After a couple of interesting finds emerged from my folks back garden, I took the opportunity to investigate a part of the garden where a pumpkin
patch was going to be dug. The finds were flint debitage (rubbish from flint tool production) and a piece of Medieval pottery. I had earlier dug two 1m test pits in
areas next to where the finds came from and found a scraper, hard hammers, a few waste flint flakes and a tile but due to the garden having been rotavated it was all mixed
up and was out of context with the soil being a fairly consistent mix of top soil and sand. I noted where everything came from and back filled the test pits. When I
started to dig the pumpkin patch I immediately came across a lot of debitage and a well used hard hammer at around 5-10cm, unfortunately dug into this material was recent
rubbish with areas where there had been fires which had modern plastics burnt and melted into the charcoal and soil. This went on until 20cm down. I then cleared that and
found a mixed up sandy soil with a few debitage finds. I slowly troweled this back and uncovered a linear feature and then another and another. Before too long it appeared
I had a series of lines in the sand, at 30cm from the surface. This looked a lot like ridge and furrow, albeit a tightly packed one. When I cleaned up the section I had two
pottery finds of Medieval date from the dark ‘furrows’ as well as debitage. Below is a photo of how the ridge and furrow appeared in the soil as I first uncovered
it. |