A palimpsest of texts inscribed on the cliff face west of Margate. Who is Violeta, what was special about 1935, is I Steve a vision of the future?
This is just a few metres of an immense running inscription, unfolding a theatre of memory and an archaeology of seaside experience. Will this record be pored over for its meaning in the future or are these human experiences as enduring as the chalk they are written on?
Go and see it one day, see who you can find.
The Trust for Thanet Archaeology is an educational charity and one of its aims is to teach people about Thanet’s very important past history, which has been revealed through archaeological investigation.
One of the problems faced by the Trust is that much of our archaeology remains hidden from view under the wide expanses of agricultural fields that cover the Island. Take a close look at the area surrounding the excavation in the image, which is as flat and featureless as any field could be. Yet below the thin covering of top soil are the remains of a prehistoric site, formed of several succeeding ring ditches that were used and adapted for many different ceremonies and burials from the Beaker period to the Bronze Age.
The importance of Thanet’s landscape in the past partly derived from the fertile soils and relatively warm weather, where the climatic conditions on this south east coast were not dissimilar to those of the near continent. For prehistoric peoples, the interaction with the coastal areas of Britain were not such a great leap as they would have been if the conditions were closer to those in the north of the the British Isles. The combination of close European connections, openness to innovation in culture and the fertile landscape, led to the formation of a dense record of past settlement that has been discovered in the Isle of Thanet.
Sites like the Lord-of-the Manor ring ditches shown in the image tell the earliest part of Thanet’s story , but their significance can really only be comprehended by looking at the records, reports and images that remain from the archaeological efforts to discover and investigate them. The intensification of agriculture from the medieval period onwards levelled the remains of the settlements of preceding generations, until only the truncated remnants lay buried under a swathe of plough soil, covering miles of flat ploughed fields.
Over time, each generation has done its best to prosper in the soil. For many centuries much of the landscape was in use as grazing land and we have archaeological evidence that ancient barrow mounds and ditches remained standing in the landscape in the Roman period. As late as the 19th century earthworks and mounds remained in the Lord-of-the Manor area of Ramsgate, where today’s image was taken during excavations in 1976.
Today’s image is of a Middle Bronze Age hoard excavated at Dumpton Gap, Broadstairs in 1992. Five unused palstave axes and a bronze ring were found in a pit that cut through an enclosure ditch.
Today’s image from the archive is of a ninth century Saxon silver hooked tag excavated in 1991 from a ditch at Sarre. The hooked tag measures 2.5cm high and 1.5cm wide and is a crude design of a Trewhiddle style bird in niello inlay.
Decorated hooked tags are known from the seventh century and continue until the late Medieval period probably because they could be used multiple ways. The holes at the top of the plate were for fixing to cloth or leather and would have been used in a similar way to hook and eye fastenings. Similar tags have been found in association with coin hoards and may be purse fasteners, others have been found in graves where they may have been attached to garters.
Extracting ancient images. We will say that again.
Today’s VM 365 image follows on from a theme set by yesterday’s image, which was scanned from an old colour slide dating from the early 1980’s. The image was cleaned up for a new digital generation more experienced with looking at images sent instantly to their phones than delivered using a hot light bulb to the wall of a village hall. Today’s picture is of one slide archive from the 1970’s and early 80’s, full of many hundreds of images that are locked in celluloid slides.
Even though many of these slides were scanned in the early 2000’s, technology moves on and our ability to enhance and manipulate the images progresses every year allowing them to be available and potentially more accessible over time.
Many of the images we will present in the future for VM 365 will come from this valuable resource.
Today’s photo is from the large archive of slides we have from excavations dating back as early as the 1970’s many predating the Trust for Thanet Archaeology. This slide shows a Roman Bronze, no longer in our possession, excavated in 1981 by the Isle of Thanet Archaeological Unit, from a second century chalk quarry at St Peter’s Footpath near Draper’s Mills, Margate. Alongside the slide are Dr Dave Perkins’ illustrations which show it in more detail.
The head is bald and shows a lock of wavy hair at the back. There is a phallus and a pair of testicles modelled on top of the head; a symbol used to ward off the ‘Evil Eye’.
The head is hollow and measures 63mm high with a 50mm diameter base. It was probably a decorative mount for a horse harness and intended as a good luck charm.
The full details of the Boxer were published in Kent Archaeological Society’s journal Archaeologia Cantiana 97 pages 307-311 by the late Dr David Perkins.
Following on from VM_365 15, today’s image shows how it is possible to reconstruct vessels when only fragments remain.
The sherds from a once complete Beaker vessel were found in the grave of a 40 to 50 year old male, radiocarbon dated to 2460-2200 BC, excavated near the QEQM Hospital, Margate. The vessel had been crushed as the grave structure decayed and some sherds had eroded completely making it impossible to reassemble. The vessel was reconstructed instead with a drawing by taking careful measurements of joining sections of remaining sherds and using the measurements to complete a full profile and section.
The image from the Virtual Musuem 365 project today is of a Late Iron Age ‘Belgic’ Fineware jar, which was reconstructed from sherds that were found together in an archaeological feature at a site excavated at Hartsdown, Margate in 2003.
The joins between each sherd were matched and carefully glued to reconstruct the profile of this vessel which now forms part of the Trust’s display collection.
Our image today is of a display of World War One weapons and equipment at a day of commemoration of the 100th anniversary of the start of the war, held at Ellington Park, Ramsgate.
Archaeology is all about using material remains to understand cultures and societies of the past, including the recent past. By collecting and curating examples of the objects that contributed to major periods of history, the scale of the events and the technologies involved become easier to appreciate.
From model trains to classic cars, curated collections are a form of archaeological research, creating ordered series of objects to demonstrate the form, function and change over time of objects that have been significant to the development of our ways of life.
In this centenary of such a momentous event in the lives of so many Europeans, the curation and display of objects associated with World War One provide a way to demonstrate ‘history from things’, which is really a form of archaeology.
Today’s image comes from Archaeology for You, our annual event for the National Festival of Archaeology, held in the gardens of the Powell-Cotton Museum.
It has been a long day for the Trust and our volunteers, with many people taking part in our archaeological activities.
This image is of the new skeleton excavation for our Bones and Burials area. Good fun and some very good and careful excavation carried out by our archaeologists of the future.
If you weren’t there you missed interesting, educational and entertaining day!