A Final Account of the Investigations Carried out at Lower Halstow, Kent

Abstract

In the Proceedings of this Society (Vol. V, pt. 1, pp. 73–8) I described an epi-palæolithic factory site at Lower Halstow, Kent, situated beneath an accumulation of marsh deposits. In addition I recorded the discovery of Early Iron Age and Roman pottery in the immediate neighbourhood made under similar circumstances. In the course of the above paper I endeavoured to correlate the facts at my disposal so as to afford a general appreciation of the results obtained from the first year's work upon the site. Upon resuming operations in the following year I immediately put to the test the deductions and facts which I had been working upon with the result that one deduction and one fact needed amendment. In my first report I stated that the peat overlying the stone-age factory site represented the Roman land-surface. Though, unquestionably, this peat did, in places, constitute the land-surface in Roman times, it was not the general rule, since its proper stratigraphical position occurs some 2-ft. 6-in. below the horizon of the Early Iron Age occupation level. Here and there, however, this intervening 2-ft. 6-in. of marsh clay deposits had become eroded away with the result that, in these instances, the Roman invaders were living upon a considerably earlier land-surface.