Current Archaeology 110 from 1988

Click on images to enlarge

My thanks both to 'Current Archaeology' and its publisher Rob Selkirk (Current Archaeology) and as ever to PWD for their kind permission to reproduce this abstract from CA 110 in 1988. It's rather longer than my usual posts but there wasn't really an obvious way in which it could be split into instalments.  

"Crickley Hill 1969 – 1987 by Philip Dixon

Crickley Hill lies on the edge of the Cotswolds, with magnificent views over the valley of the Severn.  The excavations began by investigating an Iron Age hillfort, but soon a Neolithic causewayed camp was discovered, and later a Dark age stronghold.  This view shows the Neolithic entrance passage, looking west.

Twenty years is a long time to spend on a single excavation, particularly when the site is hillfort of modest size.  But the excavations at Crickley will soon enter their third decade, and seem likely to continue for some years yet.  The site has proved to be remarkably rewarding, with a long and complex history: furthermore, no ploughing has damaged the deposits, so even ephemeral traces of past activity can be picked up in the soil.

The project was begun in 1969 with limited aims.  We wanted to dig the entrance and part of the rampart of an Iron Age hillfort, and to dig a few trenches in the interior to try and assess when the fort was built, and whether it was built for permanent or temporary occupation.  The wider aims were unrealistic, given the small scale of work at first, but by the end of the third season in 1971, we had answered most of the questions with which we had started: by then two superimposed hillfort entrances had been explored, and a system of phasing arrived at – a phasing sequence still in use on the site. The Iron Age defences were dated by pottery and metalwork, and soon by radiocarbon, too, to the period c. 700 to 450 BC.  Within the banks, trial holes revealed occupation debris post holes, dense in places, of broadly the same two periods as the defences.

Our problems, however, were just beginning.  Towards the centre of the hill, well within the Iron Age defences, lay a much eroded bank.  Cuttings across this area revealed unmistakably Neolithic assemblages – flint tools and waste flakes in large numbers, and pottery akin to that from the Windmill Hill excavations. Below this earthwork layer completely separate Neolithic bank and ditch, and even at this early stage it was apparent that these two Neolithic banks had been subjected to a whole series of alterations and reconstructions.

The site was clearly sufficiently complex, and well enough preserved to warrant a more thorough examination than was possible in a series of individual cuttings.  So in 1972 we began a programme of stripping, in a regular grid pattern across the top of the hill.  Over the seasons since then we have excavated some 160 10 x 10 metre squares, an overall total of about 17,400 square metres.

At first we were concerned that our returns would diminish as we knew more about the site.  Theory, after all, suggests that a site may satisfactorily be investigated by a limited, often small sample. This has not been our experience at all. Almost every season has produced something new (and has required the modification of our interpretations of other formerly-believed aspects of the site).  Even minor details are proved to have an added significance when seen in the total context of our growing knowledge of Crickley.

Our earliest horizon is a causewayed-enclosure of two circuits of ditches, with at least nine entrances. In comparison with the majority of Neolithic interrupted ditch enclosures, that on Crickley is tiny, no more than two acres in size.  Its history is complicated:  the outer ring was built first; the larger, inner, ring was contemporary with the second phase of the outer ring.  Both were subsequently abandoned and restored on at least two occasions, and in flimsier phase of reoccupation the inner ring alone was rebuilt.  While the relative sequence is clear, the time-span of all this is still doubtful.  Almost all our Neolithic assemblages fit into a single phase of Neolithic material culture.  At the moment, we are proposing a date range from c. 3000 to c. 2600 hundred BC for these enclosures.

The final Neolithic enclosure, a single-ring affair with few causeways, was built after a period of abandonment.  Its narrow entrances, strong fences (and the plentiful evidence from leaf arrowheads and widespread burning) indicate that it was intended for protection, and fell only after a serious assault (see CA 76, May 1981). After the results from Hambledon and Carn Brea, Neolithic defences in Britain can no longer be denied.  Though this enclosure has occasionally been singled out as the “Neolithic Fort” at Crickley, in its layout of entrances, banks and fences, it is not at all unlike the earlier Crickley causewayed-enclosures: these too have now produced leaf arrowheads in significant contexts, and their double rings would clearly provide a defence in depth more effective even than the more obvious “fort ”.  On the whole, then, it seems likely that all these neolithic enclosures provided a protection – and a protection, probably for a settlement, for several phases of roads, fences and houses have been uncovered in the interior.

During the final phase of the Neolithic enclosure a small plateau at the western end of the hill had been segregated from the rest of the site by complex series of fences (see photo opposite). It was approached by a narrow footpath, blocked by two gates, and at the further side of the tiny courtyard stood a small rectangular building, with a hearth in the opening front of it, and with low cairns containing bones, flint and pottery at the extremities of the platform.  Apart from these deliberate deposits, the whole of the area was kept scrupulously clean.  The arrangements resemble those in the Danish Neolithic shrines of Tustrup and Herrup and the Crickley building is provisionally identified as the shrine of the last Neolithic settlement: it was burnt at the same time as the settlement itself.

Sometime now passed – long enough for the Neolithic ditches to silt to about one third of their depth.  The footpath leading to the former shrine was buried in a massive cairn of small rubble, and apparently marked out by upright posts.  On top of the shrine a circle of small stones set upright as a kerb surrounded a huge burning slab, seen opposite.  In its final form, with western circle, long mound and kerb-stones, and a marker or totem at its eastern end, the monument was as long as 100 m, and was isolated from the surrounding countryside by a small trench, cut into the infilled ditches of the Neolithic enclosure. We still do not know when this ritual use of the site came to an end.  Its beginning was probably in the late Neolithic or early Bronze Age; it is possible that it continued in use until shortly before the reoccupation of the site during the building of the Iron Age hillforts.

These early phases of the site are fascinating, but very ticklish to interpret.  The hillfort, in contrast may seem straightforward.  The area of the occupation was more than twice that of the earlier enclosure, and the defence is tall, and military-seeming, with narrow in-turned gatepassage and timber-laced ramparts.

The settlement inside was of two periods.  The first was the more unusual, for it contains several rows of rectangular buildings (see plan, p. 75). These have a very early date, possibly in the 7th century BC, and they remain virtually unique in hillforts in Britain. There was also a series of clusters of small square buildings from which have come thousands of charred grains of cereal.  After a period of occupation only modest length, the fort and its buildings were destroyed by fire.

They were then reconstructed in a completely new arrangement.  The houses were by now the more usual roundhouses, with a particularly large one just inside the entrance (for the chief?).  There will also some 4-post granaries, and the defences were massively improved.  Work on them was still continuing, and an outer ring of vallation had only just been begun, when the fort was once again destroyed by a fire which consumed the roundhouses and granaries, and involved all the timber work in the new defences.  The date of this, the final destruction of the hillfort, seems to have been in the fifth century BC.

At the moment we have no clear evidence of any further occupation of the site for nearly a thousand years.  A change of use, however, came at the end of the Roman period.  At the end of the fourth or in the fifth century AD two separate settlements were built on top of the ruined hillfort about 200 m apart. One was sited close behind the collapsed Iron Age ramparts, and consisted of rows of small slightly sunken huts.  When we first explored them, we thought they were going to be platforms of Iron Age round huts, but they were dated by late Roman material (including a military belt buckle) and grass tempered wares.

Two hundred metres to the west, on the very tip of the promontory was another settlement, enclosed by a strong fence, and entered through a wide gate with a guard house.  It contained a series of buildings, including a granary and at least one substantial framed house.  This too was dated by late Roman material and grass tempered wares.

However there were considerable differences between them in layout and cleanliness; all the finds came from the rather dirty settlement behind the rampart, which we are thus identifying as a peasant village. The settlement on the end of the promontory was much cleaner (fewer fines), and we are thus identifying it as an enclosed high status site.  Both presumably belonged to a sub-Roman British group, perhaps even the descendants of the occupants of one or other of the nearby Roman country houses.  These settlements in common with almost all Crickley’s occupations over three millennia, seemed to have ended through an act of war, perhaps in the late fifth or sixth century.

The destruction of the Dark Age sites at present seems to have been the end of serious occupation on our hill.  In the Middle Ages the top was used by grazing animals, and fragmentary hut on the side of the hillslope may have belonged to a shepherd.  When the agricultural improvements of the 19^th century came to the Cotswolds, Crickley was remote from the areas of arable farming around the villages, and so escaped that destruction by the plough that was so widespread in the region.  Until the start of our excavations it remained little visited, a place where (in Ivor Gurney’s poem about the hill)

The orchis, trefoil, harebells nod all day, /High over Gloucester and the Severn Plain."

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]

Ferris, I.M. reflects upon life and flint ...

"Even after two days of intensive regressive hypno-therapy I am unable to confirm that the photograph recently posted on Crickley Hill Man's blog is of Cutting N7. The N and O series of cuttings had quite complex geology/subsoil and there were many gulls cutting across them, as in your photograph, but whether your photo is of one of the cuttings I supervised I cannot say for certain, though I suspect it is. Speaking of the N and O series, I do recall cutting O1 extremely well, on which there was a leaf-shaped arrowhead chipping floor. We made every effort to recover even the tiniest trimming flakes and I remember Corky's determination in the finds hut that no flint debitage, however small, would escape proper washing, drying and marking. Dedication indeed. I wonder if the flint scatters plotted for O1 were ever drawn up ready for publication-perhaps Phil might be able to let us know.

 

The regressive hypno-therapy has, though, got me wondering why my mother locked me in that cupboard for so long, but I don't expect this will be of much interest to Crickley Hill Man and his dedicated readers."

Dr Phillpotts's earliest published work ...

Dr Phillpotts sends me a interesting note: "It is an account of my experiences of the 1972 season which I wrote for the newsletter of the Bristol Archaeological Research Group to which I belonged whilst still at school, and which met at Bristol Museum under the leadership of the renowned veteran archaeologist Leslie Grinsell. I suppose it might count as my first published piece about twelve years before my first serious piece on Agincourt."

Chris is referring to his 1984 piece in the English Historical Review "The French plan of battle during the Agincourt campaign" a copy which may be downloaded here.  Well worth a read.   But here's Dr Phillpotts on CH72:

"This summer I assisted in the fourth season of excavation at Crickley Hill, near Cheltenham.  This is an Iron Age promontory fort on the edge of the Cotswolds, containing a Neolithic causewayed camp.  In the first three seasons the Iron Age entrance had been excavated, revealing two periods of building, the second much more sophisticated, and an intermediate repair job built after the burning of the first entrance.  Excavation of the Neolithic area had uncovered causewayed ditches comparable to those at the Windmill Hill site.

At the peak period there were about 70 volunteers working on the site, though this dwindled to about 40 in the last days.  When I arrived I was dismayed to find that the accommodation was a disused civil defence barracks.  Even this was overcrowded, with one unfortunate sleeping under the sink.  Every morning we were taken to the site in a decrepit coach driven by the caretaker, a giant of Eastern European extraction, known as 'Lofty'.  It was difficult to grasp the significance of the work we were doing as we seemed so isolated.  Contacts with the outside world were restricted to Thursdays.  

It was, however, an important site.  We stripped nearly an acre of ground down to bedrock, making three vast cuttings.  This revealed the potholes of a street of Iron Age longhouses, tailing down to a small ones straddling a Neolithic ditch - nicknamed 'Fred's Place' and a later Iron Age roundhouse along with some smaller buildings.  These two sets of buildings were almost certainly associated with the two building periods of the entrance.  All this showed up extremely well on the air-photographs.  In the Neolithic area  we uncovered the longest piece of uninterrupted Neolithic ditch in Britain, and Neolithic house and several less readily identifiable features.  Finds were unspectacular but extremely plentiful.  A couple of flint axe heads and lots of arrowheads came up, but most of the finds were animal bones and fragments of daub and pot, some of a revolting coarse-gritted variety that crumbled when you tried to wash it.  it is planned to open up an even larger area next year, and several more seasons are planned.  This is an extremely interesting site which should continue to produce good results.  Chris Phillpotts"

Well, the Chronicler got over his first impressions of Ullenwood: I wonder who was sleeping under the sink?

Witts's Ancient Camps - Leckhampton Camp

A further extract from the Archaeological Handbook of the County of Gloucester by George Witts published by G. Norman, Clarence Street Cheltenham, n.d. (1883):

"No. 64. — Leckhampton Camp. On Leckhampton Hill, two miles out of Cheltenham, there is an interesting work of some magnitude. The point of the hill overlooking the valley of the Severn has been cut off by an entrenchment, consisting, for the greater part of the distance, of a single mound nine feet high, with each end resting on the escarpment. About 50 yards from the northern precipice there are two entrances through the entrenchments, one leading into the main portion of the camp, and another, at a much lower level, leading into a deep depression running nearly parallel with the edge of the rocks. Along the line of the entrenchments from these entrances to the escarpment there is a considerable ditch, outside the bank. On the old Ordnance Survey a bank is shown parallel to the northern escarpment of the hill. This has possibly been destroyed by quarrying operations. Professor Buckman, in his "Corinium," speaks of a true Roman well existing in the centre of the camp, sunk through the various strata of the oolitic rock down to the clay beneath. I can find no trace of this, but there are one or two likely-looking hollows in which a little excavation might be interesting. On the outside of the camp, towards the east, is a remarkable round barrow, 4 feet high and 35 feet in diameter; this is protected by a mound 70 feet square and 2 feet 6 inches high. At a distance of over 300 yards from the main position is another line of earthworks, consisting of a single bank, in some places five feet high, running on a curved line, and thus enclosing a very large area, probably for flocks and herds. Several relics of antiquity have been found on Leckhampton Hill, including a bronze helmet, spear-heads, coins, pottery, flint arrow-heads, &c.; and some human skeletons have been discovered at various times. 

See "Archaeologia," vol. XIX, p171. Also "Archaeological Journal," vol. XII, p9. Also Bigland's "History of Gloucestershire," vol.II, p148. Also Buckman's "Corinium," p5. Also "Proceedings Cott. Nat. Field Club," vol. VI, p209. Also "Journal of Archaeological Association," vol.I, p43.Also "Transactions Bristol and Glou. Archae. Soc.," 1879‑80, p206."

Article from Gloucestershire and Avon Life July 1983

The following article, written by Richard Savage, was published in the now defunct "Gloucestershire and Avon Life" in July 1983.

" Fifteenth season at Crickley Hill.  Richard Savage issues an invitation to one and all to visit the Country Park that is the focal point of one of the region's most intriguing long-term archaeological digs.

On July 15 volunteers from all over the world will begin the 15th season of archaeological excavation at Crickley Hill, 4 miles south of Cheltenham.

The site is now a Country Park, a promontory of the Cotswolds Scarp with breathtaking views over the Severn Vale and into Wales.  Its prehistoric settlements are clearly marked, access and parking are easy, and visitors to the excavation of welcome during the hours of work 9 a.m. to 6 p.m. daily, including Saturdays and Sundays, but not Thursdays.  Ask at the finds hut if you would like a guided tour.

The season runs until August 25, and visitors are particularly welcome on the open days, Saturday and Sunday, August 13 and 14, when extra attractions are provided. The trust's splendid new mobile exhibition coach will be there at weekends.

As before the team of volunteers will be led by Dr Philip Dixon of the University of Nottingham. All are unpaid - in fact most pay for their own food - and while their ages range from 14 to 70, the majority are between 16 and 25.  More than 2000 have now worked at the site, the archaeological importance of which has attracted them from most of the countries in the Western World, and several from the Eastern bloc was well.  

Since 1976 their work has been sponsored and organised by the Crickley Hill Trust, an educational charity which must find the difference between volunteers' contributions and the true cost of the excavations.  The trust believes that the project offers an invaluable experience of physically and intellectually demanding teamwork, with important scientific results.

The first 14 years of work has shown an extraordinary series of settlements on the site, with great deal of Gloucestershire's past represented there.  Its earliest occupants were neolithic (New Stone Age) farmers, about 3500 BC, using only stone and flint tools.  They built rectangular timber houses on the hill in an enclosure defended by stone walls and ditches.

Their successors - about 2000 BC - were protected by a far stronger and better planned defences, but these did not avail them: they were attacked by bowmen, whose flint arrowheads are found concentrated along the walls and in the entrance, giving a dramatic picture of a New Stone Age battle which is at present unique.  The attackers were victorious, and the walls were destroyed.

After their destruction, a long earthen mound was built, incorporating at regular intervals flat slabs of stone, some of which cover deposits - presumably sacrificial - of butchered meat.  The Long Mound seems to have been used as a source of processional way, perhaps religious.

There are only hints of human activity on the hill from then until the beginning of the Iron Age, when, about 600 BC, a substantial village of long timber houses was built and defended by majestic stone wall and ditch.  This, too, was destroyed after a battle, and replaced by a village of round houses, with defences rebuilt and strengthened.  In its turn, this was destroyed and abandoned about 500 BC.  Even in periods not notable for their tranquillity, Crickley Hill seems to have had more than its fair share of violence.

Until 1982, the destruction of this second Iron Age village seemed to mark the end of permanent occupation on the hill.  But last year excavation just inside the Iron Age wall at its southern end showed that a small village, probably of earth houses, had huddled there after the end of the Roman occupation of Britain.  It is one of the windiest and least sheltered parts of the hill, and there must have been a compelling reason for the villagers to avoid more comfortable areas. Perhaps they chose to place least visible from the Vale, at a time of lawlessness and hunger when a few hovels or even a wisp of smoke might have invited attack.

In the coming season Dr Dixon and his team intend to examine this post-Roman settlement further, to establish its date and nature.  They will also investigate the Long Mound, in the hope of finding out more about the date and purpose of this odd structure, at the point where it crosses the ditch and bank of the first New Stone Age enclosure.

With the help of sponsors, the trust has fitted out the mobile exhibition to make the results of the work easily available to schools and the public.  In scale models, photographs, drawings and finds from the site, the exhibition shows the successive occupations on the hill and the archaeological methods used to examine them.  It has proved very popular at schools, and is a big attraction at charity fairs, fêtes and similar events.  If you would like it to visit you, contact the author, Richard Savage, at Jarolen House, Old Rectory Close, Walkley Hill, Stroud, GL53 3TY."  

(The captions to the photographs read as follows: (Top) drystone walling two 2,500 years old dominates this picture of volunteers at work on the Iron Age defences of Crickley Hill; (above) new this season is a well equipped mobile exhibition aimed at spreading word of the project far and wide.)"

Alas, I fear that the yellow bus went to meet its maker long since, so cannot come to your fête ... 

Fourth Report 1972, part II : the Neolithic Enclosures

Thanks again to PWD for permission to post these extracts from his 1972 Fourth Report - click on the images to enlarge:

"The Neolithic Enclosures (Figures 2 – 4)

Two cuttings, CIII and CIV, were placed adjacent to the areas excavated in 1971; they confirmed the phasing established in 1971.

The two period bank identified in CII (Dixon, 1971) continued across cutting CIII (see figure 2).  In its latest phase, now called 1d, the bank was surmounted by a fence, the burnt traces of which were visible without a break as far as the north section of CIII. both phases of bank contained quantities of Neolithic pottery and worked flint, of types comparable to those found in 1971.

In the flat area behind the bank two hearths were uncovered.  These, and another in CII, are perhaps to be associated with post holes which may have supported screens, for no enclosed structures here can yet be identified.  At the southwest corner of CIII a pit contained only heavily burnt slabs similar to those of the hearths, which resemble in their construction the hearths, possibly of Period 3, found near the roundhouse and the hearth in CIV.  The design, however, is rudimentary, and in the absence of dating evidence any period ascription would be unwise. It is thus still unclear whether any of the structures behind the banks can be attributed to a Neolithic occupation.

The Period 1d ditch in CI continued without interruption across CIV (Ditch 304/603).  Some 45 m of this ditch have now been examined; the material from it and its bank is Neolithic throughout, including a fragment of a polished stone axe, but there is by now some doubt that it is in fact segmental, and the description "causewayed enclosure" seemed inappropriate for phase 1d.  Below the 1d bank ditch 853 (of Period 1b) formed a further section of ditch segment 384; at the northern side of the cutting the 1d bank has not yet been removed, and may conceal a causeway, but it is still possible that 853/384 is the same ditch segment as Ditch 319 which was exposed in cutting CI; thus the causeways uncovered in 1971 remain the only causeways across the two inner ditches.  From the primary silt of 853 came two decorated sherds kindly identified by Mr Humphrey Case as similar to material from the causewayed enclosure at Abingdon.

Towards the eastern end of CIV two segments of the ditch line (ditches 612 and 699) continued the outer ring of ditches excavated in 1971.  The broad causeway between 612 and 699 was matched by gap in the bank on their west sides. Through Across this area ran a structural weakness in the hill (a "gull"), filled with eroded limestone which had the consistency of concreted sand.  Unlike the normal oolite laminae elsewhere on the site, the material in the gull retained the impressions of stake holes, but the interpretation of the structures represented here and in the corresponding part of CIII was complicated not only by the continuing leaching of limestone into the gull but also by the activity of tree roots and rabbits which had taken advantage of the softer rock.  At least two phases were distinguishable (see figure 4).  The latest consisted of a hearth (628) set in a hard-trodden floor (629) of gull material mixed with earth and charcoal dust.  To the south and east the floor merged into a layer of clean yellow dissolved limestone; to the north it had been eroded by activity in the gull.  As a consequence it could not be established which postholes within the gull had been sealed by the floor.

Postholes 879, 615, and 880 can be associated with the hearth and floor, and a further small posthole between 615 and 880 was only doubtfully sealed;  within the gull postholes 640 and 621 resembled the former postholes in size; to this group posthole 860 seems an obvious addition, but this was larger and shallower than the others, similar in fact to postholes 861 and 858; posthole 858 predated 640 and it is possible 861 and 858 were earlier postholes in the group, replaced during a renewal of the structure by the adjacent postholes 640 and 621.  In either case the resultant plan would be a small boat-shaped house with a slightly eccentric hearth.  Daub was found in a hollow, 877, and some of the stake holes may have supported wattled screen wall.

Floor 629 merged eastwards into clean material ultimately derived from the gull.  This stratum overlay the edge of ditch 699, and a laid stone platform, 622, perhaps paving outside the house, similarly overlay the edge of bank 697 but neither ditch nor bank can confidently be placed in the overall phasing of the site; the absence of the causeway in 1d ditch 304/603 to the west perhaps would make otiose a gap here in the outer ring unless the latter pre-dates Period 1d, and ascription of the outer ring to 1b, or even as a single ring to the so far unenclosed period 1a and 1c, may be strengthened by consideration of the extreme erosion of the outer bank, which survived to a height of only 10 cm.  But with no general agreement about the function of causewayed enclosures the argument is weak.  The house itself could well belong to the hillfort occupation, and may be compared with the structures to the south of House 4, and perhaps should be associated with occupation debris, including a shard from a pot with a rounded shoulder decorated with finger tipping, in the upper levels of ditch 699.

Seal below floor 629 two large post holes, 878 and the complex around 884 and 879, can be linked with the ditches.  They sit midway between the bank terminals and were substantial enough to serve as supports for double or triple posts of a small gate; to the north postholes 894, 895 and 898 would then form a fence, but no corresponding postholes were found to the south, beyond the line of the gull.

The group of postholes cut pass into the sides of ditch 603 and part into the infill certainly belonged to the hillfort occupation of the site.  No posthole was found as a pair to posthole 654 but it should have lain entirely within the ditch and could easily have been overlooked in the rubble infill.  Spacing of posts exactly corresponded with that of the Period 2 longhouses and the house and its hearth, centrally placed at the top of the ditch infill, should be attributed to Period 2.  Beyond the crest of the bank in CIII four postholes of similar size and spacing to those of House 7 cut through the 1d bank, and perhaps formed a slightly trapezoidal structure of Period 2.  Immediately to the east of House 7 lay a palisade trench (617) from which the only find was an intact Neolithic arrowhead.  It lay parallel to the Period 1d ditch; equally, therefore, it aligned with the Period 2 house, and its date is uncertain.  A similar slot (682) to the east of ditch 612 belonged to the phase of the outer ditches.

Thus the inner bank excavations, in addition to producing problems about the interpretation of the Neolithic enclosures, have shown that the longhouse settlement, and perhaps the Period 3 settlement, continued at least 130 m within the rampart on the line of the hillfort entrance."

Another dig party - this time 1980 ...

I posted a photo of Jane Lambert (nee Fitt) here the other day.  Jane replies from Cyprus where she's now living: "I can't remember exactly how I earnt a "well deserved rest", the 1979/1980 seasons are kind of blurred together in my memory. Was it something to do with the pit? Or was it when I'd found a leaf arrowhead, no - I think that was 1979?

I did actually work in archaeology (as an archaeobotanist) until 1990, mostly in Rome but also on another Nottingham University project in Bulgaria for a couple of seasons. Several career changes later I'm running adult literacy centres for the army (well, it does help if they can read what's on the ammunition cases....)"

Wonderful to hear from you, Jane: here's another photo of you, this time with Maryam Ghaffari, Julie Ann Morrison (nee Souter), Jim Gale and Training at a dorm party in 1980.

Crickley Hill and The Socialist Worker ...

The pages of "The Socialist Worker" would not the most obvious place for a mention of Crickley Hill, my readers may think. But you will have realised, by now, that I leave few corners of cyberspace unexcavated with Google as my trusty entrenching tool (or should that be cybercatbasher'?) and the Surf Canyon add-on for the Firefox browser as my cybertrowel. (Free add-on available here at Surf Canyon. Give it a try for finding interesting things that Google misses!)

The Socialist Worker is running a series called "The History of War" and in the first article, "The beginning of organised violence and the origin of war" Crickley gets a mention. All those wicked proto-capitalist flint leaf arrowheads ...

UK Readers will, I suspect, be familiar with the sellers of "Socialist Worker" whose habit it is to stand on street corners, or a recessed bit of pavement, with a sheaf of the journal over one arm chanting loudly, lugubriously and ceaselessly "Sōōōōōōshlist Worker", with the emphasis on the first syllable (that syllable being as long as the rest of the chant put together). I've never seen anyone buy a copy but I guess I may just not have stood and watched for long enough. There was a splendid cartoon in Private Eye, some years ago, making ironic reference to such a scene with a boss, dressed in top hat & overcoat, equipped with a monocle and a sheaf of newspapers standing outside a factory gate as all the workers emerged chanting "Cāāāāāāpitalist Bastard!"

From summer 1976 ...

Iain's memory of the Sports Day posted here caused me to find this photo of Becky Spencer, with whom in the wheelbarrow he won the race. Here she is with Mike Gething, both happily pausing from their labours for a minute. The Neolithic ditch and bank is in the background behind them.

The speck of foliage visible on the right hand side of the picture is, I think, on a hornbeam in the shadow of which I put a trowel in the ground for the very first time under the kindly eye of Simon Mercer. On my second day I found what I now know to be a perfect flint arrowhead. I wasn't completely sure what it was so I showed it to a man I was sure knew more about these things than I did, Mr Robert Roberts.

The Son of Tipton's reply went like this "******* Hell! You ******* lucky *******! I've been digging for ******* years and I've never ******* found one of those.  You jammy ***! You turn up like the ******* fairy on the top of the ******* Christmas tree, put your brand new ******* trowel in the ****** ground ******* once and ******* pull that out! Why did I ******* give you that ******* strip to dig?"

I could tell he was pleased that I'd found the arrowhead.  My vocabulary grew by the hour.  I was pleased I'd found it too - I've never found another one!