Welcome
To our eighth season of digging at Saveock Water Archaeology. What we do.
Advantages of digging at Saveock Water Archaeology
Porthtowan Beach
4 miles from site
Dates for Season Nine field school
April 2009 - August 2009
YES WE DO START THE WEEK ON A SUNDAY
Jacqui Wood
Experimental Archaeologist
International Lecturer and Author
Papers & Articles by Jacqui
Saveock in Print
Mesolithic Studies in the North Sea Basin and Beyond: Proceedings of a conference held at Newcastle in 2003.
Bookings now being taken for our
2009 season
(June 2009 - August 2009)
Bookings no longer available for the week
beginning 26th July
Due to e-mail server problems please contact us at
We are just preparing for our 9th season at Saveock planning new trenches we are going to put in and contemplating what surprises Saveock is going to throw at us this season! In view of the international media interest in the site last year and with two new magazine features in Britain and in Europe about to go into print, booking early is essential if you want to come on particular weeks.
We have the booking form on the education page with information about local student recommended accommodation and a sample of our typical lunch menu. We believe if you are going to learn how to dig you might as well have a good lunch while you are about it! No experience is necessary just an enthusiasm to discover what people did in the past and meet interesting people from all walks of life in the trenches. We had an article in Archaeology magazine in America in October which we will put on the homepage soon for you to look at.
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 section on the right of this page). The main site is over a south facing peat bank on the bend of a river that used to be 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 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.
Jacqui Wood
Director
