by George Smith
The excavation, noted in the previous newsletter, was completed on Saturday, 29 September. The hengiform monument was found to be a variety of disc or pond barrow rather than a henge. The circular ditch had no trace of a causeway although there appears to have once been an external bank. Beaker fragments (in secondary positions) probably date the monument's construction apparently deliberately built around a large natural ground hollow, the surface manifestation of a large solution hole in the chalk bedrock. Within the central hollow were the remnants of two small pits, possibly unaccompanied cremations. Elsewhere in the enclosed area were three possible cremations in pits, one accompanied by a fragment of a disc-headed bronze pin. There may well have been other internal features removed by ploughing - in places recent subsoiling had cut 15 ems into the chalk bedrock.
Northdown, Margate: excavating the Late Bronze Age quarry pit.
The monument continued in use for a considerable period as shown by the deposition of disarticulated and partially articulated human and animal bones in the ditch silts and by the insertion of an inhumation burial into the inner ditch side. A large quarry pit was also dug into the outer ditch side. Both quarry and the latter burial were sealed by the deposition of a layer of domestic rubbish attributable to the period c.1000-700 BC. This included flint scrapers, knives and hammerstones, spindle whorls, loom-weight fragments, a bronze boss and distinctive pottery characterized by rims and applied cordons with 'rope-twist' decoration. The monument was later incorporated in the corner of a Belgic/Romano-British field system and within this period two extended inhumations were inserted.
The excavation benefited from one of the best summers on record and from the interest, help and encouragement of many local people as well as of KAS, the Thanet Archaeological Unit, the landowners, Sunley Estates Ltd, and the farmers, Messrs Steed and Nicholass.
