Field Unit News Archive 2022

This section contains the latest news from the Field Unit, as and when it occurs. New sections are added as and when to show the progress the Field Unit are making during the year.

* Original Information 29th April 2022

The Brighton and Hove Archaeological Society will be returning to the excavations at Rocky Clump on Saturday 16th April. We will meet at the Upper Lodges car park at 9 - 45 am. On Saturday 9th April the team will be on site with their new resistivity machine examining the location of a large circular feature. This feature could be either a very large pit or the terrace of a round house. Pottery from this feature dates to either the late Bronze Age or early Iron Age.

Excavations in 2018 and 2019 revealed a large enclosure containing large post holes indicating the location of a granary for storing grain for food processing. Adjacent to this feature was a deep depression suggesting that it was a grain storage pit, an area of a worked floor with ephemeral lines of flints suggest a possible threshing barn. The north ditch of the enclosure contained the remains of 4 baby burials and a number of Roman coins.

The new season will continue to seek evidence for a pair of possible round houses, which should be located not too far from the primary food source, and the baby burials. Geophysical anomalies noted in earlier resistivity surveys are circular and large enough to suggest that they could be such dwellings.

This excavation at Rocky Clump is in the south field, and it is producing pottery from the Late Iron Age. It may be that the small peasant, subsistence settlement originated in this location before moving north of the trees, and expanding during the early and middle Roman periods. Low status sites from the late Iron Age and early Roman periods are quite rare so this will be a great opportunity to reveal where, and how, ordinary people were living and working.

Fig 1. The new excavations at Rocky Clump, removing the top soil

Fig 2. The adjacent ditches of the large enclosure

The Brighton and Hove Archaeological Society have been excavating at Rocky Clump since early April. The team are seeking evidence for round houses, that would be located close to the major food site comprising a large granary building found in previous seasons. A large percentage of the top soil has now been removed and a number of features have been revealed. T

here is a ditch, a possible dew-pond and a collection of post holes and stake holes, along with a number of pits. There is one area where a round house could be located and this has produced finds of Iron Age pottery, hobnails and a bone pin. In the south west corner is a very large pit, with recent digging producing a Roman coin of Tetricus AD 271-74.

The east side of the site contains some depth of soil, and this is almost down now to occupation levels. It is hoped that post holes indicating the location of post for the roof of a round house may be uncovered. The excavations will continue until the end of October