The discovery
and excavation of a Late Iron-Age and Early Roman Farmstead at
Viewpoint, Wellfield, Hartley, Kent 1975/76 and 1984
TQ6084/6842
Excavation Archive September 2013 - work in
progress
Christopher St
John Breen's work on the pottery
Following the excavations in 1975/76, all finds were washed,
numbered with the layer/context number, bagged and boxed up.
On a number of occasions, sherds of pottery, bone etc were
extracted by the members of the Fawkham & Ash Archaeological Group to put on
display at exhibitions around the area.
In February 1984 the late Christopher St John Breen very kindly
borrowed the boxes of pottery from the 1975/76 excavations to study. It seems
that Chris in fact did not have all the pottery for some reason.
Chris made lists of the contents of most of the bags of pottery etc
and then went on to extract individual fabrics and forms of pottery in separate
bags, often with annotations written on the bag.
In addition he made copious notes on many sheets of paper about the
pottery and its origin of production. I have attempted to type up Chris’s
notes and scanned all the individual sheets. The boxes of pottery were returned
to Ted Connell. Sadly Chris died before having an opportunity to examine the
pottery from the June 1984 excavation.
During 2012 Pam and Ted Connell have attempted to locate all the
finds from View Point that are stored in their garage. On Tuesday 10th April
2012 all the finds were taken to the Shorne Country Park and sorted into
different categories, pottery, tile, daub, bone, shell and metalwork by members
of the Group. All the tile, daub, bone, shell and metalwork were laid out and
photographed by Gerald Cramp. The site diary and layer/context register were
typed up by Pam Connell and Gillian Cramp. Albert Daniels very kindly reported
on the bone from the site (see Bones).
The pottery has now been sorted into strict layer number order,
counted and each layer weighed. (List of numbers of sherds and weight)
The process of comparing the pottery with the list compiled by Chris Breen
is in progress. It is this process that has highlighted the fact that he did not
see all the pottery from the 1975/76 excavations.
Some of the pottery has been photographed by Ted Connell and the
rest will be photographed when the natural light is better.