Archæological Excavations in Britain

Abstract

WITH the coming of university and school vaca tions, numbers of voluntary workers are released for archaeological investigations in the field. Since July, excavations have been resumed or initiated on many sites in Britain. The scheme of training in field work through voluntary assistance organized by Dr. R. E. Mortimer and the late Mrs. Wheeler is again in being, this year on an extended scale. Nearly a hundred students drawn from universities in the British Isles, Australia, India, Canada, the United States and China are at work on the continued excavation of Maiden Castle, near Dorchester, under the direction of Dr. Wheeler and Col. C. D. Drew. Although the season has only just opened, some important results already have emerged. On the hill-top in the neigh bourhood of the temple of the Roman period dis covered in 1934, according to a report in The Times of August 14, further stone age habitations, with stone implements and pottery, have been discovered. A series of pits has been uncovered, in which were pottery and animal bones, including those of large oxen of a type now extinct. The neolithic site under lying the fortifications is also being explored. Ex tensive areas containing stone implements and pottery have been opened up; and a stone age trench now being examined is found to be covered with a well-marked line of turf underlying the later prehistoric rampart. It contains large masses of material of the stone and early bronze ages, while on top of the trench numerous sherds of elaborately decorated Early Bronze Age pottery are being identified.