Dirt

One of Dr Phillpotts's' more inspired compositions entitled 'Dirt, buckets and limestone'. I am thinking of nominating this seminal example of late 20th century archaeo-grunge for the Turner Prize. Having examined the rules, Dr Phillpotts was young enough to qualify when he took the picture even if he would not pass muster now. Come to think of it, C-H-M himself missed that boat last week.

Savage 1988: 10 Herdsman and Quarryman

Time for the 10th section of Richard Savage's 1988 booklet: to him and the Crickley Hill Trust thanks for the permission to reproduce.

"10 Herdsman and Quarryman

After the burning of the final dark age settlement the hill reverted to pasture. In the Middle Ages the northern slopes may have served as grazing for Brockworth Parish, whose boundary runs along the crest overlooking Gloucester. A small rectangle of stone-walled building, perhaps a shepherd's shieling, lay just inside the boundary. At about this time the hamlets below the site is first mentioned by name, as Creke in 1237 and Crekelege in c. 1240. The name is understood to mean "clearing (leah) by the hill (*crouc)”. The latter is a British word, and although the eminence became known eventually as Crickley Hill, "the hill of Crickley", it is interesting to note that it seems in our earliest sources simply to have been known by a Celtic name, "the hill". During the 17th century pits for lime burning were opened, destroying about an acre of the prehistoric settlements.

In the next century quarrying began on the slopes, and had produced steep cliffs by the early 19th century. The Iron Age ramparts had already been noticed, and appears as "Roman intrenchment" on the Tithe Map of 1838. The bulk of the site to lay by now in the ownership of Hallingwood (Ullenwood) Farm nearly a mile away. Maps of the holding in 1807 and 1863 revealed the reason of the survival of the archaeological deposits, the arable land of Ullenwood stretched west of the farm as far as Crippets long barrow, and east and south towards Coberley. Crickley was protected by two belts of woodland (Short-wood and Hallingwood) and was used as a rough pasture too far from the farmhouse to be worth ploughing. So it remained, threatened by the quarry on its north flank, in separate annual tenancy from the lords of Badgeworth Manor, but not devastated by agriculture. Quarry workings slackened in the 1930s, and ended in the 1960s, shortly before the beginning of excavations.

[Photo: a 17th century pit for lime burning]"

Savage 1988: 7. The Long House Village

65 years ago this morning were the Allied landings in Normandy, warfare on a scale unimaginable to the men and women who inhabited Crickley Hill more than 2500 years ago. Doubtless war then was as terrifying but necessary to endure as it was for our parents and grandparents.  The destruction of the Iron Age ramparts of the longhouse village described in the following section from Richard Savage's 1988 booklet must have been a frightening sight. Thanks, as ever, to Richard and the Crickley Hill Trust for permission to reproduce the abstracts from his booklet.

"7 The Long House Village 

The First Hill-fort c. 700 - 600 BC 

At a time when the climate had deteriorated - it seems to have become very like our own - the hill was permanently occupied again in the 7th or 6th centuries BC.  This was the time of the development of a full iron-using economy in Britain; indeed we cannot at present be certain whether the new community at Crickley was iron- or still bronze-using.  It is hard to see any continuity of tradition between the builders of the hillfort and the worshippers who had gone before.  Even the final Neolithic wall, almost as far in the past to them as they are to us, was scarcely visible. 

The newcomers built long timber houses, aligned upon a street running east west along the top of the saddle at the eastern part of the hill.  Four-post structures, some of them at least for grain storage, lay in a ring outside the houses.  The bridge was defended by a stone wall, reinforced with timber lacing, which ran right around the promontory enclosing 9 acres.  The wall was most substantially built to the east, where attackers could approach across level ground, and an imposing appearance would have most effect.  Here it may have reached 4m high, with the ditch outside it, from which the stone was quarried, adding to its effective height.  A walkway along the top, with a bridge across the entrance, allow the defenders to keep watch, to parade their valour, and to cluster where they were most needed during an assault.  Deposits of sling stones lay near to hand, useful for discouraging animal and human predators alike.  Timber towers, arranged at intervals behind the rampart, seem to have provided viewing or fighting platforms for the slingers. 

[Photograph: the largest longhouse.  Part of the roof is unthatched to show the construction.  There is a smoke hole in the gable. J Eltham] 

[Illustration: The long house village, c 700 - 600 BC K. Hajichristou] 

The village housed, perhaps, a hundred souls.  We can imagine them a little more clearly than their Neolithic predecessors, because in later centuries Greek and Roman writers describe barbarian societies like theirs, which shared much with the literate Mediterranean world; a cart made in Greece or Italy could be mended without difficulty -- perhaps improved -- in Gaul or Britain.  They are likely to have thought of themselves as members of the great family, with relatives in other settlements, and many of them will actually have been more or less closely related to one another, although there are likely to have been "foreigners" among them.  The power structure of their society may be guessed at.  They were probably governed by the dominant member of a single kindred.  Such a man or woman must decided the arrangements of the settlement at Crickley; the site has very long and strong defences in comparison with a few houses inside it, and the granaries are too numerous merely to hold the produce of the occupants of the houses.  The site seems to be a citadel for the elite of the society most of whose members lived outside, some of them perhaps in the Vale. 

We do not know what language they spoke.  It is possible that it was already one of the Celtic family of languages, to which modern Welsh and Irish belong. 

Like most hill-forts, Crickley lacks an internal water-supply.  The spring line is 60 m below the settlement, and there is no evidence for well-digging or pond making on the site.  The cattle will have been watered at springs outside, where also the human community will have done most of its washing and only a minimum of water needed to be carried up.  The village could not have stood a siege; sieges are almost unknown in primitive warfare, which is centred about the raid and the short campaign, even when it is set reassuringly within a hereditary feud. 

The new community farmed the surrounding land, probably in small squarish fields whose boundaries, obliterated by modern agriculture, we do not now know.  Their animals and crops were fundamentally those of their Neolithic predecessors - wheat, barley, cattle, sheep, pigs - though in improved breeds and probably using improved methods. 

It is likely that there were undefended Iron Age settlements nearby; they are not always easy to find.  A sight of this kind in the lowland is suspected Sandy Lane, Cheltenham, that we do not yet know certainly of any near Crickley. If we knew how these undefended sites and the adjacent hillfort worked together, much of the character of late Bronze Age and Iron Age society would be clear.  At present we do not know whether they were occupied by members of the same rank in society nor how far their functions were different.  In most cases we do not even know whether they were in strictly contemporary use. 

The settlement was attacked, captured, then thoroughly and expertly destroyed.  In a strong west winds the rear facing of its wall was torn down and brushwood piled against the expose structured to fire the reinforcing beams.  So intense was the heat is that much of the limestone of the wall was turned to quicklime. 

[Illustration: section through the final Iron Age defences: the core of burned and slaked limestone, with the remains of vertical timbers just visible, and the new wall, in two tiers, built over and in front of it]"

A beautiful Iron Age hearth from 1972

One does not often see an Iron Age hearth, let alone one as splendid as this from Andrew Powell's collection.  Professor Dixon recalls that this was discovered in 1972 on cutting CIV.  It is certainly one of the most clearly delineated compared to some of the more haphazard patches of burnt limestone where one could not be sure that they had not arisen by some accident or another.

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 burning of the limestone

The piece which I posted last week from the Transactions of the Bristol & Gloucestershire Archaeological Society avers that there is no adequate explanation for the reddening of burnt oolitic limestone.  But that was published in 1925 and refers to the reddening of the limestone being mentioned in 1818 in the Transactions of the Society of Antiquaries.  An excellent explanation does, of course,  appear in "Crickley Hill: the Hillfort Defences" (Dixon 1994), in the geological chapter by R J Firman:

"An understanding of the mineralogical changes brought induced by heating limestone is thus of crucial importance in interpreting the archaeological evidence.  The most obvious indication of heating is the development of a brick red colour due to the dehydration of rust coloured ferric hydroxides leading to the formation of haematite.  It is important to note that the intensity of the red colour is unrelated to the intensity of the heating, being directly proportional to the concentration of ferric hydroxide, 'limonite', minerals in the original unburnt limestone. Moreover, in a conflagration, conditions may be sufficiently reducing, to preclude the formation of haematite: magnetite or less stable ferrous compounds forming instead.  These, when weathered, impart a grey or brownish yellow colour to the burnt limestones. Given a strong draught, limestone will calcine at temperatures of 800 to 900°C and, in still conditions 1050°C.  Masses of 'meringue-like' material in the prehistoric earthworks show that such calcination did occur, the resulting quicklime having reacted with water to form slaked lime, and this in turn wholly or partly, becoming carbonated as it reacted with atmospheric carbon dioxide.  Reddening and calcination are thus good indicators of burning and destruction by fire.  They must, however, be interpreted cautiously, because some of the red colour, particularly if associated with clays and sands, could be glacially derived from naturally released Triassic sediments."