For our September session MAYA members were invited by Richard, Cheryl and Tara from Context One Heritage and Archaeology to take part in their excavations at Broomfield on the Quantock Hills.\u00a0 They were trying to find out the nature and date of a large, circular ditch almost 100m across, identified on aerial photos and geophysical surveying.\u00a0 This was a great opportunity for our members as we don\u2019t often ge<\/p>\n
t a chance to do some actual digging, especially as our August test pitting was cancelled due to bad weather.<\/p>\n
We were given a tour of the site and then<\/p>\n
we split up into groups to do some digging.\u00a0 There were three trenches, one on the big ditch and two on other anomalies located by the geophysical survey.\u00a0 The MAYANS carefully scraped back the soil looking for artefacts and any changes in the colour of the soil which could be postholes.\u00a0 Those working in the big ditch were also trying to define the edges of the ditch.<\/p>\n
This was quite near the start of the dig and no artefacts were found apart from two very tiny pieces of pottery.\u00a0 The fact that there were so little finds, plus the size of the ditch suggests the circular enclosure could be Neolithic or Bronze Age.\u00a0 The archaeologist who were running the dig were very impressed by how careful and dedicated the MAYANS were whilst they were working.<\/p>\n
This was a really great day for our members and we would like to thank Richard McConnell, Cheryl Green and Tara Fairclough for giving MAYA this exciting opportunity, plus Dan Broadbent from the Quantock Hills Landscape Partnership for organising transport to enable us to get to the site.<\/p>\n\n\t\t