Out and about...

The town hall in Lewes - formerly the Star Inn where Pitt-Rivers stayed whilst excavating Mount Caburn in 1877-78.

As part of our public engagement programme, for the Excavating Pitt-Rivers project, Carlotta Gardner gave a talk to the Sussex Archaeological Society in Lewes on Saturday (8th June). It was an excellent opportunity to inform the society, with which Pitt-Rivers worked, about the project and our results from cataloguing and researching the archaeological material excavated by the General from Sussex which is held at the Pitt Rivers Museum in Oxford.

The Sussex Archaeological Society on top of Mount Caburn

After the Talk a group of us went on a small field trip up Mount Caburn, where Pitt-Rivers excavated in 1877-78. The weather was perfect and we were able to see for miles around. As mentioned in a previous post Pitt-Rivers spent a considerable amount of time in Sussex studying and excavating a number of 'camps'. Mount Caburn was of particular interest to Pitt-Rivers and the Museum holds approximately 3,900 objects from his excavations there. In a letter to George Rolleston he described having to walk up the mount in order to be there before 8 am to set things up. Walking from Lewes would have taken around 30-40 minutes.

The walk up Mount Caburn (from Glynde)

Overall it was a wonderful day out and the Society were incredibly friendly and welcoming. We look forward to their visit to Oxford, to look at the Sussex collections, in October.

Panoramic view from the top of Mount Caburn.

Three public talks: Lewes, Leeds and Oxford

images: An example (below) of the specially-made 'medalets' placed by General Pitt-Rivers, having been date-stamped, in his excavations before backfilling - and (above) a wooden case in which he kept some of them (Pitt Rivers Museum Accession Number 1971.30.5).

Public engagement is a central element of the Excavating Pitt-Rivers project. Throughout 2013 the project team will be talking about the project to a range of audiences. Three of these are scheduled for May and June:

On Tuesday 7 May, Dan Hicks will be introducing the project to archaeology students at St Cross College, Oxford. The talk is at 5.30pm. Further details are on the website of St Cross College and enquiries can be sent to dan.hicks@prm.ox.ac.uk

On Saturday 8 June, Dan Hicks will be giving a talk on Augustus Pitt-Rivers in Sussex, hosted by Sussex Archaeological Society. The talk is at 2pm, and will be at Barbican House, Lewes. It will be followed by an optional field trip to nearby Mount Caburn, where Pitt-Rivers excavated during the 1870s. Further details are on the website of the Sussex Archaeological Society, and enquiries can be sent by email to members@sussexpast.co.uk

On Saturday 22 June, Dan Hicks will be giving a talk on  Augustus Pitt-Rivers and Yorkshire at the AGM of the Yorkshire Archaeological Society. The talk will be at Claremont, 23 Clarendon Road, Leeds LS2 9NZ (2pm). Further details are on the website of the Yorkshire Archaeological Society and enquiries can be sent by email from yas.enquiries@gmail.com

All welcome!

Pottery from Mount Caburn, East Sussex

As discussed in a previous post the Excavating Pitt-Rivers team has been working on cataloguing the ceramic material excavated by General Pitt-Rivers at Mount Caburn - an Iron Age hillfort on the South Downs near Lewes, East Sussex - in the summers of 1877 and 1878. This assemblage of material represents one of the earliest ever made through a modern scientific open-area excavation. It is a very large assemblage, comprising approximately 3,472 sherds of pottery from this single site. Most of the pottery is Iron Age in date. Below is a brief discussion of some of the different types of pottery in the assemblages.

Material:

The majority of the ceramic material consists of sherds from pottery vessels. From visual examination of the ceramic fabrics it is evident that five different tempers – non-plastic inclusions added to clay to alter the physical and/or mechanical properties of the clay - were used; fine sand, coarse sand, shell, grog and burnt flint.

Photographs of the five different tempers used in the pottery excavated from Mount Caburn. Left to right - fine sand (PRM 1884.137.37 .3), coarse sand (PRM 1884.137.38 .10), shell (PRM 1884.137.3.101), grog (PRM 1884.137.5 .2) and burnt flint (PRM 1884.137.1 .25).

Production method:
The majority, if not all, of the pottery is hand-made. There is evidence for the coil and drawn techniques. A number of sherds have fractured along the coil joins and others have finger impressions from where the clay has been moulded into shape.

In the middle of this sherd is a finger impression - this indicates that the original vessel was handled prior to drying and may even be evidence of the production technique used whilst making it. (PRM 1884.137.35 .150)

Decoration/surface treatments:

The pottery is largely undecorated. However a number of the grog-tempered sherds appear to have had their surfaces wiped, leaving striations on the surfaces in random orientations. The following photographs show a range of decoration and surface treatments that we have found.

A number of the decorated sherds have these sub-triangular impressions - these will have been made using a broken bone, twig or similar implement. (PRM 1884.137.11 .16)

This sherd shows fine horizontal linear impressions in a herringbone design along the top of the rim and a series of overlapping curved lines that have been incised under the rim. (PRM 1884.137.19 .24)

Two moulded bands run just underneath this rim sherd. The bands have also been impressed with small horizontal lines. (PRM 1884.137.39 .1)

This vessel has been burnished - this is where the vessel is polished, in its leather-hard state, using a pebble, or similar implement, to create a shiny surface. There are a number of sherds from Mount Caburn that have been burnished. (PRM 1884.137.35 .20)

Firing:

The majority of the pottery sherds are reduce fired, some with oxidized outer surfaces and others show uneven firing environments. 
The grog tempered sherds are much softer in texture and still feel like they have not completely cintered, the fractured surfaces are also heavily abraded. This indicates that this particular wear wasn't fired to high enough temperatures to completely transform the clay into ceramic.

A couple of sherds have evidence of spalling. Spalling is when the ceramic explodes during firing. It occurs when the drying process is not complete. The water that remains in the clay expands when it turns to gas during the firing process which causes the ceramic to explode, or spall. If one pot fails in this way it often causes the entire batch that is being fired to fail.

Evidence of spalling (PRM 1884.137.31.62)

Cataloguing ceramic sherds from Mount Caburn, Sussex

The Excavating Pitt-Rivers team is now working on the material from Sussex, starting with the excavated artefacts from Mount Caburn.  Pitt-Rivers conducted a large-scale excavation at Mount Caburn - an Iron Age hillfort on the South Downs near Lewes - during the summers of 1877 and 1878. We estimate that the PRM holds c. 1,546 ceramic sherds from the excavation of this site by General Pitt-Rivers - representing one of the earliest assemblages from a modern scientific open-area excavation ever created.

The pottery has never been documented at this level of detail, so we are working bag by bag, laying out the contents and labelling each sherd with its own unique museum accession number.

The next step is to catalogue the material on the PRM database, enhancing the records with measurements, weight, object descriptions and information from old labels.

Once all the material has been catalogued, each object is photographed then bagged up individually along with the old documentation, before returning to storage.

This will be keeping us busy for the next few weeks at least!