Looking forward to the

2012 season

(April 2012 - August 2012)

Booking early to avoid disappointment

 

 

Well we have finished our eleventh season at Saveock and just like every year  it has created more questions about what was going on here than answers! The excavation of pit 42 the Goat pit dating from post 1970’s was to say the least a bit of a shock last season and we excavated more pits in 2011 but all had been emptied in antiquity.

 In fine Time Team tradition during the last week we excavated a Neolithic Leaf arrowhead and a number of fire cracked stones indicating a cooking area. Both these items are a first at Saveock. We have had the diggers and dumpers in this Autumn and moved the spoil from next to the area we found the arrowhead and fire stones and are going to be digging that in our 2012 season. So maybe we are going to be excavating a feasting area next to the Neolithic ritual pool in trench A1. The arrowhead could have been embedded in some meat being cooked by the firestones. This is just an idea, it will probably be something completely different! This is the joy of digging here it is never predictable!

 

Personally I have had a rough summer due to a family member being seriously ill and finally losing his fight with heart disease in September. This is why there was no dig diary this year.

 

We are now taking bookings for next season, our prices are the same as last year £195
per week and an optional extra £25 per week if you want lunches. Otherwise you can bring a packed lunch.

 

     You will also be able to buy signed copies of my books
‘Prehistoric Cooking’ and ‘Tasting the Past’ direct from me
using PayPal.

 

Again I feel I need to emphasise that this dig is a training dig,
but it is training out in the field not in a lecture room. Novice
diggers will for the first few days be digging topsoil, but it will
be topsoil we have not dug before so you will be doing real
archaeology from day one. If it is wet we will do post excavation
work which is just as important to any dig as trowelling is.

 

We believe that the best place to learn is in the field
doing what professional archaeologists do. Class room teaching
is no substitute for getting your hands dirty and emptying
buckets. We do have set features on site to teach section
drawing and planning but these are real features not made up
ones. You will be taught on a one to one basis how to plan on a
very tricky part of the main site and at the end of the day we  lay your plan over the one we have done of the feature so you can really learn how to plan. It is no good telling someone their test plan is great and then they go to another dig with a feeling they are brilliant at planning only to find they have a bit more to learn about the subject.      Learning excavation techniques is not rocket science but after a bit of practice in the field everyone can do it.

 

Once a week we do spend an hour in my lecture room with a slide show of the other work I do which is Experimental Archaeology. I worked on the ‘Ice Man’ ‘Otzi’ artefacts for the museum where he is exhibited in Italy and this is featured in the talk.

 

There is a tour of our facilities page, so you can see we are not a Porta cabin in a muddy field. We are a well equipped research excavation that believes archaeology should be available to anyone who wants to learn how to dig. For those of you new to the site for the first time here is a brief synopsis of the earlier phase of the excavation in this sheltered river valley in Mid Cornwall. The site covers a period from the Mesolithic to 17th century Pagan Swan feather pits (more information about these can be found by clicking on the link in the Feather Pits, and Goat pit sections on the right of this page).

 

In the Mesolithic the main site trench was over a south facing peat bank on the bend of a river that was between two shallow lakes. This entire site has been purposely covered with various different coloured clays in an attempt to make the river bank a suitable place for dwellings. In the area A/2 the first phase of the site, is what we believe to be a Mesolithic dwelling platform covered with dense green clay surrounded by stony yellow clay in which the stakes to support the dwelling were driven. The next phase we believe (and the jury is still out on this) is the use of the constant spring line to make some sort of Neolithic ritual area. We say ritual because we cannot think of any conceivable reason why people would make stone lined drains covered with 30cm of green admix clay. Then manufacture a large rectangular pool lined with white quartz cores, unless it was for some ritual purpose. In season five (2005) we found another rectangular pool next to the original this one only fills with water from a spring in the bank at the back of it in mid Winter.

 

These features are at present unique in Cornish or from what we have researched British archaeology. The only similar feature we have found is the Neolithic clay platform that is underneath the Maeshowe monument on Orkney. A trench put into this platform revealed a stone lined drain almost identical to ours. So if you feel like a bit of adventure and learn how to dig at the same time come and join us in our 12^th season.

 

     Jacqui Wood