHAS. Geophysics suggest an enclosed area that once contained a large house and possibly barns and/or workshops.

Our mission was to look for post holes and rubbish pits. There was a nice sturdy post hole in my trench slot, but I got as far as uncovering two rusty nails, fragments of pottery and tile, a snail shell, debitage and other interesting flints.

John Skelton, the director, assisted me with brushing up on my skills to identify different types of soil. Part of this included taking a soil sample in the palm of my hand, adding a bit of water, and rubbing it around to see if it would create a ball or crumble from all the inclusions in it. My sample formed a neat ball, concluding that the soil I was working in was of the "clay loam" type due to its slightly gritty nature. This information is useful in the cataloging of soil deposits in this particular area.




I am hoping to continue excavating on and off this season! Will keep you all posted on exciting finds and discoveries.

Church next door.

Stories from "Windy" Clump (2013)

My slot in the middle.

I try to make it out to Rocky (AKA Windy) Clump at least once a week now, but last Wednesday (the 23rd) left a long gap of 1.5 weeks since I had last been out there. I was placed back in my little muddy Stonehenge slot, amongst my ring of large friendly flint stones and chunks of white chalk. John, the director of RC, bestowed upon me a new nickname on Wednesday in honour of my new troweling context (announced in his weekly e-newsletter of the shenanigans that we get up to): "Pete, Chelsea (Rocky to her friends) and Fran, along with Mark worked on the floor surface north of the barn, and it is producing lots of archaeology. Chelsea had lots of large flint nodules in her section, and was loathe to move them, while Fran and Pete got down to those lower levels where there were fewer flints." That pretty sums up excavations conditions on Wednesday, with many poor attempts to find a comfortable middle ground amidst the flints that were slowly closing in around me like angry gnomes, to rest my knees on my foam gardening mat . I troweled up the usual bits of pot, fragmented animal bones and teeth (an assumption here), fire-cracked flint and a few bits that looked very important but were covered in so much mud that they are probably going to turn out to be just clumps of ironstone or sandstone when cleaned.

Fernando, Rocky, Windy.

The weather kindly held up but that cheeky wind had me chasing Pete's kneeling mat around the field. There were no inquisitive cows again, although we did have a rather irritable cow mooing over to the next pasture whose voice echoed eerily around the downs. We concluded that he liked to hear the sound of his own voice.