Aiji and Stuart begin to uncover the post holes in the wall trench of the hall
What a very exciting few days we’ve had! We’ve been looking carefully for the presence of post holes in the wall trench of the hall that we opened last week. A similar hall building at Cowdery’s Down, Hampshire, had two rows of planks, burnt in situ, forming the end walls of the hall. Would we find anything similar?
At first it looked doubtful, but as the trench was taken down we started to see darker patches appearing. We extended the slot and suddenly saw two clear rows of rectangular post hole slots, exactly what we had hoped for! They were very difficult to see from above, so it was only at this lower level that the began to appear clearly.
Here you can make out the two parallel rows of rectangular plank-shaped post holes running through the middle of the wall trench
We’re now a couple of days into week three of the excavations and the floor plan of the hall is looking just as it should with the lovely plank-in-trench end walls. The planks would have formed the back wall to the hall building. This would have been a non-load bearing wall, which explains the small size of the plank holes, and it even seems like the backfill on the inside of the wall planks contains domestic debris.
Frances takes the sunken-featured building down carefully and slowly
Progress in all areas of the excavation is coming along brilliantly. The SFB is throwing up huge amounts of animal bone. In order to excavate this feature as carefully as possible we divided the rectangular-shaped SFB pit into quarters and began to remove opposite quadrants to get a profile of the layers across the whole pit, taking down the infill of the pit 5cm at a time.
Even though we’re only 5cm down on one quadrant and just about 10cm on the other, you can see the large amount of animal bone scattered through the fill of the SFB, as Melissa, Frances, Alan and Emily dig down into the pit.
The sunken-featured building is jam-packed full of animal bone, pottery and daub.
The quantity of animal bone, pottery, daub, metal-working slag (waste material from smithing and smelting) and even Roman brick and tile is remarkable. We also had a beautiful piece of what looks to be very early Saxon pottery out of the SFB, with these lovely ridges of decoration.
A closer look at some decorated pottery from the SFB
Emily shows off her sherd of decorated Saxon pottery
Emily shows off her sherd which could be as early as the 5th century AD. It is thought that some SFBs were backfilled in one or two episodes from nearby surface middens after they went out of use or were abandoned, so often there are quite early finds mixed with later artefacts contemporary to the period of use or abandonment of the building.
A shale spindle whorl found in a post hole
At the other end of the site, pits and post holes are being excavated. Gianluca’s very small post hole appears to have more than its fair share of finds, with a lovely shale spindle whorl and two pieces of probably Saxon glass. A spindle whorl is a specially made or adapted item with a hole in the middle that is used to tension and weight the wool in spinning by hand, producing a length of usable yarn from the fluffy chunks of shorn and carded wool.
Gianluca excavates his productive post hole. This is where the shale spindlewhorl came from.
This spun yarn would then be used for weaving. Spindle whorls are found the world over, made of all sorts of material. In previous years we have found examples carved out of chalk and bone, and sometimes Roman tile or pottery is pierced and rounded.
Max excavates a ditch that runs across the hall building
Keith is busy with Les, Max, Joe and Dave cutting slots into the linear features that project across the hall building, finding lots of intercutting features.
The ditches and pits cutting across the hall building under excavation by (L-R) Les, Dave, Max and Joe
We’re looking for good dating evidence to help us date the hall building more accurately, but lots of intercutting pits are coming up as they dig into the ditch-like features.
Bone needle found in the SFB
Other finds have been coming up over the past couple of days. This beautiful bone needle is only missing its point, and is a lovely example of the items related every day crafts, and we also have lovely decorated pieces of bone, most likely from a bone comb. These are often some of the prettiest and most delicate items from the Saxon period.
This piece is decorated with horizontal lines, extremely fine, less than a millimetre apart.
Small fragment of worked bone, possible from a bone comb, found in the SFB
The skill is very advanced – the decoration is perfectly aligned, and you can imagine how hard it would be to do yourself with the materials available in the Anglo-Saxon period.
Fragments of bone comb, with visible teeth, also from the SFB
Everyone has got into the swing of things here, getting used to what the archaeology and geology are like here at Lyminge, and the systems that we use. The first few weeks are involved with making sure everything is set up properly and getting everything revealed, but now we can finally say excavation is fully underway, and some of the smaller pits and post holes have been fully excavated. Now that we have established what is going on in the end walls of the hall building, we’re excited to see the construction method for the load-bearing walls. Over the next few days we’ll be opening a portion of the southern side of the hall building and we’ll be keeping our fingers crossed for post holes and datable finds!
Rosie and I went up on site on Sunday to check a few things and saw this beautiful rainbow!