Post-excavation discussion about the ring ditch in Stringman’s Field
Description: Archaeologists Steve Willis, Keith Parfitt and Richard Taylor discuss the initial findings from the May 2018 excavation of the ring ditch in Stringman's Field on Lees Court Estate.
Transcript: Keith and Richard can I ask you what so impressed - to make this commitment to the field work here ready and to all attracted me was it was a corner King I knew nothing about and when I started look I don't think any other I'll feel which is me much about teammates it's it's between all the towns know constantly there's no field will be done here so it's a completely unknown quantity and the little bit of work we have done it's only maps to a few days we've already started to tell them apart the origin wolfswood everywhere a story to be having a problem for not great deal is a lot of its ingredients is we all know tracks we do What we discovered site actually the the unknown element of it apart from looking at aerial photography and things like that I think is fascinating and certainly the the area that I ended up excavating of strings field is is something you don't get to do it every day in terms of what we discovered in that we've got a prehistoric monument of some description but this feeling sat there for thousands of years unknown untouched and we were the first ones to see in in such a long time and explore it and the dating evidence that you must now come through basically lottery makes the story much more interesting than we originally thought yeah debated evidences is what surprised me in that we had stratified mid Neolithic pottery which I wasn't expecting at all and we've also got a contiguous pottery throughout the Stratego fee into middle Bronze Age and into Iron Age as well so it looks like the feature the monuments that we were excavating in strings field was used or occupied for a long time so at first I mean we thought perhaps in the field there was perhaps a Neolithic you know Flint scatter or something like that and then into the Bronze Age you became a focus for burials activity like that when we were looking practice series of you know barrows with spring ditches around them of which that feature that new excavated we thought was probably going to fit into that picture but it's much more complicated or interesting or enigmatic and Western exploring the possibilities you'll go back to that site will you go back to that site next year and hopefully do a larger excavation of quadrants put the quadrant owners southwest corner to see if we can investigate it further and determine its actual function and its role but like you said the really interesting thing for me is looking at the whole landscape in terms of you know do we have a prehistoric ritual burial area I think the possibilities are really quite interesting hmm there's on the edge of a valley isn't it lesson owned a dry Valley that drives itself up into North Kent and also game playing in Faversham Harry do you think that's an important access way in the past I think it might be you know because we walked up we walked up I appreciate and looking at it today on those slopes there are very clear plow banks limits which means they have been cultivated in the past those steep slopes which suggests there's a lot of people about because it's not it's not prime and steep slope chalk slope like that so it implies a lot of people barely eat and today I've been wondering about honest there's prehistoric structuring over all the fields is much the same as one could obtain string ones but it's pretty much everywhere and it might not it might be near that's very little known to archaeologists but I think he's well known to prehistoric man I able to see a fully fully soft out this place he looks like they here from the Neolithic through into the Bronze Age right the way through so I suspect we're looking at just starting to glimpse you know ancient landscape that's gonna come right through nobody some Iron Age in Roman in there somewhere they'll be around in due course but it'd be right at the beginning of thee o study at the moment but I think it's got very high potential this and as you you said the the land owning the formal ad songs absolutely key to do it we can self and we just about managed to get on these sites you know grudgingly allowed on for fall right here we can sort of do pretty much what we want I think within reason that's what makes this special opportunity absolutely and and and Clive secretary of the KSR is doing about 15 year long project which is ambitious but you know there is plenty of archaeology here clearly from what we've done things easily 15 years worth of archaeology and probably there be 25 used by the time we done 15 I suspect as we're gonna find more as we go along I suspect in 10 years time and look bang thing Christ if we'd known in what we know now sort of thing you know it's so it's gonna look very different hidden landscape is Remote sensing geophysics beginning to - yes just touching you mean you're really talking about token fieldwork done only in the area so far what amounts to two or three weeks at most spread over different places at different times you know already it's a lot of details starting to show there can you remind us how we're discovering some of that detail through remote sensing etc geophysics well yeah they the drone new equipment we've got okay I think we're very fortunate the KS because we've we've invested in a lot of new equipment we've got a differential GPS we've got geophysics equipment as a magnetometer and we've also got a drone high-definition drone so a combination of those three I think enables us to see beyond the surface of the ground and get a very clear picture I think of the potential landscape underneath so I think that's a very sound investment for these next 15 or 20 years whatever it is that we're here actually looking at this area so what did what did the geophysics produce when you do that surveys of April May well we did that we did a relatively small geophysical survey instruments field which revealed the existing enclosure that we can see on the aerial photography reporters here in the first place exactly but we also found another smaller looks like partial ring further towards stringless farm today to the east yes to the east so that's another potential target and one of our aims for this year is to actually geophysics the whole of streamlets field and as much as would quart field as we can to get a clearer picture to give us some targets to to go and visit in the future for excavation so that the informations building I think it is this building very quickly and only the other the other interesting is we're quite high up on the chalk downs here and certainly in this area we're on claim with fleet it's not good quality land especially you look prehistoric folk to farm it is difficult land to farm for sure if indeed they do Population increase they say just doing partially burnt it's it's not prime quality land but they are up here up here in some numbers which presumably means if you know they've already exhausted the good stuff further but we fill the dense slope toward establishing it a guess and cadet could that mean that you know that population needs to do with population increase something like that they're looking for new resources I suspect it is yes no even let me come back to these steep hillsides being plowed and the Lynch it's forming on it well again you you you're only going to plow up 45-degree slopes if you're pushed into you're not going to do it you know just because you're fancy you did you you need all the land you can get and that's gonna be sort of some of us lose our stuff on you least being what we're gonna have to use that now because it's there's nothing else to you so they're gonna go for these slopes I think so it doesn't plus a lot of people better through it I mean I think that's really very interesting is that I think there's been an assumption in the past as know that the North's towns you know with various or if any surface water yeah tractable you know clay with Flint's difficult terrain to move through in many ways probably quite wooded in various areas with those links as well has a much larger extent of the well I mean precisely what you said is how we always used to be viewed around Dover Network they're like being involved with the last 40 40 years more now has proved of the in fact it's not the case there is stuff going on on the high dams lots of strike Flint's prehistoric barrows and all the rest of it but there's one slight difference with the Dover end of things in that we near the English Channel and it may well be that the what perhaps force is at work there that drew pre Astana and up onto those high clay lanza we thought weren't particularly attractive because they were near the channel and it was there were lots of people coastal base but they'll be come up here further into the hinterland okay we see exactly the same pattern starting to emerge in broad term so it looks like they all here so no it's not that far to the sea down the slope but it's it's some distance away so I think if you live up here you're probably not going to be going down to famishing Creek on a regular basis because you would be based up here so it seems to me there's a lot going on up here and probably everywhere between here and the coast as well so I think there's a lot and I think it's we don't beyond this of course the implication then is that it's going to apply it all of King mm-hmm because this is a book of ground that apparently tintin that much going on it has got things going on if chances or other place it's going to be designed for food not just not just burials but there could be settling I think so that that's Settlements what interests me is that that idea of settlement up here and so closely associated with with the burials perhaps or in the near vicinity I think that's quite an interesting concept in terms of population spread yeah and the if you've got that barrier I don't the enemy horn in the mile was up onto the downs are you you're just gonna put them nearby there is this as you know in Holly Grove this upstanding man that seems to be a Bronze Age barrel now previously unrecognized and what's interesting I think about that one is that um if you stand on the top of the plateau look across can't see it you can only see it from the bottom of the valley below or on the other side of the valley to the west-northwest I think and that to me suggests they're the places we need to be looking for the settlements nor up on the top may be telling some of those valley bottoms which they probably they may be down by the water if there's water coming through and those various quite a deep back that value there so that may be a clue what I suspect it's gonna be deeply buried under damn more soil if there's anything there that could be present my preservation absolutely it could be very good he's acting that's those those ones are very interesting because of often in archaeology we think of the date being very visible you know for the living that the cemetery monuments the long barrows around bear AZ during the Roman period perhaps enclosed cemeteries they are nearby to settlement you close by so that you can visit them you can see them that they're marking the landscape so they have an active role for the living rather than you know March my stand hidden away so it and that you can process too and have have memorials limit ceremonies with and visit so they're not that you know it's a proximity between the living and the dead so that's very interesting you should point out in this case one of the other intriguing things for me is you'll say how people move through through the landscape and I reflected on my own life recently and thought well and I'm constantly going on the same road on the same pathways on that same street it's very very it's a very very small world that I'm moving through they're these established access roads and train journeys people are moving all the same channels all the time it's very very restricted unless you're sort of countryside walks in the pathways but it's so we've got a very sort of channeled way about how we move through the landscape and it's from you know it's often these days from the video from when economic point to another or you know commuting to and from work and in the past you know there's presumably all this landscape here that people are moving around in different ways to access different resources for different purposes and you know because somewhere like here is not on a normal routine pathway because we're you know we're going along with us within 20 or the a2 or we know that you know that bypass round sandwich doesn't like that very sort of channel but in the past you think people are moving around the landscape in different ways and can we see that perhaps in this I think they must be us mate I suppose the other thing is we we say it's always selected up people why is it always liked it up here only because it's not near Fabrice in town or railway station or the motorway but if you haven't got any of those things maybe it is actually called a centre up here maybe some of these other places there's and Tom Benigni areas because you thought about this before it's only isolated by our standards but if the buildings up here and everyone comes here to do this now the other it's not always related so she was got sort of track why he's leading it's only isolated in the modern landscape because the modern landscape the settlement pattern has moved away from that but if it's if it's not that settlement pattern were working to maybe it's not isolated in these sort of places not practical notes fuel they always interested in your ring deej got public right away going through it yes I don't if that's common system of Landscape things no I think it's an old football it indicates there was the bare room and I mound them so your burial mound somewhere there and people used to cut across the field and they'd hate straight for them yeah I did actually think that because public rights away tend to follow path of least resistance and I don't think that landscape has changed much over thousands of years and perhaps that is you know a channel if you like of access to that higher ground it's quite interesting yeah do do people change the appearance of its change that's a very interesting point with blue Thurber my students at the University right I show them a couple of slides and a PowerPoint presentation whereby we're looking at two 20th century paintings of long barrows in in the sandy part of the Netherlands and there are footpaths going through that landscape now it's sort of heathland sandy heathland and so the monuments are still upstanding so we've got them we've got the pathway and it's going past long bearers in both of these cases there's probably others so what came first the pathway or the Long Barrow well you know it makes you think about the landscape and how people are using it and why monuments are there and why access room so there and help people punctuate the landscape and and how they move through it and how they adjust how they move through it through different sort of reasons not just the economic ones that was talking about just now but you know for other things to do with you know what's going on in them in the mind of culture and tradition hmm yeah going back to the the footpath that goes to you're in he goes to your ring dish doesn't go to the big mound you can still see and Holly Grove does he because you can't see it from the top you got nothing doing that but you always been that little bit further up the slope along it's what Morris on the scone on isn't it from the flattop so I think that's in the way you will come in you'll come to it from the plateau side of it but you're not going to the one we can still see because you can't see that no I think that's it don't want to get you will better than you can pick your best when you're down into the valley so I think that's I think that's telling this board a lot actually mmm what do you think about you know prospective work in the next few weeks later awkward September in terms the geophysical survey and the targets for that and then the photo op ik excavation won't war sort of ideas and plans do we have for that well I'll be very interested to see what the geophysics comes up with regarding the the field with with the hordes in it to see if there are only any structure there any any good results that we can pick up on that because like all of us I'm very interested in fact that there's such a concentration of hordes within a such a small area well most of you they must be a real a term even one Ward were they one thing that's very rare to very rare going through wouldn't just wouldn't even in to take me would you so I think that's quite interesting and I've there has been this long expectation if these halls has been buried in the middle of nowhere but I'm not sure that's gonna be the case you know I can't see how it can be here there's too much in close proximity the idea is the ancient man used to bury these halls in the middle of nowhere for safekeeping that's been the standard sort of thought well and but somehow they never got back to collecting with us feel a lot of people with bad memories even get back to get these hundreds so yeah it's just not looking as if that's right it was just not right is it no so we're now looking so the old theories wrong we haven't got a new one yet so I think we we need a new theory I think I think it's simple things I think they're buried in settlements so simple as that I reckon they're just in settlements and so if we did a bronze eight round house to go with that there'll be rush we're happy bad but it won't be particularly surprised doesn't it pleased but not surprised increasing evidence in their iron age they're marking boundaries with with deposits like you know so-called currency bars and coin doing disposal you things like that so you know perhaps this is the context for something that can't is reasonably well known for which is Bronze Age hoards but you know to have for come up in one weekend there's a very silly every Thursday so that discovery in the context of that through the geophysics and then follow-up exavation they're being really quiet so and if we if we find nothing well we'll just go back to the old theories or perhaps they write at least on some occasions I think we'll we'll come out with something else I suspect you know this time next year rich and to be awash with new information and one of the sorts of things exciting prospect good news I think it is yeah
