We don’t usually post on Saturday but thought that we’d record our thanks to the Mason’s Arms in Odcombe for their welcome and fine beers. We had a lovely time and Kimberly especially enjoyed the visit!
Most of Saturday was spent shopping for food and mooching about Yeovil. Elliot is returning to Odcombe tonight with his guitar and high hopes for the open mic competition…
Day 4 was a pretty busy day. In Trench A Lucy and Jess continued to tidy up after the machining and identified what is probably a modern field drain. Lucy began to excavate it in the afternoon and found a tiny fragment of medieval pottery.
In Trench B James G, Kimberley and Ollie continued to dig a deep slot across a feature we think might be a ditch or holloway (trackway). This feature has produced a lot of medieval pottery but the upper fill also contained a piece of industrially produced blue and white ‘china’ and a piece of modern glass. We think this fill might be the result of the bulldozing in the 1970s and hope to find out whether there are medieval deposits below.
Andy, Flora, Elliot and Hayley began investigating a big feature in the south-eastern corner. This is a complicated area that we don’t fully understand yet. Nevertheless medieval pottery and pieces of iron slag provided plenty of excitement.
All of this activity was aided by Bill on the sieve.
The evening saw the team return to Chris and James St A’s excellent chilli and also a new camping shower.
We had an exciting find yesterday just south of Trench B.
A copper-alloy seal matrix (used for marking sealing wax with a design) dating from AD1250-1400 depicting a hare riding a hound and blowing a horn. Around the edge there’s an inscription reading ‘Sohev Roben’, which is a medieval phrase similar to ‘Tallyho Fido’.
The seal is a humorous little piece and mocks the medieval elite’s favourite past time. It may have belonged to a noblewoman poking fun at her male friends and relations or a clergyman.
A similar seal is noted on the PAS Database.
Thanks to Mike (Ski) for his help in finding this object.
Lufton excavators graduate in 2014 © Newcastle University
Congratulations to Fraser, Georgia, Lucy, Danni, Johanna and Ellie (who couldn’t make it for this picture). They have all their survived fieldwork at Lufton and gone on to graduate from their degrees.
The Project would like to wish them all the best for the future (especially Lucy who will be rejoining the team for this season’s excavations!)
We’re now 10 days from the start of this season’s excavation. Yesterday Andy and James met to discuss final preparations and trench locations. We have a plan, although whether it will survive first contact with the archaeology or not is another matter!
In other news Ollie was added to the blog today as an ‘author’. Ollie is a second year student (soon to be a third year) studying Single Honours Archaeology and will be responsible for updating the blog during the excavation. We hope the updates will be daily (more or less) and they’ll be a good way for you to keep up to date with out progress.
Ollie also has previous experience of archaeological blogging. Last year he dug on one of our other projects at Derwentcote and wrote a few interesting posts.
We really couldn’t work without the help and assistance of the locals in and around Lufton and we’re really grateful for everyone’s efforts on our behalf. In particular our friends Maggie and Colin are kindly hosting the excavation team on their farm this year and have gone to extraordinary lengths to prepare for our arrival.
The marquee (complete with wifi access!) will make life on camp much more comfortable!
Indiana Jones (The Last Crusade) once said:
“X” never, ever, marks the spot. Seventy percent of all archaeology is done in the library
and in many ways Indy was right. We’re most visible when we’re in Somerset digging for three weeks every Summer, but the truth is that excavations are complex projects. Organising a dig is not as simple as flinging some tools and students in a minibus and heading South West!
We’ve been reading up on what is known about the deserted medieval settlement and thought this’d make a good opportunity to share our knowledge.
In 1976 archaeological attention was drawn to a ‘bumpy’ field near Lufton (but actually in Odcombe Parish) that was reputed locally to be the site of an old quarry. Investigation of the site showed it to be the earthworks of a well-preserved Medieval settlement with remains of crofts, holloways, low platforms and boundaries surviving.
A plan of these earthworks was made by the late Mick Aston (county archaeologist at the time).
Plan of the earthworks at Barrow by Mick Aston (from PSANHS 121)
and some aerial photographs were taken that show the site.
Earthworks of the site 1976 (from Somerset HER)
The site was bulldozed shortly after this work was undertaken and some tenth- to fourteenth-century pottery was recovered.
Some further archaeological work was carried out in the early 1990s when the Odcombe-Ilchester waterpipe was laid. This identified a single medieval ditch associated with the settlement and some ridge and furrow.
Documentary records indicate that the site was known as Barrow Orchard in the nineteenth century. In the Lay Subsidy of 1327 a ‘Richardo de Barrow’ is recorded in Odcombe and this might suggest that the settlement was called ‘Barrow’, although we don’t know this for certain.
For further information please take a look at the Somerset HER, or the following papers in Proceedings of the Somerset Archaeological and Natural History Society.
Aston, M. 1977 ‘Barrow(?) deserted medieval village, Odcombe’, Proceedings of the Somerset Archaeological and Natural History Society 121, 115-116
Pearson, T. 1978 ‘Late Saxon and early Medieval pottery from the deseerted village of Barrow(?) in Odcombe’, Proceedings of the Somerset Archaeological and Natural History Society 122, 79-82.
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Post-excavation work on last year’s excavation is still on-going. Normally we like to have an assessment of our work complete before returning to the field for another season of work. However, this year we haven’t been able to do this because James has been very busy with teaching and research commitments and Andy is busy wrapping his PhD up. Not to fear though – the work is in progress.
If you were following last season’s blog you might remember that Dave and Cubby found a very nice greyware flagon of Roman date in a ditch.
Dave worked on the pottery assemblage for one of his second year modules (ARA2101 Artefacts) and produced a very nice drawing, which will go into the assessment report when it’s complete.
Just a month to go until the team heads down to Somerset.
Yesterday James and Andy spent some time thinking about the geophysics and aerial photos of the DMV site. This left them with lots of questions and pondering how many trenches we should dig and how big they should be…
Meanwhile most of the team have finished their exams and headed home for a few weeks’ rest before the dig starts.