From Victoria to the Bronze Age

So who's been here before you ?
As promised earlier, here’s a bit of a diversion from the usual allotment type blog, which you may find interesting, about finds on my plot

Being interested in history and archaeology, I couldn’t help noticing the man made things that turned up as I was digging the plot for the first time. Most of it was just broken 19th and 20th century pottery, glass and clay pipes but there were a couple of earlier items that pushed the history of man’s presence on this piece land even further.

As you know, up to last year this was farmland, that I presume has been cultivated for hundreds of years, being close to a very old and important village and town. So most of the items found, probably came to be here through the activity of spreading night soil on the land. Night soil was the name given contents of household “privies”, from the towns and villages that was collected and sold as manure to farmers, before the days of sewers.

Given that they were basically a hole in the ground into which all sorts of rubbish, as well as sewage, was deposited, it is not surprising that broken bits of household items turn up, and here is a selection of them. Some things were a little more personal, like the little pot lid perhaps from a toy teapot and the opaque class bead possibly from a brooch, at the bottom of the photo.



However, some items will have been dropped by farm workers whilst working the fields, and I’m sure this is how the clay pipe bowls, come to be there. If you’re lucky you may find a bowl with a makers’s mark which can be researched.



Pushing things back even further, there was a piece of 17th century slipware from the English civil war period, aptly nicknamed Mr Kipling ware, and a couple of pieces of Medieval glazed earthenware from around the 15th C .



Now for the surprise!!!
Having studied Archaeology for a short while has enabled me to identify worked pieces of flint, from the many that you find in the soil. Well, you could have knocked me over with a feather when I found this piece.



It is not exactly a flint tool but what is known as a core, from which pieces of flint have been knapped (knocked off) to form small tools such as knives and scrapers. You can plainly see where the pieces have been struck off from the main body. As for its age, it was dropped or lost on this site by its owner during the Bronze Age, when flint was still being used, probably around 3500 years ago !

So keep an eye out when you are digging you never know what might turn up, and I’ll keep you posted on anything else I find.

By the way, I would love to hear what any of you have found on your plots or gardens, just post in the comments.