How much do you know?

[Chef Geoff]

About the land you detect?
This post is just to see how you think about the items you find on your land, how analytical or not you treat those finds. Hopefully this little quiz may help you look at each find, no matter how insignificant as parts of a bigger picture. This is not to catch anybody out or to show you up, unfortunately I ran this post through a far bigger forum some time back and from the 286 people who read it, 64 replied and not one got the full story. I'm hoping that it may help you see even the humble button as evidence to the history of a site.

Below is a photograph of what could be a typical collection of finds from a field in many parts of the country but generally not the far east of England (that's the only clue you get ). In isolation these finds only tell a part of the fields story but as an assemblage   they build a picture which, although we can never be 100% of, does fit together quite well.
I'll only let it run for a couple of days before I put up an explanation

So what history can you make from these finds?

You can add 5X more buttons.



PS. If you saw this post elsewhere please don't cheat.....and that includes Mike and Dylan

[carling2]

I like the post but don't quite see what conclusions are to be made ,,I can see this particular field has early roots In the fragments of ia pottery then the history goes right throught the ages but seems  to be missing pieces from the saxon {don't they all } period and early medieval,,i would suggest that this particular field was deforested sometime in the pre early roman conquest but the land went out of favour sometime after the roman conquest {circa 5thc} as did a lot of land but  this particular field did not see a medieval revival maybe because of drainage problems etc or maybe you aint found the evidence yet ,,then I see the revival of this piece of land coming after the black death period {circa 1350-1400} and then continuing right until present.

[nero]

 The only thing that makes sense to me is that the relevant land was inundated by rising sea levels and then reclaimed in medieval times.This scenario is probably not uncommon.

[Chef Geoff]

OK Sorry I should have given slightly more description of the land.
It is 500 meters from a village that dates at least to the 9th century, it is 65 meters above sea level and so no flooding.
It is on a gentle south facing slope so is relatively well drained.

[nero]

Why would a piece of land near a village,go totally out of use for a thousand years ? Suppose that we'll have to wait and see.

[Chef Geoff]

Ah but why do you assume it was totally out of use?

[Neil]

During the 1000 years of no finds it was because there was a solitary shepherd walking the land looking after a flock of several hundred sheep with just his dog called Ralph for company. A single shepherd makes very few losses. Obviously the shepherds would die off and be replaced every 40 years or so, as would poor Ralph!

Any closer to the mystery no loss time window?

Neil

[nero]

There is not even one archaeological artefact  for a 1000 years.Not even a bit of Norman influence. Must have been an Old English nudist colony and that's the bare truth.

[carling2]

many reasons why land may go untouched for a period of time,no it dosent mean that there were no longer anybody on it,just means more land was favourable for whatever reason,,a case in point is the farm on my doorstep has produced 200 hammereds in total the 2 fields next to parish boundry about 50 hammereds between them ,,now if I go in the field on other side of boundry its produced no hammereds at all but about 30 roman and that's me tectin that particular field for 3 years.  so obviously this roman field was gung ho in the 1st-4thc then sadly didn't see much activity till the Georgian period.

[Val Beechey]

Well, the only reason I can think of for the land not to have been used was because it became the property of some land grabbing Aristocrat that thought it made a nice park. They in turn from the 4th to the 14th cent would have passed it on to ancestors till the Black Death in 1348 when over 4 million died and everything changed.
That could also account for the Village. Maybe if the above is correct they would have had their own strips of land but those left expanded out from the Village after the Plague.

Val

[herbie]

Ok, here are my thoughts for what they're worth From the photo you can deduce pretty much continuous occupation from IA to the Roman period, as we know the Roman legions were recalled in the late 4th century which started to lead to economic and social decline and invasion by the Germanic tribes which led to a period of a unrest and war, coinage also became scarce in this period and pottery production was reduced. So maybe the romano-brits that had been there decamped to a more defensible position, or joined a larger more well defended community elsewhere?? I think I also read somewhere that the invading saxons & angles etc destroyed existing stone built roman buildings and replaced them with wooden ones which if true would leave little archeological evidence.
There could have been a shortage of water supply as well due to a disintegration of the roman infrastructure. The abandonment of the land could have led to reforestation and after the Norman Conquest huge tracts of land were parceled out to Norman Knights who were possibly initially pretty much absentee landlords. The land could have then been cleared again in the mid to late middle ages, maybe for sheep & wool production etc with the evidence showing it was being worked in some form through to the 19th century.

My other theory is that 'dinosaurs is thin at one end, fat in the middle and thin at the other end', this is probably more accurate than the above!!

[nero]

 Think that I'll stick with the nudist colony.No pins,broaches or buttons,nothing.

[handyman [Alan}]

good to see the mediaval thimbles, but why no medieaval buttons? 

It appears that there is a change in usage from occupation to farming. I'm in agreement with  carling2 and his hypothesis in his first post.

[Chef Geoff]

Alan would you like to show me a "medieval" button?

[Mike]

I vaguely remember this question from last weekend Geoff , alas the night got a little too long and I forget the answer