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Archaeo-botany
Excavation
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Air Photography & Geophysical Survey
Fieldwalking
Finding the earliest inhabitants of Boston Spa
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Excavation
Location: Leeds
Excavation
In 2002 an excavation was carried out on an unusual earthwork feature in the small irregularly shaped piece of woodland, which the surrounding fields seem to have avoided.
The excavated feature is an irregularly shaped ditch dividing the remnant ancient woodland into two apparently different archaeo-botanical periods. At 0.5 metres below the ditch silt and about 1.5 metres below the woodland floor, the first trench revealed a lining of limestone pieces pressed into the natural clay of a hook-shaped arm of the ditch. The ‘shank’ of the hook shape was also excavated and was found beyond where the curve had straightened to have a cobbled ramp rising out of the feature to meet an exterior cobbled apron about 15cms below the present woodland soil.
Even in the prevailing dry spell water slowly filled the ditch from an aquifer inside it to settle at a height level with the transition from limestone lining to cobbled ramp. A clue to the feature’s purpose came when the clay was found (by experimental hair-washing in a thick slurry of water and clay, rather than by any more scientific methods) to have excellent fulling properties, being very effective at removing grease.
Probing found the unexcavated curving arm of the ditch to slope downwards gradually to its widest part at about 1.2 metres deep at the head of the ‘comma’ or hook shape. The main trench revealed irregular limestone blocks that may have been used as a form of revetment, as well as sandstone cobbles of varying sizes that had slipped into the ditch. One of these proved to be a broken prehistoric saddle quern. A rubbing stones was also found in the ditch. The relatively few other finds included: the remains of a medieval or later sickle; part of a horseshoe in the base of the cobbled ramp which may date its construction to late medieval or 17th century, though it is badly corroded and therefore uncertain; various organic finds, including a layer of ‘brashings’ in the second quarter down of the 50cm woodland ditch silt, which might represent an accumulation of 300-500 years in such conditions. The south bank of the ditch has coppiced elm stools of an age consistent with a period of coppicing after the feature went out of use.
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