SOTMAS Visit

Today we visited the current excavation site of our friends at Stoke-on-Trent Museum Archaeology Society. The group have been digging the site of an early post-medieval house for a few years and have uncovered much of the floor plan which displays various phases of building.

Recent discoveries seem to indicate other building phases while much remains to be understood about the structures and features already uncovered.

As might be anticipated from the open excavation of a domestic site, there have been many interesting finds, including the range of ceramics one might expect from a dwelling so close to The Potteries.

 Details of the dig can be found at the Society's website.

Moat Pseudo-Section

Here's the final plot from a series of resistivity readings taken at our moated site yesterday. The diagram shows a 'pseudo-section' ie a slice down into the ground across a single line, rather than the usual points on a horizontal plane.

The rubble-filled moat is clear to see (the big blue blob at left!) and its size and profile match with our excavations nearby. Being able to detect the former moat in this way should help us to trace its outline and limit the number of exploratory trenches we need to put in.

The higher resistance area at right lies within the area of the building platform and may hint at surviving foundations.

 

Creswell Crags

Engravings at 'Church Hole', made during the last ice age some 12,000 years ago

 

On Saturday 8th July, members visited Creswell Crags, near Worksop, Nottinghamshire, to attend a meeting organised by Dr George Nash on the subject of rock art. The programme consisted of seven lectures from eminent speakers covering subjects such as cup marks, ring marks, cave painting and linear incisions. The morning session was devoted to the art of the UK and Ireland while the afternoon focused on art from America, South Africa and Australia.

All of the lectures were superbly presented, resulting in many questions and discussions from the audience. This was an informative field trip which served to improve our knowledge of rock art, which is a fairly recent innovation within archaeological circles.

Spectacular scenery at Creswell Crags.

Image copyright Creswell Crags Museum & Heritage Centre

 

 

 

Progress at the Moated Site

 

Good progress is now being made on our current project, with almost a complete cross-section of the moat having been excavated. Our work to date shows that the moat was around 1.2m deep in the middle with the blue-grey sandstone floor rising gently towards each edge. The edges of the moat seem to be formed by a vertical 'wall' of clay in front of which, sand has been used to form a slope which in turn has also been covered with a thin layer of clay.

Dating evidence from the very bottom of the moat suggests it was last cleaned out in the second half of the 17th century but after that it was allowed to silt up. Fast forward to the late 1700s and the house which stood on the island platform was demolished and the rubble put into the moat. Since then around a foot of topsoil has built up both mostly as a result of leaf litter from the nearby oak trees.

The photo above shows the north end of our trench, where the rising floor meets a wall of clay at the furthest point.

We're still working on the south end (below), having just encountered the bottom of the clay slope in which the large stone at centre is set.

 

This artificial colour image shows the various strata to good effect; topsoil, demolition rubble, silt, clay slope, sand, sandstone at bottom and clay 'wall' at left:

 

Tilley Field Trip

On 24th June WAG members were treated to a guided tour of the beautiful Shropshire village of Tilley. Our hosts,  George Nash and Alastair Reid, have spent years studying the village's amazing collection of timber-framed houses and its history in general.

Their work forms the basis for two books, 'The Tilley Timber Project' and 'Tilley: The Secret History of a Secret Place'. The 'timber project' began with dendrochronological dating of timbers but expanded to include other historical aspects of the buildings concerned, while the 'secret history' book is a detailed look at the entire history of Tilley from the Anglo-Saxon era to the twentieth century.

One of the most fascinating details revealed by George and Alastair's work is the notable spikes in building activity in certain years, especially in the early seventeenth century. They were able to show that local trees were used for construction and explain the varied and intriguing range of carpenter's marks and witches marks. In the latter case experimental archaeology was used to discover exactly how candles could produce flame marks on oak beams without burning down the entire house!

The glorious weather (and tea and cakes in the garden!) topped off one of the most memorable and interesting visits WAG have made in recent years.