Making Good Use of the KAS Resistivity Meter
The new KAS resistivity meter (RM) is a great improvement on the old one. That one refused to work for us on some of our sites, even if one gave it some coercion with the rubber mallet (yes, it really was a recommended practice!). It may have been unable to cope because our Lenham Heath sites have a dense, hard iron pan some 50cm beneath the sandy soil. The new one, we find, switches up into higher range automatically to cope with this.
Our most recent investigations have been on a medieval Chapel site (1296), and an Iron Age settlement lying close by. Using the RM in the summer, when the subsoil sand is like the Sahara, gives a very high reading, and tends to mask the true situation. Winter investigation is therefore better, and during the short farming slot this winter, we worked hard to cover as much of the site as possible. There is much demand for use of the machine and we had to vie for booking with the Otford and Dover Archaeological Groups, and the University of Kent!
Our work using the new RM revealed almost the same shape as images on aerial photographs; was this a possible rectangular ditched area? Certainly it is a feature lying outside of the main Iron Age settlement area. Our excavations of the site had some success; the feature shown so clearly is a ditch, but was at a depth of 130cm. This deep detection by the RM was more likely to be the absence of the iron pan as much as the presence of a ditch. For, when we sectioned the feature, in the area to the east of the ditch the iron pan is in evidence, but to the west it appears to have been removed. Finds indicate quite clearly an Iron Age date for the ditch, with pottery sherds interspersed with iron slag and pieces of charcoal. The presence of several worked flint flakes at the bottom layer indicates the ditch could have earlier origins, and may have been re-cut on an older one, but it is difficult to say. Close to the pieces from Iron Age pot was one piece of ironstone, unremarkable till it was lifted and then one could see it had a natural form exactly like that of a female breast! (fig1). The possibility that it was buried as an offering to the Earth goddess becomes likely. There were far less sherds and iron slag in this ditch compared to the number found in a 1m square test pit within the main settlement area; could this be a ditch around a sacred site, particularly given its rectangular shape?
Further RM work located the causewayed gate to the main Iron Age settlement. There appears to be a bar/bank directly in front of the entrance, possibly with a stone abutment holding the original palings, for the reading was exceptionally high. The old name of the field is ‘Mouldstone Gate’ so it does not preclude the possibility that there was some fancy stonework involved! There is evidence of Romanization from Samian scraps found amongst Iron Age pottery in a trial pit. We anticipate more findings when the barley is cut later in the year.
Our excavation then moved to the site of the medieval chapel where we dug a narrow trench across the area and extended it in slots to try and find the walls. Most of the walling was robbed out but 15cm depth of rubble with mortar, wall plaster fragments and floor tile was found (fig 2), together with a few scraps of window glass and leaded edging. Within the rubble was the skeleton of a modern pig, possibly buried early last century. Kent peg tiles and a piece of the floor tile lay underneath it, and it had been weighted down with a large piece of iron slag and wall stones (fig 3).
Lesley Feakes
Lenham Archaeology Group
Fig 1: The tiles are highly glazed with clear, black, or yellowish green, not unlike the glaring colours used at Boxley Abbey
