Archaeological Anticipation

Over the past month we have been paying special attention to one of our Scheduled Ancient Monuments (SAM) right on the summit of Bredon Hill.  The Kemerton Hill Fort is thought to be about 2700 years old and was built in the Iron Age period of time.

Over the years the field has changed with some quarrying taking place, to provide local stone, maybe for houses or stone walling.  As a result we have an area of erosion, where the land has slipped away.

The erosion was uncovering some very interesting changes in soil type, colouring and even an old bone or two.  The erosion here has been caused by heavy rain, sheep movements and general wear and tear.  The dark area of soil (left) is thought to be a hole for a post, maybe a fence for corraling cattle or even part of a house.  There are other areas of the hill fort that are suffering from erosion by mountain bikes, (we will tackle these bits another day). 

Under our HLS agreement we have secured some funding to repair the erosion scar's, thus protecting the archaeology for future generations.  Adam (Worcester Archaeological Service) was  employed as part of the repair to survey and record what was being uncovered, before the face was sealed up again.  GPS measurements, readings and photographs where all taken as an official record of the event.

After the excavations had been completed the repair work could begin!  Leigh Watts, who is a local landscape gardner, was detailed with the prescription to repair, as detailed by English Heritage.



Stone from the quarry was used to build up the main layer and the final dressing of soil was collected from within the field boundary, by collecting up mole hill dirt!  We actually collected a JCB bucket load, it took a while but luckily the moles obliged!  This dirt was then spread over the stones and within a plastic mesh to stop further erosion until grass can establish.  The grass seed will be collected later this year again from within the field boundary, although I'm sure there will be some seed from within the mole hill dirt that will start the process off.  The sheep netting is a temporary boundary to stop unwanted feet and mouths disturbing the fresh soil.  The final picture shows the half compeleted repair but you will be glad to know that it is now fully restored!

X-Ray Spectacular

Darren has very kindly sent me the Geo-Physics resulting scans for a couple of the fields on the farm. The field shown here has got some very interesting features and it was the first field that Gordon dug trenches in earlier in the week. The black and white line through the middle of the fields is a crop mark, shown up in aerial photographs over the years. Adjacent to this on the right is the bunded area uses as a coral (see other blog) The line is actually a trackway. The geo-fizz info is shown by the red and blue areas to the right of the trackway and show the actual ditches and mounds of earth and lots of small pits and other features. It is great to see that these areas are still in tact after years of farming practises and we're now looking forward as to how we can protect them for future generations.

Taking it to a Higher Level

As part of the on going investigations as to whether we should be getting involved in the Higher Level Stewardship a team of archaeologists have been looking at the farms archaeology. They have been trialing a system called 'COSMIC' which is based on a risk assessment to the archaeology. The study looks at each of the sights on the farm and tries to work out whether or not the current or past farming practices have or will put the archaeology in danger. The study looks at the field slope, soil depth, passed cropping and passed cultivation techniques to work out the potential risk. It also looks at futures plans for cropping and cultivation. The the system is then taken outside and hand dug test pits are dug to test the theory from the office. So far most of the test pits have come up with plenty of protection for the archaeology and no harm has been done through the farming practices. We will await the final report as the team still have a few sites left to look at. It any of the sites are shown to be at risk we may have to think about putting an HLS option on that land to protect it. These options could include using minimum tillage establishment techniques or grassing the field down in the most at risk cases. We wait to see! The test pit here is in a field of beans where they were looking to find an old roadway and various enclosures. the darker soil is the cultivation depth and the lighter soil is the subsoil, going down further in the top left corner goes even further down to the base rock layer where the archaeology would be found. In this scenario there is plenty of soil to buffer the archaeology from any of our farming operations.