Anglo-Saxon Romsey
The Evidence in the Landscape
Digging
A Lifelong Interest in Paleontology, Geology and Archaeology
Fossil horsetail Calamites from Mazon Creek, Illinois.
The headline is wrong - I was 9 years old and from Itasca. It is correct about my early start in finding fossils - crinoids in the school playground. I was five when my mother told me that, when she was young, children found arrowheads where she lived. She said that people who studied fossils were called paleontologists and people who studied artefacts were archaeologists. I said, in that case, I will be an archaeologist.
Me at 13 with my sisters Sara and Polly. I'm holding a skull I found buried in the mud on the shore of Devil's Lake, North Dakota. It is the the skull of an extinct animal that lived in the Late Pleistocene, Bison antiquus.
I finally found my first arrowheads when I was 19, at Grassy Cove, Tennessee, while I was on a University of Illinois regional geology field course. I started university in September 1967 after spending a summer in Europe. Several weeks were spent cycling in England and staying in youth hostels, including Winchester City Mill. I saw the excavations next to Winchester cathedral and visited Stonehenge and Old Sarum. The next summer I came to the UK to dig as a volunteer. In my second year at university I completed my credits in Anthropology, mainly archaeology courses, and took several courses in geology. I also worked two part-time jobs in order to earn enough money to be able go back to the UK. I didn't use my return ticket.
I bought this postcard when I stayed in the Winchester City Mill youth hostel in 1967. Looking at again after half a century, it is clear that the scene was enhanced with a degree of artistic licence. The water in the Ladies' Bathing Place would have had a far gentler flow.
The view from the Ladies' Bathing Place - there is no need for a weir along the mill bypass channel. (See more on the mill and water power on the Romsey page.)
The dig by Winchester Cathedral was still ongoing when I bought these postcards in 1967.
I came to Europe in 1967 to visit my best friend from my schooldays in Itasca, Susanna Winters. She was staying with her father near Amsterdam. He was quite happy for us to head off to England on our bicycles for two weeks via the ferry to Dover. Our final destination was Stonehenge, staying in youth hostels on the way. By the time we arrived in Salisbury, we wanted a break from cycling. There was no bus to Stonehenge, so we got a bus to Amesbury and walked the rest of the way. After paying our entrance fee, we were free to wander around the stones. On the way back to Salisbury we visited Old Sarum.
Fortunately, I made a list of the excavations I was on while I still remembered the details. The dig at Durrington in 1970 included the excavation of a section of the ditch at Woodhenge. Part of the Stonehenge Avenue was excavated during the dig at Amesbury in 1973.
CBA British Archaeology magazine, January/February 2022.
Digging was different half a century ago. There were no hard hats or hi-vis jackets. Footwear was optional. I spent the summers in flip-flops. Volunteers were paid £7 a week on my first dig, increased to £10-10s the following year. We worked six days a week, with Saturdays off for shopping. Some of us were allowed a few days off to go to the Isle of Wight Festivals in 1969 and 1970 to see Bob Dylan and Jimi Hendrix.
Walesland Rath, Haverfordwest, Pembrokeshire - July 1968
An introduction to the life of a digger - sleeping in my little tent, evenings in the pub. A communal campfire provided the focus for a sing-song on Sunday evenings when the pubs in Pembrokeshire were all closed!
Information on the site is available on the Royal Commission on Ancient Monuments website.
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A view of the site from a colour slide. The tower to the left was used to photograph features from above, an activity that is much more efficient, and less dangerous, since the invention of drones. The director of the excavation, Geoff Wainwright, is just visible standing near his caravan.
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Marden Henge - July-August 1969
This excavation was my first experience of one of Geoff Wainwright's Big Digs. Numerous volunteers participated during the summer, between university terms. The marquee was used for tea breaks. Hot water was available, bring your own tea and coffee. There must have been a shortage of teaspoons - I remember diggers stirring their drinks with their trowels.
The site of the henge is now managed by English Heritage.
The Breiddin Hillfort - October-November 1969
Digging in the snow. A flame thrower was used to clear the trench at the start of the day's work. We camped next to a radio station at Criggion and had the use of a building for cooking. I was allowed to sleep in an office on particularly cold nights, but had to leave before the day shift arrived for work.
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Site huts on a snowy morning. Director Chris Musson supplied dried packet soup for tea breaks to help us keep warm. I was tasked with making the soup. This was not a sexist decision. I was the only girl on the site, but also the only digger with a wrist watch. The soup had to be boiled for a specified time.
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A report on the site can be downloaded from the Archaeology Data Service website:
The Breiddin Hillfort: A later prehistoric settlement in the Welsh Marches
C R Musson with W J Britnell and A G Smith
CBA Research Report No 76 (1991)
https://archaeologydataservice.ac.uk/archives/view/cba_rr/rr76.cfm
Woodhenge - May-June 1970
Peter Donaldson supervised a dig near Durrington, Wiltshire for Geoff Wainwright. We excavated an area that was going to disappear beneath a new road where we found evidence of a Romano-British settlement, including a corn-drying kiln. The highlight of the dig was the excavation of a section of the Woodhenge ditch. I remember finding a stack of antler picks at the bottom of the ditch. There is information on the history and discovery of the site on the English Heritage website.
Photo from Mount Pleasant, Dorset : excavations 1970-1971 by GJ Wainwright. The report included an account of the Woodhenge dig.
National Trust information board at Woodhenge showing monuments in the Stonehenge Landscape.
Back to Woodhenge for a visit in 2021. Concrete markers indicate the locations of the holes that held the posts. My grandson Ivor has inherited the good-at-finding-things gene - a future archaeologist, perhaps.
My son and grandson on their first excavation - at the Hyde900 Community Dig in Winchester.
Broome Heath, Norfolk - October 1970 - February 1971
A small group of Geoff Wainwright's diggers spent the winter excavating a Neolithic enclosure, under the supervision of John Hedges. The whole of the interior was excavated along with sections of the bank. Some of the features on the site were difficult to interpret - they turned out to be ice wedges, the silt-filled cracks created in the frozen ground during the Ice Age. Finds within the fill had probably been displaced by the activity of earthworms. The site was notable for the large number of flint tools it produced. The inner slope of one part of the bank was littered with dozens of scrapers. I worked on the site as a volunteer. The Department of the Environment had a policy of reducing volunteers' pay after three months. As a result, all the volunteers resigned and were replaced (on the payment sheet) with new staff. My replacement was named Gloria Swanson.
A description of the site on the Norfolk Heritage Explorer website includes a list of the worked flints found there, over 22,000 of them.
Eaton Heath, Norwich - March-June 1971
We excavated at Eaton Heath prior to the construction of a housing estate. We found several 'ritual shafts', now thought to possibly be natural geological features. Our concerns about the stability of the excavations weren't taken seriously until Geoff Wainwright was half-buried in a collapse. Fortunately, he was on his way up the ladder at the time. Timber for shoring was provided after the incident.
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Mount Pleasant Henge, Dorchester - August-September 1970 & July-September 1971
The site was excavated during the summers of 1970 and 1971. Both were Big Digs. Unfortunately, I don't have any photos for the first year. Digging a site on chalk bedrock is relatively unchallenging - the features show up well on the surface and their edges are clear when they are excavated. Someone took photos of me on my camera. I was having a good day, with someone helping remove the rubble. Most of the time I would have carried the bucket up the ladder myself.
The site photographer took a group photo of the diggers on the 1970 excavation, myself included. It is available here:
https://mikepitts.wordpress.com/2021/04/14/do-you-recognise-these-archaeologists/
Click on a photo to view the Gallery.
A load of telegraph poles was delivered to the site, and a television crew filmed the reconstruction of a palisade. They also filmed some of the excavators in action. I was working in the bottom of the palisade trench. The crew asked me to cover the antler pick I had just found with rubble so they could film me finding it. Some of the diggers saw the footage on the television in the pub later that evening.
Gussage All Saints, Dorset - May-September 1972
The entire site of an Iron Age settlement was excavated. A small group of us spent a couple of months preparing the site prior to the arrival of dozens of volunteers in July. We trowelled the whole of the area to expose the features cut into the chalk bedrock. Site director Peter Donaldson called us to the site hut one afternoon and declared a 'Beer Break' for which he provided a crate of bottles, including cider for me. This was a one-off, and much appreciated, occasion.
The excavation report can be downloaded from the Archaeology Data Service website:
https://archaeologydataservice.ac.uk/archives/view/eh_monographs_2014/contents.cfm?mono=1089034
Click on a photo to view the Gallery.
The Beer Break
Moulds, bone tools and crucibles from Gussage All Saints, Pit 209, in the British Museum.
I spent a month excavating Pit 209. It had been used for the disposal of debris from a metalworkers' workshop which was making bronze objects, mainly horse equipment and fittings for chariots, using the Lost Wax process. Wax models were covered in clay to form the moulds used for casting. Finds in the pit reflected the various stages involved - bone tools for modelling the wax, crucibles for melting the metal, and the moulds which had been broken open to remove the castings. Blacksmiths worked nearby - there was iron hammer scale in some of the layers of ash and debris. A selection of the finds are on display in the British Museum.
Finds from Pit 209 are discussed by Sophia Adams in The Crucible - Historical Metallurgy Society News, Issue 24, 2017:
https://historicalmetallurgy.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/01/The-Crucible-94.pdf
Photo and section drawings of Pit 209 from the excavation report Gussage All Saints - An Iron Age Settlement in Dorset by G J Wainwright.
Embury Beacon, North Devon - October 1972 - March 1973
We spent the winter digging an Iron Age promontory fort on the edge of a very high cliff - note the location of the barrow run. There was a large crack running through one of the trenches. Part of the excavated area has disappeared over the cliff in the past half century. The site is now managed by the National Trust. It lies on the Coast Path within an Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty. Photos of the site and a 3D model can be found on the North Devon Coast AONB website.
Tea break in the site hut.
Welcombe Mouth beach
The Hermitage on Google Maps.
All of us working on the excavation spent the winter in relative luxury in a house called The Hermitage, a short walk from Welcombe Mouth beach. There was a bathtub and hot water! The three American diggers - Andra Kurlis, Mary Rosner and me - spent Christmas in the house. Everyone else was back to see in the new year of 1973 at the New Inn in Clovelly.
Embury Beacon was a mile north of Welcombe Mouth beach and our dig house. We were able to drive to the excavation site along a track further up the coast, approaching the fort from the north. The site is on the horizon at the top of the cliff. The trench cut through the bank is visible in the photo.
The section through the bank shows up in black against the snow-dusted earthwork.
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Welcombe Mouth Beach
Castle Hill, Cambridge - April-June 1973
A small group of archaeologists excavated the graveyard of All Saints by the Castle. The church was founded sometime between 950 and 1050 and went out of use in 1365. No trace of the church building was found during the excavation of the cemetery. I particularly remember excavating the skeleton of a pregnant woman with her fetus - perhaps she died in childbirth. Another individual had a lower left leg that was noticeably shorter than the right, either a deformity or the result of an injury. The most unusual burial on the site was a pair of skeletons lying side-by-side and face down. A later disturbance had removed their skulls. When I lifted the skeletons I found an articulated left arm directly underneath them. A third person had been buried with them to their right, also in a prone position. The course I took at the University of Illinois in Physical Anthropology came in very useful on this dig. We were expected to be able to identify each bone in the human skeleton, right side and left side, from bone fragments.
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After the skeletons were bagged and boxed on site, the bones remained in storage for nearly half a century, untouched and therefore uncontaminated. This made them suitable for inclusion in a major project that scientifically examined around 1000 medieval skeletons from excavations in Cambridge. The skeletons from All Saints by the Castle represent the ordinary people of the town. Several of them are featured on the After the Plague website with imagined biographies based on the study of their bones.
Article in the Guardian on 1 December 2023 describing the Cambridge project and announcing the new After the Plague website.
London - May-July 1974
Working on excavations in London was a very different experience from my previous digs, with a daily commute by Underground from the suburbs to the East End. I worked on a site on the London Docks where I remember finding lovely sherds of Metropolitan slipware, some of which fit together to make complete pots. One day I was taken to see the place where the pottery finds were being examined. There were several tables covered in sherds which were about to be bagged after the joins had been identified. I walked around the tables fitting pieces together. The next day I was moved to the pottery section. A childhood spent doing jigsaw puzzles had provided me with a useful skill.
Click on a photo to view the Gallery.
