A view across Tayne Field as the last of the dig infrastructure was packed up at the end of the 2015 dig
It’s been quite a while since our last updates on the Lyminge Project, but we have some lovely ‘Lyminge News’ to share with you all from this ‘behind-the-excavation’ period of research.
It seems like it was only a little while ago that we were unearthing the flints and finds in the bottom of our ‘blob’, but the months have in reality flown past. It might seem like the project has been hibernating, and certainly the blog has been rather quiet in the months following the completion of our final excavation in summer 2015, but we wanted to reassure you that there is still plenty of work going on behind the scenes. The project Director, Gabor Thomas, is currently fully absorbed in completing funding applications for the large and complex programme of post-excavation analysis required to bring the excavations to publication. As promised, we will keep you posted on progress on the results of these applications over the coming months.
We are pleased to report that some of the star finds made in last summer’s excavation have been conserved by Dana Goodburn-Brown and we wanted to share the fantastic results with you. Remember these lovely finds as they came up?
Pre-conservation finds from ‘the blob’
They have now been stunningly conserved. The shot below recently taken at Dana’s Sittingbourne Lab contains items you will recognise from previous blog posts, and is a wonderful example of what happens to the artefacts after the excitement of excavation:
Finds excavated in the summer of 2015 and beautifully conserved by Dana Goodburn-Brown (c) D. Goodburn-Brown
Here you can see a selection of gilded Anglo-Saxon brooches – a garnet-inlaid disc brooch (top left), a pair of button brooches (top and centre right) and a Frankish bird brooch (top centre) – alongside the fragment of a buckle (centre), the collar (centre left) from a decorative setting, and, at the bottom, a lovely iron spearhead. All of these objects were recovered from the midden deposits excavated from ‘The Blob’ and date to the sixth-century AD, contemporary with the use of the Anglo-Saxon cemetery located at the north of the village.
The latest project publication in Antiquity
Not only do we have news of the objects, but we would also like to share news of recent and forthcoming publications based on the excavations at Lyminge. A paper on the remarkable Anglo-Saxon plough coulter recovered from the 2010 excavations has just been published in the prestigious journal, Antiquity. The article is available to view or download Open Access from the journal’s website.
The Lyminge Plough Coulter on display in Maidstone Museum in 2015
We are also pleased to announce that the proceedings of the Lyminge Project Conference held in Canterbury in April 2015 will be published by the end of the year.
The volume will be published in the series Anglo-Saxon Studies in Archaeology & History under the title:
‘Early Medieval Monasticism in The North Sea Zone – Recent Research and New Perspectives: Proceedings of an international conference held to celebrate the conclusion of the Lyminge Project excavations, University of Kent, 24-26th April 2015’.
We will circulate a post as soon as the volume rolls off the press.
I have saved what I consider to be my favourite piece of Lyminge Archaeology news until last. Our focus over these last few years of digging in the village has been the wonderful archaeology, but just as important has been our impact on the community and the village,
The talented group of sewers behind the Lyminge Tapestry
and our fantastic team of local volunteers and visitors, some of whom have been finds washing with us since the first test pits in 2007 and the first large excavations in 2008. We were particularly thrilled, therefore, when a group of our volunteers asked if we would mind if they designed a tapestry to commemorate the excavations – of course we were thrilled!
As you can see from the below masterpiece, they recently finished. It contains images of the halls and sunken-featured buildings that were excavated on Tayne Field since 2012, as well as incredibly accurate renditions of some of the artefacts, animals, and the activities that would have taken place we uncovered with the help of all our volunteers. The tapestry is proudly on display in the Tayne Centre across from the excavation site. Huge congratulations to the sewers of an incredibly beautiful piece of work: Maureen Cox, Niki Hunnisett, Eileen Jennings, Margaret Keeble, Janet Reynolds , Rosemary Selman, Pam Sidders, Andree Sladden, Pauleen Stewart, Gill Wren and Katharine Barber with local artist Nikki Barratt who designed the tapestry and Angela Camplin who provided calligraphy in the framing.
The stunning Lyminge Tapestry commemorating the excavation and the archaeology of Lyminge
You might be able to spot objects that have been in the blog, and we have been told that the Director and his family have even been inserted – can you spot them?
We wanted to go to Lyminge and have a tangiable impact as well as do some important research. Not only has the team made friends for life, the beautiful tapestry is proof of the positive impact archaeology and history can have on a community.
We’ll be back soon to update you on whats happening with the project, and of course let you know when the conference proceedings are published.
Great news.