Projects - excavations

Projects Excavations Excavations 2008 Boden Excavation, Manaccan, Cornwall. 19 Sept. - 5 Oct., 2008 The Society's second excavation season focussed on Boden on the Lizard at a site where it had been established, by a prior trial excavation, that there was a Bronze Age structure. The excavation was managed by James Gossip, with the assistance of Jo Sturgess and Anna Tyacke, and included a full training programme for participants. The excavation is being organised and funded by Cornwall Archaeological Society and the Meneage Archaeological Group. Conservation of the pottery is being carried out and funded by the Royal Cornwall Museum, Truro. The excavation has revealed more of the roundhouse first revealed in 2003 and has produced finds from both the Bronze Age and Iron Age including decorated pottery and worked stone. The roundhouse is cut into the natural bedrock, typical of Bronze Age houses in lowland Cornwall and has a diameter of approximately 10m. Within this scoop the Bronze Age builders would have erected a ring of wooden posts to help support a conical thatched roof. An entrance is likely to be found on the south- eastern edge of the roundhouse. When the excavation is complete we are hoping to have identified postholes cut into the base of the roundhouse and other internal features such as hearths for cooking. We are also hoping to recover more of the very large Middle Bronze Age pot known as Trevisker Ware, fragments of which were found in 2003. Radiocarbon dating tells us that this pot was deposited in the bottom of the roundhouse in the period 1500 – 1300 BC. Fragments from at least five other vessels have been found. The large decorated vessel is the largest of its kind in Cornwall and probably Britain and appears to have been deliberately broken and then laid in the roundhouse shortly before it was abandoned. This raises questions as to whether the structure had a ritual or domestic function. The pot was richly decorated with chevrons and other patterns formed by impressing twisted cord into the unfired clay. During October and November of 2003 a team from the Historic Environment Service, Cornwall County Council carried out a programme of archaeological recording as part of an evaluation of a Bronze Age structure, Iron Age enclosure and fogou at Boden Vean, St Anthony-in-Meneage, Cornwall. The site is situated one kilometre to the south of the village of Manaccan. This original work was funded by English Heritage and came about because of events that began in 1991 when pipelaying by the landowner led to the discovery of a shaft containing Romano-British pottery and rotary querns (grinding stones for wheat), and to the rediscovery of a fogou (subterranean passage) which although documented in this area since the early nineteenth century (recorded by Rev Richard Polwhele, vicar of Manaccan in 1816) its exact whereabouts were unknown. Geophysical survey by English Heritage in 1992 and 1993 identified a possible fogou and large ditched enclosure – in Cornwall these are often known as ‘rounds’, but in fact these settlement enclosures can be round, oval or rectangular. In 1996 a void opened in the ground during agricultural operations, exposing a subterranean tunnel and archaeological excavation led to the discovery of the stone-walled fogou. The 2003 excavations were undertaken to better understand the fogou and the enclosure. The Iron Age fogou (circa 400 BC), the enclosure and features inside it produced an unusually large assemblage for Cornwall of pottery from this period and suggests that people were settled here in the Iron Age. The fogou was deliberately filled in at this time and had a scatter of pottery, worked stones and two beads buried at the bottom. The settlement appears to have been unoccupied at the end of the Iron Age but Romano-British pottery indicates re-use of the site in the early centuries AD. An important collection of a style of pottery known as Gwithian style platters showed the site to have been in use again around the sixth century AD. For the first time a radiocarbon date has been secured for this type of pottery of AD 590 – 670. An important element of the project has been the dating programme, providing unusually early dates for both the fogou and enclosure and a date for Gwithian style ceramics. James Gossip

Images from Boden 2008 The site was being run as a training excavation for Cornwall Archaeological Society members with the aim of answering some important research questions raised by preliminary work carried out by Historic Environment Service, Cornwall County Council in 2003.

Dig Director Jame Gossip & CAS President Tony Blackman