East Wear Bay: Archaeological Field School Season 2
By Andrew Richardson
August saw the completion of the second season of the East Wear Bay Archaeological Field School. Newsletter readers will remember from last year (see the Winter 2015 edition) that Canterbury Archaeological Trust has established this project, with the support of the KAS, both to provide training in a wide range of field archaeological skills, and at the same time to achieve excavation of the very significant Iron Age and Roman archaeology at risk of loss to ongoing erosion of the cliff top at this site.
This year a total of 25 fee-paying students attended, some for 1 to 4 weeks of training, including an archaeology student from Mainz, and some for one-day experiences. In addition, 15 local young people, aged between 16 to 24 years, were able to attend as a result of funding generously provided by the Roger De Haan Charitable Trust (RDHCT). Feedback from these students indicates that they enjoyed a very positive experience, with some deciding to go on to study archaeology or related disciplines at university as a result. A number of anthropology students from Texas State University in Austin again attended for some days; next April the author will be giving a presentation on the project to staff and students in Austin, and hopefully the links between the project and Texas State will be strengthened. And as well as students and volunteers taking part in the field school, several hundred visitors were welcomed to the site during the course of the dig.
At the time of writing, post excavation on the results is still ongoing and at an early stage. But some key findings are starting to emerge. The excavation saw the completion of the trench opened in 2015. The earliest feature identified, which only emerged in the last few days of this year's dig (of course) is a large oval feature, possibly an infilled pond. Only the northern end of this feature was revealed, underlying a spread of Greensand debitage from Late Iron Age/Early Roman quern production. The rest of it will be revealed next season, when the plan is to extend the excavation to the south of the current trench (which will be backfilled). It contained at least two fills, the lower of which has yet to be bottomed. Finds included numerous sherds of flint-tempered pottery, possibly of Bronze Age or early to mid-Iron Age date, plus quantities of worked flint. The latter assemblage included a blade that on initial assessment may be of Upper Palaeolithic date; this is yet to be confirmed.
The next major feature in the sequence was a large ditch, with a V-shaped profile, which ran across the western end of the trench from north to south, continuing into the area planned for excavation next season. The fills of this ditch contained residual quantities of early to middle Iron Age pottery, along with sherds dating to the second to first centuries BC. It is probable that it was dug no later than the second century BC, and had been filled by the end of the first century BC at the latest. The ditch is probably not large enough to be regarded as defensive, although it was certainly a significant feature; until more of its length is traced its role within the layout of the late Iron Age settlement remains unclear.
A round house, defined by a sequence of semi-circular drip gullies, lay a short distance east of the ditch. As noted in the previous newsletter article, it had a rectangular chamber cut into its floor, lined with Greensand slabs. Partial remains of a Greensand slab floor, set on a chalk rubble base, were also found. Excavation of the house this season revealed the articulated partial remains of a baby (estimated to be aged about nine months at time of death) in a small pit within the interior. A dog skull, complete apart from the lower jaw, had been placed on the base of the second phase drainage gully, facing towards the interior of the house.
The round house gullies also produced a large quantity of pottery. This is still being analysed, but Nick Watts (one of our Trustees) has partially reconstructed one vessel and provisionally identified it as a late Iron Age sand tempered coarseware storage jar, dating to circa 150-75/50 BC. It is likely to be a local product, perhaps produced at the site itself, with the sand sourced from the beach. Although the late Iron Age inhabitants at East Wear Bay had access to a wide range of imported materials, it seems very clear that this was also a place of production, whether that be of querns and other stone products, salt or, in all probability, pottery and coinage; indeed, the high incidence of Flat Linear II potin coinage at the site (dating to circa 50-35 BC), may indicate East Wear Bay as a possible production site for this coinage.
Overall, the pottery associated with the round house, along with a coin of the Durotriges (from Dorset), minted between 40-20 BC and found in the fill of the primary drainage gully, seems to indicate that it was in use during the second half of the first century BC. Further analysis of the finds will hopefully allow us to refine the chronology of occupation at the site.
As we move into the first century AD, both the large ditch and the round house fell out of use. A succession of field boundary ditches were then cut across the site. Interleaved between these, a series of stone surfaces, dumps of partially made querns, and Greensand debitage, spread across the western part of the excavated area, and extended beyond it to the south (where they will be further investigated next season). These spreads seem to form a roughly rectangular area, and it is possible that they represent the footprint of a large building. Certainly a number of postholes have been identified, but further study of the records, and excavation of the southern extent of these deposits, will be needed before this can be confirmed. What is not in doubt though, is that these deposits represent clear evidence of the production of rotary querns (and mortars) at this spot in the first century AD, probably in the decades immediately before and after the Roman conquest in AD 43. Querns had been produced at the site for many decades before this, and the Romans would later produce millstones from the Folkestone Greensand. The production area excavated in 2015/16 was, therefore, just one of many that would have existed across the wider cliff top area over the course of at least two centuries. Nonetheless, it is believed to be the first such production area subjected to systematic excavation anywhere in Britain to date (Chris Green pers. comm.).
Interestingly, the quantity of Iron Age material recovered during the 2015-16 seasons of the Field School far outweighs the quantity of Roman material, despite the fact that the site of two