[ News
| Homes
| Life
| Entertainment
| History
| Science
| Community
| Shop ]
| Sport
| Culture
| Cars
| Money
| Broadband
| Learning
| Health
| Dating
| Games ]
[ Text Only: Homepage ]
[ Graphical: Channel4 Homepage ]
[ Time Team Home | Return to programme index ]
Iron-Age bracelets
Archaeologists from Bournemouth University, under the direction of Dr Eileen Wilkes, have been investigating Green Island, in Poole Harbour, Dorset, for some time. Their system of excavating, using a distribution of test pits across the area, has uncovered evidence suggesting this was an important centre for both the production and distribution of artefacts during the Iron Age. Among them were the waste cores from the production of shale bracelets. Time Team was called in to discover more about these finds and the past of this beautiful island.
Carefully does it
Green Island is a Site of Special Scientific Interest (SSSI) because of its delicate ecology. So Time Team had to work with extra care in order that the ground could be reconstituted after the dig. Two main areas of excavation were highlighted first based on earlier results and the latest geophysics. The aim was to find evidence of settlement and the shale bracelet manufacture.
Sands of time
Phil's trench on the western side of the island uncovered an indication of structures, including linear stonewalling. It proved difficult to establish if this was part of a building, however. Another theory was that the stones were part of some landscape terracing.
Human bone and a shale core were also discovered in relation to this feature. The bone was the first to be found on the island – its preservation is unusual because the island appears to be made almost entirely of sand, and bone does not survive well in the acid conditions.
Iron works
Excavations by Dr Miles Russell on the eastern side of the island uncovered scatters of iron-working slag and the base of an Iron-Age furnace. Shale cores in the trench helped to date the feature to the first century AD. Meanwhile, another small trench excavated nearby by Matt Williams uncovered some ditches, which could possibly define working areas.
In the course of the three days this intriguing island offered up literally thousands of finds and evidence of both settlement and manufacture. The range of finds both here and elsewhere in Poole Harbour point towards the area having been an important trading centre from the Iron Age to the fourth century AD.
Protecting delicate ecology
Green Island is a Site of Special Scientific Interest (SSSI) and as such needs to be carefully protected so that its environment and ecology are not damaged. There are some particularly sensitive areas that the Team could not dig and mechanical diggers are also not permitted on the island.
Before any excavation could take place, an English Nature representative had to be consulted. Then photographs of the immediate area had to be taken before each trench was opened to record the environment. Even the topsoil was kept separately so that it could be reinstated properly after the dig. All of these measures had to be put in place to protect the delicate ecosystem of the island.
Feeding the ticks
Respecting the local ecology isn't always painless. It was the height of the tick season when Time Team visited Green Island, so everyone had to be covered in repellent. Unfortunately, though, they don't make a brand that's heavy duty enough for the geophysics team as they trekked up and down in the most heavily wooded and bracken-filled parts of the island.
John Gater lost count after removing 36 ticks that had developed a taste for the geofizz crew's blood. And by day three, about three-quarters of those working on the island had donated blood to the little critters. Tweezers became a standard part of the archaeological tool kit.
Shiny black shale
Some 2,000 years ago, during the British Iron Age, Green Island acted as a hub for trade both within pre-Roman Britain and with the continent. As well as possibly controlling import and export for the region (by means of large stone and timber jetties reaching out into the deep water channels) the island and the surrounding area also produced its own material for trading. Lots of evidence for lathe-turned shale has been found here, indicating that the beautiful shiny black jewellery and adornments made from the stone were in high demand at the time.
For the reconstruction cameo on this programme, craftsman Jake Keen turned a replica of an Iron-Age shale bracelet on a pole lathe. 'Shale is a fine grained sedimentary rock that's basically compressed mud,' says Jake. 'It's very strong and durable but also really nice to work. It's quite oily and smells like rubber when it's worked on. You can even set alight to it because it contains so much natural oil.'
Variety of tools
Using a variety of tools, including some flint chisels that Phil Harding made, Jake first split a block of shale along one of its stratigraphic beds to produce a thin slab about 2cm thick. This was then marked out with a scribing compass and the basic blank disc shape was chiselled out.
'This preparation stage takes about three hours,' says Jake. 'It's important to get it right so it runs nicely on the lathe. I've also got to make a square hole in the middle to take the chuck which holds it in place.'
Pole lathe
After around two hours on the pole lathe, where the torsion in an ash pole is used to return-pull a leather strap wrapped around the lathe shaft, Jake produced a fine shale bracelet with the core just ready to pop out (and looking exactly the same as the Iron-Age cores found by Time Team and in earlier digs on the island).
'Before I remove it from the lathe I can do some of the finishing,' says Jake. 'It's easier that way because the lathe can do a lot of the turning work for me. By using a range of abrasives from flint right down to shale dust, I can get a really fine finish on the stone.'
After removing the work from the lathe and popping out the core, the final finishing was done to bring the bracelet to a smooth shine. 'To get the final shine I rub in a bit of beeswax and that's about it,' says Jake.
Expensive but accessible
'We know that these were popular in the Iron Age because they've been found all over Britain in excavations and on the continent too,' he continues. 'I guess if I wanted to produce lots of them I'd do them in batches, but they would still take a fair time to make'.
'In the Iron Age I would imagine that they would be fairly 'expensive', but also accessible to a lot of people – not necessarily high status, but probably a special thing to the people who owned them. There have been burials found where adult skeletons have been discovered still wearing small bracelets that were probably first worn when they were children. I think from that we can tell that they were important to people and certainly played a role in the economy of the time.'
With an area of just 350 x 320 metres, Green Island is one of the smaller islands in the natural harbour of Poole, in Dorset. It might be less than one kilometre from the mainland, but it's still an island and everyone had to be shipped in and shipped out each day.
In order to get the 50 crew members and their equipment to the island, a flotilla of five boats was chartered. Running regular shuttle trips, the island was gradually supplied until the whole site could be rigged with the necessary cables and generators to make a television programme.
'There are just so many things that can go wrong with a location like this' says production co-ordinator Kaye Lippitt. 'But it all worked out really well.' Apart from the ticks, that is ...
Channel 4 is not responsible for the content of third-party sites.
Places to visit
Cornwall Celtic Village
Saveock Mill
Greenbottom
Chacewater
Cornwall TR4 8QQ
Tel: 01872 560351
A reconstructed Bronze-Age settlement run by Time Team contributor Jacqui Wood. The purpose of the project is to educate the public in the daily life of the Bronze/Iron-Age inhabitants of Cornwall and to enable them to participate in activities which help to reconstruct that way of life.
Flag Fen
Flag Fen Excavations
Fourth Drove
Fengate
Peterborough PE1 5UR
Website: www.flagfen.freeserve.co.uk
Flag Fen is open seven days a week, all year round (except Xmas), 10am–5pm, last admission 4pm. School visits and tours by arrangement. Admission: Adults £3.50, children and students £2.50, family £9.50 (two adults and up to three children).
The Flag Fen visitor centre has both Bronze-Age and Iron-Age roundhouse reconstructions, giving a glimpse of what it would have been like to live at Flag Fen thousands of years ago. Its displays include the oldest wheel ever found in Britain, and there is also a specially constructed preservation hall built over one of the earlier excavations of Bronze-Age timbers at the site. Other attractions include a Roman herb garden and ancient farm animal breeds. Flag Fen is also where the famous Seahenge timbers, from the wood circle excavated and removed from off the Norfolk coast at Holme-next-the-Sea in 1999, were sent for preservation and study.
Butser Ancient Farm
Nexus House
Gravel Hill
Waterlooville
Hampshire PO8 0QE
Tel: 023 9259 8838
Website: www.butser.org.uk
Butser Ancient Farm is a replica of the sort of farm that would have existed in the British Iron Age around 300 BC. Its former director, Peter Reynolds, who died in 2001, was a regular Time Team expert. Founded in 1972, the farm has buildings, structures, animals and crops of the kind that existed at that time.
It is much more than a museum, though. It is, in effect, a large open-air laboratory where research into the Iron Age and Roman periods goes on using the methods and materials available at the time, and also by applying modern science to ancient problems. The farm is open to the public on occasional weekends, and is happy to welcome school parties, archaeological societies, and other group visits by arrangement. Special-interest groups can also be catered for. The farm runs a number of day schools and courses for people interested in the Iron Age and in archaeology in general.
Peat Moors Centre
Shapwick Road
Westhay
Nr Glastonbury BA6 9TT
Tel: 01458 860697
Website: www.somerset.gov.uk/levels/pmvc.htm
Open daily Easter–October
The centre has reconstructions of many prehistoric structures, including Iron-Age roundhouses, prehistoric trackways, Roman pottery kilns and an Iron-Age canoe. It also offers displays on the history and archaeology of the local area. A range of Iron-Age activities are available for school groups and students in addition to tours, and special weekend activity courses are run on themes such as coracle building, green woodworking, Roman pottery-making and the reconstruction of prehistoric trackways.
Farmers in Prehistoric Britain by Francis Pryor (Tempus, 1998) hardback £18.99
Wearing both his hats as archaeologist and farmer, Pryor has produced an empathic work on the life and methods of prehistoric farmers. Often what survives is just a few cropmarks, but this work brings what is now obscure into vivid reality.
English Heritage Book of Iron Age Britain by Barry Cunliffe (English Heritage, 1995) paperback £15.99
Between 700 BC and the Roman conquest of Britain in 43 AD, a number of important social changes took place. The first millennium BC was a time of dramatic change in Europe, dominated by the emergence of Rome as a mega-state. Britain, on the periphery of these developments, witnessed huge social and economic change, seeing the end of the Bronze-Age cycle of subsistence farming and the beginning of a more complex society. Still-existing regional boundaries were established, hillforts such as those on Bredon Hill were built by warring chiefs and the first towns were founded. This well-illustrated book surveys the period.
Iron Age Communities in Britain by Barry Cunliffe (Routledge, 1991, 3rd edition) hardback £100
For more than 20 years Barry Cunliffe's survey of the British Iron Age has been a standard source. But the mass of new evidence (more than 700 new papers and books have been published in a decade) and the quite radical change in emphasis that has occurred in prehistoric studies has required a complete revision of the book. This new, third edition retains the qualities of the first two editions, but the changes are substantial. The text has been completely revised, new sections have been introduced and all illustrations have been redrawn. Likewise new photographs have been taken of all the sites. The result is, once again, a classic of British archaeology.
Prehistoric Settlements by Robert Bewley (Tempus, 2003) paperback £17.99
This book traces the variety and development of prehistoric settlements in Britain through 8,000 years, from the hunter-gatherers of the Mesolithic to the tribes of the Iron Age in the years before the Roman invasion. Examining key sites such as Star Carr, Bodmin Moor, the Dartmoor reaves, and hillforts and farmsteads, Bewley concentrates on two central themes: the close relationship between the individual settlement site and the wider landscape; and the ways in which archaeologists discover, interpret, and reinterpret prehistoric settlements.
Britain and the Celtic Iron Age by Simon James and Valerie Rig (British Museum Press, 1997) paperback £9.99
Excellent introduction to the Celts, a family of European peoples who spoke related languages and shared many things in common, from art to aspects of religion and social organisation. Was the British Iron Age simply part of this supposedly uniform, Celtic world, or was it something much more distinctive, complex, strange and fascinating? New research is promoting reappraisals of Britain's prehistory, in ways that challenge many ideas, such as that of a familiar Celtic past. Excellent introduction to the Celts, marvellously illustrated, with lots of pictures of sites and artefacts, and chapters on people, economy, settlement, society, ritual and communications.
The Ancient Celts by Barry Cunliffe (Oxford University Press, 1997) hardback/paperback £25 hardback
With a subject as wide ranging as a good thousand years of prehistory in Europe, this master of the subject explores in some considerable depth the archaeological evidence in a superbly illustrated book which also contains copious maps. Examining the archaeological reality of the Iron-Age inhabitants of barbarian Europe, he traces the emergence of chiefdoms, patterns of expansion and migration, and the development of a mature urbanised society, thus assessing the disparity between the traditional view of the Celts and the archaeological evidence. One of the tricks of archaeological writing is not only to know your subject, but to be able to explain it as well, and this is just what the author is able to do.
Iron Age Farm – The Butser Experiment by Peter J Reynolds (British Museum Publications, 1979) hardback/paperback, out of print. ISBN: 0714180149/0714180157
Butser is an experimental farm set up to discover the practicalities of farming in the Iron Age. Nearest modern analogue breeds were used if the original breeds of the Age had died out, and grains and cereals harvested and stored under Iron-Age conditions. Dr Peter Reynolds, author of the book and director of the project, diagnosed and described the functioning of the grain pit at the Salisbury Plain dig. The book describes these and other aspects of Iron-Age farming, including the observations of the high-jumping capacity of Soay sheep (six feet!) and the difficulty of keeping them penned.
Channel 4 is not responsible for the content of third-party sites.
Green Island Archaeology
www.poolemaritime.org/Green%20Island%20FR.htm
The Green Island Archaeology Project is an ongoing investigation by Bournemouth University in conjunction with the Poole Maritime Trust. This brief overview, based on a forthcoming PhD thesis by Eileen Wilkes, provides a general description of the project and information on previous archaeological work on the Island. There is also a useful list of references.
Green Island Causeway
http://www.poolemaritime.org/PBARG%20Report.htm
One of the first underwater sites investigated by the Poole Harbour Heritage Project was a stone structure known locally as the Green Island Causeway. The existence of this 'causeway' linking Green Island to the nearby mainland at Cleavel Point is well known around the harbour, and its date and purpose have been the subjects of much speculation. This report, by Mike Markey, of the Poole Bay Archaeological Research Group, covers two seasons of fieldwork on the causeway.
Nautical Archaeology Society
www.nasportsmouth.org.uk/newsandprojects/poole.htm
Website of the Nautical Archaeology Society, including some details of archaeological work in Poole Harbour.
Dorset Life
www.dorsetlife.co.uk/articles/ArticlesDetail.asp?ID=348
Is Poole the oldest cross-Channel port in Britain? Mike A'Court reviews recent evidence that Poole was a thriving trading port long before the Romans came to Britain