Bookings now being taken for our

2009 season with £50 deposit

(April 2009 - August 2009)

 

 

 

We have just finished our  last week of the 2008 Saveock season it has been busy and surprising in many ways. Especially the fact that the votive pits were  being put in the ground since 1950! We have a booking form on the education page if any of you want to join the dig on our 2009 season. No experience is necessary just an enthusiasm to discover what people did in the past and meet interesting people form all walks of life in the trenches. We have an article in Archaeology Magazine in America in October, a big article in the German equivalent of National Geographic and an article in the Saga magazine for our more mature students. So if you are thinking of coming next year I suggest you send a deposit for the week you want as it looks like it is going to be a busy season.

There is a tour of our facilities page, so you can see we are not a porta cabin in a muddy field. We are a well equipped research excavation that believes archaeology should be available to anyone who wants to learn how to dig.

 

For those of you new to the site for the first time here is a brief synopsis of the earlier phase of the excavation in this sheltered river valley in Mid Cornwall. The site covers a period from the Mesolithic to 17th century Pagan Swan feather pits (more information about these can be found by clicking on the link in the Feather Pits section on the right of this page). The main site is over a south facing peat bank on the bend of a river that used to be between two shallow lakes. This entire site has been purposely covered with various different coloured clays in an attempt to make the river bank a suitable place for dwellings. In area A/2 the first phase of the site, is what we believe to be a Mesolithic dwelling platform covered with dense green clay surrounded by stony yellow clay in which the stakes to support the dwelling were driven. The next phase we believe (and the jury is still out on this) is the use of the constant spring line to make some sort of Neolithic ritual area. We say ritual because we cannot think of any conceivable reason why people would make stone lined drains covered with 30cm of green admix clay. Then manufacture a large rectangular pool lined with white quartz cores, unless it was for some ritual purpose. In season five (2005) we found another rectangular pool next to the original this one only fills with water from a spring in the bank a the back of it in mid Winter.

 

These features are at present unique in Cornish or from what we have researched British archaeology. The only similar feature we have found is the Neolithic clay platform that is underneath the Maeshowe monument on Orkney. A trench put into this platform revealed a stone lined drain almost identical to ours.

 

Jacqui Wood

Director