The joining instructions for 1993

Lara Unger has kindly sent me the background information sheet and the joining instructions that she received for the 1993 season.

The background sheet reads:

"CRICKLEY HILL EXCAVATIONS

The twenty-fourth season of excavations will take place between 9 July and 17 August 1993.

The site is on a hilltop of the Cotswolds overlooking the Vale of Severn, with a wide panorama from the Warwickshire uplands to the Black Mountains of Wales. Excavations here began in 1969, and have continued each summer since. Remains of about twenty phases of occupation have been identified, ranging from the Neolithic (c.3000 BC) to the sub-Roman period (c. AD450). In the Neolithic a series of settlements, enclosed by ditches and banks, stood on top of the hill. After repeated attacks they were abandoned, and the site was occupied by ritual monuments - a stone circle and an earthen long mound. Much later, about 500 BC, two successive hillforts with substantial defences were built: each was destroyed by fire. Late in the Iron Age, just before 1BC, the hill was reoccupied, but without defences. After the Roman conquest of Britain the area was farmed, with a country house and a farmstead below the hill. At the end of the Roman period two separate settlements were built inside the old defences, probably during the fifth century AD. Both were burnt, and the hill was abandoned to pasture. An illustrated booklet describing excavations is available, price £2.50 (incl. p&p): please indicate on the form if you wish to receive Village, Fortress and Shrine, and enclose payment with your form.

During the 1993 season we hope to excavate in two areas: to the north-east of the Neolithic settlement, where surface indications suggest the complex rampart structure, and to the north of the western gate of the Neolithic camp, where excavations in 1992 showed an Iron Age roadway.

Accommodation for the team is in the Ullenwood Civil Defence Centre, which is less than a mile from the excavation site. Here we have dormitories for men and for women, washrooms and showers, a dining hall, kitchen and sitting room, and a lecture theatre, together with plenty of space for tents and caravans, set within a former army camp. The accommodation comes with full board (a cooked breakfast, sandwich lunch, an evening meal, and tea and biscuits during the morning and afternoon breaks) for an inclusive cost of £37.50 a week. Vegetarian meals are available by arrangement. We do not like diggers to cater for themselves in the camp, as our experience is that it is very difficult for the digger and distracting the staff, because of the problems of shopping. Lectures about the site and related subjects will be given normally on four evenings each week, and we hope to be able to organise a coach trip to visit monuments in the area during the training week. The excavation is run by a charitable trust and exists only with the aid of donations and sponsorship. All (including the director and staff) are unpaid volunteers. A few grants-in-aid, however, are available for those in special need, to cover part of the cost board and lodging. If you wish to be considered for one of these, please indicate this on your application form. We normally have to limit these to experienced workers.

On site we work six days a week between 9 am and 6 pm. Thursday are free days, when shops are open in Cheltenham and Gloucester. During the Advance period we shall be cleaning the camp and setting up the site huts, and making ready for the excavations. During the rearguard period we should be clearing up and putting away the tools. Note that board and lodging are free to diggers during these periods. Do not worry if you feel unfit: a wide range of jobs is available on site, from heavy digging to recording, drawing and finds processing. We hope that volunteers will be able to gain experience in as many different tasks as possible, and training and advice is provided by the supervisors and staff. Previous experience is not essential, but it takes about a week from the beginning to understand the work: try to join us at least at this period if you have never done before. We can, however, accept weekend-only diggers if they can make it a regular commitment. We are always ready to accept experienced diggers for shorter periods.

Training week: between 1 August and 7 August there will be a special training period, which will run in parallel with the normal digging. During this period those who enrol for training will receive additional lectures and tutorials and fieldtrips, and will be able to accompany the director supervisors at their tasks, in addition to some general digging on site. The cost of the trainees during this period will be £140, including full board and excursions. If you would like to receive further information about this, please indicate it on the application form. Note that during this period the normal digging programme will be available for non-participants in the training week at the normal rate of £37.50 per week.

If you wish to join us, fill in the application form and indicate the day on which you intend to arrive, the first meal you wish to take, and the day (normally the next day) on which you wish to start digging. If you find you enjoy it, you can normally arrange to extend your stay with us. Send your application, together with your deposit of £37.50 (which is your first week's board and lodging) to me at Nottingham, and I will send you a map, joining instructions, and some suggestions about what to bring with you.

Thank you for your interest in our work. Philip Dixon."

Said joining instructions are these:

"CRICKLEY HILL EXCAVATIONS

Dear Lara

Thank you for your application to dig at Crickley Hill between 7 July and ......... We have accommodation/space for your tent/caravan from 6 July to ...........

The Site is above the Air Balloon roundabout (the junction of the upper road from Cheltenham to Stroud with the road from Gloucester, at Nat. Grid Ref. S0934162. Immediately to the NW of the roundabout, on the Cheltenham Road is a sign to Crickley Hill Country Park. Follow the tarmac road up the hill to the Car Park and the Park Information Centre, which is about 100 yards to the east of the excavation site.

Accommodation is in Ullenwood Civil Defence Centre, Greenway Lane, Lech Hampton, Cheltenham, Glos (NGR SO 936174). Greenway Lane is a narrow road on the north side of the road from Cheltenham to the Air Balloon. [Take care not to go to Ullenwood Star Centre, which is an institution to the south of the Cheltenham Road, nor to Ullenwood Manor, which is a private house immediately to the west of Greenway Lane.] At Ullenwood CD Centre we have our dormitories, dining and lecture halls, kitchen and washrooms, and space for camping. Campers use the normal facilities of the Centre. Self catering is strongly discouraged, as there are no local shops. We can provide vegetarian meals. Those who use the dormitories should bring sleeping bags or sheets, or pillows and blankets. If this is difficult, we can supply pillows, sheets and blankets at the cost of their laundry.

Please arrive on the afternoon or evening before your first morning's digging with us. Cheltenham can be reached by coach or by rail. The camp is about 4 miles to the south of the town centre; many walk, since there is no convenient local bus service, but taxis are available: they should cost about £5. When you arrive, come either to the excavations (but not after 5 pm) or to Ullenwood camp, where most times of the day, and certainly after 6 pm, you will find members of the excavation. You should report your arrival at the earliest opportunity to the kitchen staff.

We will provide you with all meals at cost, which will amount to £37 50 per week: this includes a cooked breakfast, sandwich lunch, a full cooked meal in the evening, and biscuits and tea during the morning and afternoon breaks. On Thursdays, our day off, breakfast is confined to cereals/bread and jam, and lunch will not be provided: most of the team will be away in town or visiting on this day. Dinner on Thursdays is normally a cold buffet set out about 6 pm (and sometimes consumed by 6.30). During the rest of the week dinner will be served about 7 pm. In the evening after dinner (normally on Sunday, Monday, Tuesday and Fridays) there will be lectures for any who are interested on a range of subjects including the weekly site lecture (on Sundays), the background to the site, and problems of archaeological techniques and interpretation. During the week from 1 to 7 August there will be additional lectures in the evening as part of the training week. During this period there will be a field trip by coach; this should cost about £5 or so per head. If you are taking part in the training week this trip will be free, and you will be given your supplementary programme of teaching and site visits when you arrive.

Digging will take place between 9 am to 6 pm daily, except for Thursday. We have an hour after lunch, and tea breaks in the morning and afternoon. Bring warm clothes, which you don't mind getting muddy, and something really waterproof. You will need waterproof footwear (but nothing with heavily serrated soles, which leave marks on the site) and light but comfortable shoes (e.g. old trainers, but not sandals or beach shoes, which give your feet little protection). The weather can be very hot on the hill, and the next day cold wet and windy, and so you may need gloves, sun hat, dark glasses, sun lotion and insect repellent. Most people bring two (old) mugs, one for the site and one of the camp. We have stocks of utensils, but you may wish to bring your own: a knife, fork, spoon, plate, soup bowl. If you do, do not bring anything precious, since things get broken and lost. Unless your hands are already tough you will certainly need surgical spirit and Elastoplast. You may find a kneeling mat or a piece of foam rubber useful. It is certainly softer than kneeling on the rock. You will need a trowel. This should not be gardening tool but a builder's pointing trowel, diamond-shaped, and with a shank forged in one with the blade. They cost from £4 pounds to £15, dependent on the make, and the cheaper ones break very easily. The size is important: 4" or 5" is best; 6" too long. You are advised to mark it as clearly as possible with your name, or paint the handle distinctively, since they are universal tools which people habitually leave lying on the ground, and others pick up. You will need to bring two or more hard pencils (4H or 5H) for drawing and one of normal (HB) hardness for writing, a pencil sharpener, eraser and coloured pencils (red, yellow and blue) for planning.

Medical: for any work which involves digging with the chance of abrasions, a tetanus inoculation is recommended, if you have not already had one. We have an excavation doctor in Cheltenham, and are accustomed to first aid on the site (mostly blisters!). If you have any question about these instructions, please telephone or write as soon as possible: telephone numbers and addresses are given below.

For urgent communications during the period of the excavations contact: Mr R. D. A. Savage, etc. While at Crickley your postal address will be c/o Ullenwood Civil Defence Centre, Greenway Lane, Leckhampton, Cheltenham, Glos, England. There is no telephone at our base (though outgoing calls can be made from a nearby public box). If you wish to contact me during excavation period, please use this address. Some people try to reach me at the University during this period. This is pointless, since I shall not be there. I enclose a map which shows the site, Ullenwood camp and nearby roads, and look forward to seeing you."

The 1982 season in a few sentences ...

My thanks as usual to the Bristol and Gloucestershire Archaeological Society for their permission to reproduce this abstract from their Proceedings about the 1982 season: "Badgeworth/Coberley, Crickley Hill, SO 927161. During the 14th season of excavation at Crickley work concentrated on the extreme southern end of the Iron Age rampart. Here, the final rampart, stepped at the front in our other cuts, had been only partially rebuilt after the first destruction. Behind the rampart a series of structures was uncovered. The final occupation in this area postdated the final abandonment of the fortifications. Dating evidence is still unclear, but includes three abraded sherds of Roman pottery. A Dark Age occupation cannot be ruled out."

Savage 1988: 9. A barbarian antiquity

Only a fortnight left now, before the reunion. Thank you to Richard Savage and Crickley Hill Trust for the permission to reproduce the abstracts from Richard's 1988 booklet.

"9 A Barbarian Antiquity

The Roman period, c. AD50 - 400

For 12 km the Roman Road from Cirencester to the Severn Crossing at Gloucester - the Ermin Way - heads straight for Crickley Hill. Only 4 km short of the hill it turns aside to Birdlip. The fact is hard to interpret but suggests that Crickley played some part, however briefly, in the Roman perception of the region. On present evidence the hill had been unoccupied for at least four centuries, but its wall was still standing, and it would have offered an easy reference point to surveyors who may, in any case, have been rationalising the line of an existing native trackway.

Crickley Hill does not seem to have been inhabited during the Roman period, though there was a small villa a kilometre to the north, at Dryhill, whose farming must have included it. Neither now nor at any time was the interior of the hillfort ploughed. Its use must have been confined to rough grazing. But its landscape was well occupied from Dryhill to Birdlip, where the main road from Cirencester to Gloucester crossed the scarp edge, and stray finds of Roman material on the hill confirm that it was visited from time to time.

The post-Roman village circa AD 420 to 500.

Soon after AD 400, with the withdrawal of Roman administration from Britain, its social and economic order began a slow decline into turbulence. The last permanent settlement on Crickley Hill was occupied at some time during the next century. It was a village in two parts. To the east, sheltering immediately behind the south end of the old Iron Age wall and built partly on the rubble of its collapse, huddled a group of small sub-rectangular houses each about 4 m long, with central hearths, built probably of turf and thatched with barley straw. A narrow entrance to it was partially cleared through the Iron Age stonework and protected with a wooden gateway. To the west, in a palisaded enclosure on the level shelf above the tip of the promontory, stood larger buildings 7 m by 8 m, kept much cleaner, with a granary. The finds suggest that the two groups of buildings are contemporary. It is likely enough that the western buildings housed the leaders - local chieftains - and the eastern the led. Both parts of the village were burnt, rebuilt, though not on the same plans, and finally burnt again.

Stratified among the eastern group of buildings was a military belt buckle, of a type made about the first decade of the fifth century AD but still in use two or three generations later.

[Photo: the military belt-buckle of the early fifth century AD from the post-Roman village. Length 65 mm]

We do not know why Crickley Hill and many other hill-forts were reoccupied in the fifth century AD because we have little certain knowledge of the period as a whole. We cannot suppose that administrative collapse could take place in a sophisticated industrial economy without causing fundamental changes in production and distribution and the power structure. These will have been complex and the results often localised. But the evidence does not suggest that the last villagers on Crickley Hill were a huddle of refugees cornered in a desperate resistance. They seem to have been an orderly, socially stratified group taking any moderate precautions, and successfully adapting themselves to the new lifestyle of the fifth century. They are abrupt end is more likely to be the result of internal discord among Britons than the arrival of the Anglo-Saxon conquerors at the end of the sixth century.

[Illustration: post-Roman village: Chieftain's house and granary in the western part. C. Clark]"

More from Crickley Hill and Gloucestershire Prehistory

Thanks to Philip Dixon and the Crickley Hill Trust for permission to reproduce the following abstract from " Crickley Hill and Gloucestershire Prehistory", published in 1977:

"Later Developments

After the destruction of Crickley’s second hillfort, perhaps about 500 BC, the site was again abandoned.  A few pieces of metalwork were found in the turf (Iron Age pins, a brooch, Roman sandal nails, and Anglo-Saxon dress ornaments) imply no more than transient visitors, and no permanent buildings have been recognized later than those of the last hillfort period.  No signs of planning have been noticed and the hill was presumably used only for grazing.  The burnt wooden buildings would soon have disappeared, but parts of the ramparts stood until the 3^rd or 4^th century AD, in their final collapse burying a small pig which was apparently rooting in the rubbish of the ruined entrance passage.

Changes meanwhile occurred in the settlements of Gloucestershire.  A new group of hill forts was built to the north, on Bredon Hill and the adjacent Cotswolds slopes.  No radiocarbon dates are available, but their pottery belongs to the 4^th and 3^rd century and later, and closely resembles the material from the forts of the Malverns and Herefordshire: the influences in the area seem to have shifted from east to west.  A discovery of great significance has recently been made at Beckford, near Bredon, where rescue excavations, in advance of gravel workings, have exposed parts of the large lowland settlement, whose houses were set within a regular grid of rectangular boundary ditches.  The arrangement resembles that at Dragonby, Lincs., and is the first clear occurrence of an eastern flat settlement in the West, an area otherwise dominated by hillforts.  The Beckford pottery is identical to that from the tiny fort at Conderton nearby, which can thus plausibly be seen as the citadel of the otherwise unfortified village.  No open settlement is yet known which might have been associated with the Crickley Hill fort.

Farther south, the small hill fort at Painswick Beacon, with its multiple lines of banks and ditches, is of a type associated with the latest Iron Age, but no dates are available for the site.  During the first century AD and new centre of settlement was formed at Bagendon, near Cirencester, a tribal capital 200 acres in extent within its banks, the predecessor of the Roman town.  An important family must have lived near Crickley at this period, for road making between Crickley and Birdlip in 1879 revealed a small cemetery of the early 1^st century AD, whose rich grave goods are now displayed in Gloucester Museum.  No contemporary settlement site has been uncovered, and Crickley itself remained deserted until the foundation in the 2^nd century AD of the small Roman farm whose branch boundaries may be traced within the wood to the east of the hillfort.

Further Reading

E. M. Clifford Bagendon (1961)

C.  Green 'The Birdlip Early Iron Age Burials', Proceedings of the Prehistoric Society XV (1949)

W.  Britnell 'Beckford',  Current Archaeology 45 (1974)

J.  Dyer Southern England: an archaeological guide (1973).  An excellent gazetteer and general guide"