Site Diary: Trench 7

The removal of another spit of mineralised prehistoric soil has been a long and laborious process, largely because of the extraordinary density of finds. Talya has been rushed off her feet keeping tabs on the flint, pottery and burnt stone as it emerges, but the system is working well. The character of this material is much the same as reported last week, though the last few days have seen the recovery of a small blue glass bead, more fragments of shale rings and the largest sherd of prehistoric pottery yet recovered during our work on the moor (c. 16cm × 10 cm).

The range of material recovered - stone working debris, pottery and burnt river cobbles - certainly suggests a variety of activities and would not be out of place in and around a dwelling of some sort. However, we still have a lot more soil to remove before we have a chance of identifying cut features and until that happens, it is difficult to determine what we are dealing with.

What is interesting at this stage is the fact that much of the flint work is consistent with assemblages dated to the later Neolithic and/or earlier Bronze Age. This has caused great excitement, as this particular phase in prehistory on the moors has generally been recognised only through ceremonial monuments such as ring cairns, barrows and stone circles.

Breaktimes at the moment are full of speculative discussions as to whether or not we have finally begun to identify evidence for occupation dating to the later third and early second millennia, and of course, what form this occupation may have taken.