Ring Ditch Shut Down

We are now coming to the end of our third season at Aspull. It's a year in which we have seen some remarkable discoveries, including three more major cremation burials to add to the two found last year (and that doesn't include our possible cist burial). Right at the start of the year we came across a strange octagonal feature embedded in the mottled clay layer. We have been working on it throughout the year and shown it to have multiple layers of cremated bone (it may well have been a family plot, as suggested in our September Newsletter 272). However its structure is still puzzling us. We now no longer think it's a vessel, more likely a clay lined pit cut into the mottled clay with a stone slab at its base.

Our next major burial came from the northeast side of Trench 3a in a pit lying under two large flat stone slabs. We managed to fill two large plastic boxes with cremated bone from the bottom of the pit. This included some large pieces and, with only half of the pit excavated so far, we expect more when we remove the rest of the bone next year.

Our most recent major burial was discovered just a couple of metres away in Trench 3a. This time in just a small pit but the quantity of cremated bone was comparable including large pieces. These include possible shin bone, vertebrae and skull fragments.

Further work on the area around the second urn (discovered last year buried upside down), has revealed it to be lying in a pit cut into the sandy clay mound (not, as we previously thought, buried with it). The pit has a flat bottom and seems to be full of charcoal and cremated bone.

As with our first urn (reported on in our last Newsletter) the plan was to remove this urn intact. However whether this will be possible with the large cracks in it, is yet to be seen.

Fragments of cremated bone have been turning up in a number of other places in Trench 3a, which may be the remnants of other burials destroyed in antiquity. Dating the bones from the major burials however, will give us a great insight into the length of time the site was in use, as they all appear to be from different contexts. As always, you can find more details on our blog site here.