Lunch break 1972

A solitary figure could not bear to leave the cutting during this lunch break photo taken by Lydia Savage in 1972. The postholes of the Iron Age longhouses are plainly visible in the foreground.

Concerning my post yesterday mentioning Elsie Clifford, Lydia writes: "Mrs Clifford was a star. We used to take tea with her every August and explain the latest findings. She deeply wanted the Birdlip mirror to belong to a noble lady resident on the hill settlement but as you all have realised by now this was an impossibility. Her husband used to give her so many man hours of diggers as a present every so often and off she would go to Bagendon or Hucclecote. The Jane Marple of Archaeology, complete with garden and needlework. Two things which are probably not recorded anywhere on the Web: her ginger cake was unique and wonderful and extremely effective on cold days. Also her birthday was around the same day as mine. Only about half a century before. :) "

Back to 1972 ...

A peaceful scene from 1972 on Clive Anderson's cutting, kindly supplied by Lydia Savage. This must have been exactly the phase when the large postholes for the Iron Age longhouses and roundhouses were emerging. Let's hope the digger sitting on the edge of the cutting wasn't as miserable as her hunched outline suggests. This picture is looking southeast towards the southern section of the Iron Age rampart.

Fourth Report, 1972: Part V

 Click on image to enlarge

Today, with thanks to PWD for permission, the final part of the Fourth Report from 1972:

"The Period 3 Settlement

The Period 2 settlement was destroyed by fire, presumably at the same time as the burning of the Period 2 defences.  Before the laying of the Period 3b road surface a large roundhouse was built across the western end of House 2.  The post circle of this house was 11.6 m in diameter, but outside it, to the north, perhaps platform formed a shelf about 3 cm higher than the surrounding bedrock; this shelf, produced by traffic wear around the house, ran from 1.7 m to 2.4 m outside the circle; on the south side a burnt streak and clusters of burnt daub continued the line, which is taken to represent a wattled partition framed, like those of the Period 2 houses, on sleeper beams resting on the ground surface.  The porch lay on the west side, facing away from the entrance to the hillfort, and appears to have been supported by diagonal braces set in slots.

The total diameter of the roundhouse was about 14.8 m.  A number of post holes whose dating is uncertain lay within the circle.  Some may belong to partitions at the west end of House 2 of Period 2: postholes 522, 541 and 542 probably associated with the roundhouse, but none were substantial enough to have held up the roof.  No central support was possible, for a hearth lay in the middle of the house, and while roof supporting posts might have rested on the ground surface (producing a tower-like structure similar to that proposed for Little Woodbury roundhouse (Bersu, 1940) no evidence of this is likely to be forthcoming.  Like the roundhouses of similar size, and apparently similar construction, at Pimperne or Longbridge Deveril, the roof construction of the Crickley roundhouse is problematic.

To the south west of House 4 two small hearths were surrounded by clusters of small postholes.  Further holes, both small and large, lay to the south of the roundhouse and to the north of House 1.  For none are there adequate grounds to allow period attribution, and all are shown in figure 5 as of uncertain period.  The excellent preservation of the hearths might suggest ascription to the final phase of occupation, and this, more tentatively, might be indicated by the undue proximity of one of the structures to the front of House 5.  The post holes around hearth 801 could be seen as a trapezoidal building: heavy burning to the south of the hearth had reduced the bedrock to quicklime, an intense heat that suggests some industrial function from the building.  The internal post holes were perhaps to support a frame around hearth itself.  No clear pattern can be made of the post holes in other areas, and, as flimsy shelters, drying racks or similar two or more pos-structures, some may belong to the Period 2 and others too are shown for convenience, on the Period 3 plan (figure 6).

If the Period 3a defences are correctly interpreted as a temporary re-fortification of the hilltop after the Period 2 destruction (Dixon, 1970), the roundhouse may have been built during Period a 3a.  It was burnt down during the destruction of the 3b and  defences, and the site was then abandoned.

Discussion

The decorated sherds of fine fabric with incised linear ornament (illustrated and described in Dixon, 1971) which came from the info of the latest rampart (Period 3b) are now closely matched by pottery from the postholes of the Period 2 roundhouse.  Almost all the material from the Period 2 post holes, however, consists of sherds of coarse fabric with sagging shoulders and irregular rims; the only decorated sherd comes from the post-pipes of the five-post  structure between Houses 1 and 3, and presumably  relates to the period after the Period 2 settlement. 

This break in the ceramic tradition, whatever interpretation be put upon it, should therefore be placed between Period 2 and Period 3a, a period which saw the change from longhouse to roundhouse, and also from daub filled with grit to clean sifted daub in the wattling of these buildings.

Comparanda for the pottery should be treated with caution in view of the paucity of the material.  The closest parallels for the sherds of the latest period appear to come from the Upper Thames (references given in Dixon 1971), in context now ascribed to the initial stages of the Iron Age and dated not later than the sixth century BC (Harding, 1972).  The cultural context of the longhouses is at present quite uncertain.  Analysis of strata deposited by erosion between Period 2 and Period 3a indicated no considerable time-span (Dixon, 1970) but calibration of this in terms of years, decades or even centuries is hardly possible.

The longhouses themselves are of a type seldom recognized in Britain.  At Park Brow in Sussex (Wolseley, 1925) a ten-poster longhouse was associated with Hallstadt pottery, and a very few others have been noticed in Wales, Scotland, and, conjecturally, on the Thames (Harding 1972, pp 34-5) But on the continent the longhouse type, many with evidence of byres as true longhouses is predominant in many areas from the Neolithic onwards.  The discovery of an extensive regularly planned settlement of longhouses at Crickley is thus an unexpected outcome of the 1972 season.  Although the dearth of insular parallels draws attention to origins on the continent, it is any reasonable to suppose that further settlements of this sort still await discovery, on new sites or perhaps even among reports of old excavations.

Future work

In 1973 we shall continue the excavation of the area behind the entrance, and hope to reveal more of both the longhouse and the roundhouse settlements.  The work requires volunteers and adequate financing to augment the generous support of the Gloucestershire College. Donations (to the Crickley Hill Fund) and offers of assistance should be sent to the Secretary of the excavations, Mr.  R. D. A.  Savage, Gloucestershire College of Art and Design,, Cheltenham Glos., GL52 3JG from whom further copies of these notes, and copies of the notes on previous seasons, may be obtained (1969, 15p 1970 and 1971, 25p all plus 5p for postage etc.).  Persons interested in taking part in future seasons of excavation in this series should get in touch with Mr Savage at the address given (telephone Cheltenham 32501).

References

Bersu, 1940: ‘Excavation at Little Woodbury’, Proc. Prehist.Soc. VI

Dixon, 1969, 1970, 1971: 1^st 2^nd and 3^rd interim reports (Gloucestershire College of Art and Design in Cheltenham)

Harding, 1972: The Iron Age in the Upper Thames Basin

Soudsky, 1969: ‘Etude de la maison Neolithique’, Slovenska Archaeologia XVII

Stanford, 1970: ‘Credenhill Camp…’ Arch. Journal CXVII

Waterbolk, 1964: ‘The Bronze Age Settlement of Elp’ Helinium 4

Wolseley et al, 1925: ‘Prehistoric and Roman Settlements on Park Brow’ Archaeologia LXXVI"

The postholes of the longhouses

1972 was the season when a very large area was dug which revealed the Iron Age longhouses' post holes.  They show up perfectly in this photograph of Andrew Powell's, taken from just inside the rampart looking directly west across the cuttings.  One thing that looks faintly curious, to my eye at least, is the proximity of the huts to the cuttings the huts were always erected at some distance from the excavated areas.   For a different perspective on the same cuttings in the same season, see this aerial photograph which I posted in November.

Savage 1988 5: The Last Neolithic Fortress

My thanks to Richard Savage and the Crickley Hill Trust for permission to reproduce abstracts from Richard's 1988 booklet: here the Neolithic section as an Easter treat. Note the chilling last sentence.

A defended Neolithic village c.  2500 BC  

About 2500 BC the last Neolithic defence at Crickley was built following the line of the inner causewayed enclosure to the east but extending the defended area by 40 m to the west, to include the flat shelf above the tip of the promontory.  The new ditch was continuous, except where broad causeways gave three entrances -- north-east, south-east, and west - and provided the stone for a low wall, at most a metre high, carefully built with the internal walls packed with rubble in a cellular structure.  At the rear of the wall stood a wooden palisade.

The new ditch was built outside the ditch of the old inner enclosure on the east, following its line and so close to it that the quarriers of the new ditch twice broke through into the old one.  Each time, they re-sealed the gap with a miniature wall of stone, as though they were anxious not to release some force or entity believed to lurk in the old pits -- which they felt about strongly enough to undertake the tremendous labour of making a wholly new ditch in the living rock, instead of clearing the old one and re-using it and its stone.  The new wall in this sector was built over the old, filled pits.  Apparently their influence could be confined, and would not weaken it.

[Illustration: Bowman. C. Clark]

This new defence, and the settlement it protected, had much in common with its predecessors.  It east an entrances coincided with those of the causewayed enclosures, and the southeastern one gave access to a fenced road along which were aligned at least to two rectangular wooden houses.  60 m inside the entrance, the road turned north to the settlement on the high point of the hill which is marked by dense clusters of pottery, flint, post holes, stakeholes, and a flint-working area, to which the north-west entrances also gave access.  But where it turned north, a gate now controlled access to a narrow path continuing along the road's original westward axis but leading only towards a fenced area with no other entry, on the shelf above the tip of the promontory. 

[Illustration: Conjectural reconstruction of the last Neolithic fortress. The positions of the central houses are not yet known. R. Morgan]

On this shelf stood the  settlement's shrine, the entrance to its precinct guarded by diminutive upright stone and a wooden gateway or arch.  Although the stone is in the middle of the path, and only a few centimetres high, the wear of the cobbling shows that all the traffic passed to the south of it.  The rituals of the shrine involved fire, the burning of bone, perhaps in animal sacrifices, and apparently the gathering of pottery, flint, bone and antler in special places away from the centre of the precinct but overlapping its edges.

[Illustration: The shrine. C. Clark]

The position of the shrine is remarkable.  It is hidden from watchers on the main body of the promontory to the east by the swell of the highest point, unless they are placed exactly in the line of the natural hollows leading to it, while had overlooked a panorama of the Severn Vale and will have been visible from great distances to the north, south and west.

Access to the tip of the promontory and the path down to the Vale by this route was specifically denied, and a traveller entering the settlement from the south-east could only gain it by turning north outside the shrine, passing through the central settlement area and going out through the north-west entrance, from which the shrine was isolated by its fence.

This last Neolithic settlement ended in violence.  It was burnt - houses, gateways and all -  after an attack by bowmen whose flint arrowheads hungrily crowd the palisades and entrances.  Four hundred have been found at Crickley so far; they are the remnants are one of the first known battlefields.  To judge from examples preserved at waterlogged sites, the bows were large and powerful, not very different from the longbows of Crecy and Agincourt.  Flint arrowheads penetrate flesh better than steel ones, and are more likely to break off in the wound.

[Photographs and plan: Neolithic flint arrowheads (length 40, and 40mm), and their find-places in a 100m length of the neolithic defences]

Fourth Report, 1972: part IV

Click on the images to enlarge.

Thank you again to PWD for permission to reproduce abstracts from the Fourth Report for 1972.

"Reconstruction of the Period 2 Houses

The Period 2 hollow way narrowed where it ran between Houses 1 and 2, and came no closer than 1.5m to the lines of posts.  The traffic was presumably here being funnelled by a barrier, and it thus seems likely that the outer walls of the houses lay the beyond the lines of the post holes, which thus formed internal supports of the roof structure.  Absence of post holes for such an outer wall creates no difficulties, for the problems, experimentally observed, during the course of our excavations, of cutting small post holes in the oolite might well induce even builders accustomed to earth-fast posts to rely on walling framed on sleeper beams.  In House 5 two post holes in this outer position can be seen as additional evidence for a framed exterior wall: House 5 had no other postholes in this position and the two outer holes perhaps supported a special structure -- the largest house having the most imposing facade.  Between House 1 and House 3 a small square structure with a central posthole, perhaps to support a raised floor, projected beyond the lines of postholes into the roadway.  As can be seen in figure 6, however, the proposed outer walls of Houses 1 and 3 aligned with the south wall of this square structure, which thus continued the line of the street frontage. 

Suggested reconstructions of the longhouses are shown in figure 7.  The simplest method would probably have been to fit horizontal timbers (aisle plates) between the aisle posts on the longitudinal axes of the houses; as at Stonehenge, a plain mortice-and-tenon joint would suffice to join aisle post to aisle plate.  Reconstruction 2 shows one such interpretation with the addition of a substantial outer turf wall to support the ends of a common rafter roof.  Considerable quantities of burned daub from wattling were found around the houses and in the postholes.  This suggests that the outer walls were merely wattled screens, but these could conveniently have been framed on sleeper beams and could, even without earth-fast posts, have supported considerable weight.  But it is noticeable that the post-settings are paired symmetrically, and this suggests an alternative more complex upper structure.  The aisle posts could have been held together by tie-beams across the width of the house and the roof supported on couples at about 10’ centres.  Such a structure - a principal rafter roof - is shown in Reconstruction 1 and in the perspective and axonometric drawings in figure 7. Further elaboration of the roof structure is too hypothetical, but could include bracing and crown posts on the tie-beams.

House 1 and House 7 (see figure 3) preserved evidence of centrally placed hearth, and other houses may have been similarly heated.  The hearth in House 1 survived merely as the circle of scorched bedrock, and the erosion in other areas could easily have removed the evidence of fire. 

The hollow way continued as far as the end of the second bay of houses one and two.  No further trace of it could be found, and it is therefore possible that the entrances to these longhouses were lateral (see cover drawing).  At the east end of House 4 an additional posthole, 811, may have been for a gable door.  Apart from a streak of burning which might indicate that a porch stood on the north side of bay five in House 5, there was no other evidence for door positions, and there is so far very little trace of the subdivisions that are found in comparable structures on the continent of Europe (e.g. Waterbolk, 1964)."

The 1983 to 1985 entry in the Transactions of BGAS

Thank you to the Bristol and Gloucestershire Archaeological Society for permission to reproduce extracts from their Transactions.  Here is Richard Savage reporting on three seasons at once. 

"Badgeworth/Coberley, Crickley Hill, Excavations 1983-1985. Work, directed by Dr P.W. Dixon, was concentrated on the western end of the Long Mound, where it was possible tod efine in the neolithic:(phase 1a) three small subcircular buildings without traces of occupation; (phase 1b) the causewayed enclosure, with two successive entrances here, a fenced pathway running in from the second and postholes which may represent buildings; (phase 1d) within new defences, probably of the mid-third millenium BC a platform built of rubble, fenced and approached from the east through a gate. It seems to have had a ritual purpose and to have been destroyed at the time of the attack on the settlement.  In phase 1e a kerb circle was built on the same spot, also having a ritual purpose, perhaps in the second millenium.  In the post-Roman period, phase 4, the area was strongly defended, with buildings perhaps related to those found in 1982 at the south-eastern end of the site."

Fourth Report 1972, part III: The Interior of the Hillfort 1972

(click on the images to enlarge)

Thank you as ever to PWD for permission to post these abstracts from his 1972 Fourth Report. I'm afraid the Albergo Parker is not equipped with an A3 scanner so each A4 page has to be scanned and posted separately:

"An area 80 m long and up to 40 m broad was stripped behind the entrance passage (cuttings BI - BXII).  Stratigraphy in this area was slight, in many places less than 5 cm between turf and bedrock, but a number of the 180 postholes uncovered here can be placed in relative sequence: near the centre of the excavated area postholes 472 cut into and was later than a large posthole; further southwards posthole 529 - 534 were cut into a layer of small packed stones which sealed the tops of posthole's 544 - 547 and 516.  Postholes 529 - 534 formed part of an almost perfect post circle, whose postholes must be seen from their regularity as contemporary; it does not therefore follow that the postholes stratified earlier in the sequences were all of the same date, but this conclusion is indicated by the consistency of their layout: almost all formed pairs from 2 1/2 metres to 3.3 m apart, with similar spacing between the pairs.  

The structures represented by both these groups of postholes may be tied in with the phasing of the rampart.  Within the inturned entrance of the timber-laced rampart (Period 2) the excavations in 1970 exposed a hollow way, produced by traffic wear.  This hollowing continued on the axis of the passage to run between the alignments produced by the pairs of (earlier) post holes.  During Period 3b a cobbled road was laid against the entrance bastions and could be followed running into the interior of the hillfort.  These cobbles overlay the structures identified in figure 5 as "House 2" and "House 6", but curved to avoid the post circle, which must therefore have been in existence in Period 3b.  In the case of the rows of postholes to the west of the post circle (Houses 3, 4 and 5) no evidence of phasing was uncovered, but their alignment corresponded quite closely with that of Houses 1, 2 and 6, and all are thus assumed to form part of one settlement, whose plan consisted of houses set on either side of the road away from the Period 2 entrance.  None of the settings were completely regular.  House 2 and House 5 in particular contained pairs more widely spaced the other postholes in the group and House 3 and House 4 each had a pair of post holes stepped southwards of the general alignment. Post pipe packings survived in many of these post holes, and showed that the post might be placed eccentrically in the hole to compensate the irregularities in the spacing, but even this was not always sufficient to produce a straight row of posts.  Each could thus be argued that some or all of the "houses" shown in figure 5 were in fact separate contiguous buildings, perhaps of four or six posts as identified on a number of Iron Age sites (Stanford, 1970).  But between each "house" lay gaps greater than the spacing of pairs within each of the "houses": these gaps, together with the close correspondence in overall alignment within each "house" group in contrast with slight variations in direction between groups, make such a suggestion implausible.  Indeed, it has recently been argued that such variations in direction and construction within a single structure may indicate variations of function within the building - between house and byre, or between single and double storeyed portions of the house (Soudsky, 1969).  Arguments as to whether all the longhouses attributed to Period 2 were in fact strictly contemporary cannot be satisfactorily resolved: none of the buildings overlapped, and the suggested plan of the settlement (figure 6) reveals a regularity in the layout which very strongly indicates that all the longhouses were designed to form a single coherent settlement."