The Burnet is an area situated within Shorne Woods Country Park. Test pits dug in the area have produced a number of Mesolthic flints. Trevor produced a short guide to flints found at the site:
Earlier digs produced the following:
(Photos by R. Smalley)
At Ranscombe Farm, on the Plantlife Nature Reserve, there is a Mesolithic site that has produced a number of struck flints. This site was discovered by Dave May, a volunteer with the Nature Reserve.
More details on these finds in the article ‘Two important new Mesolithic sites for North West Kent’.
Flint
Adze
Flint
Hand axe
(Photos by R. Smalley)
An enormous amount of tile was recovered during 10 years of excavation at Randall Manor. Storage space is always a concern when managing an archaeological dig and it was decided that some of the tile had to be discarded. Before this could happen we wanted to collect as much relevant data as possible about the tiles that had been retained.
In 2015 volunteers got together to record details including fabric colour, core details, measurements, hole shapes and descriptive aspects such as glaze, animal or human prints and tally marks.
For results of this project click here.
*Update: during a recent visit to Igtham Mote, Kent, these photos were taken. They show how a roof tile would be made and attached to the roof. The same would have been employed at Randall Manor:
Tile making mould
Peg tile reconstruction
Roof tile with mortar and print
Animal print
Animal print
Animal print
Hip tile with nail
(Photos by R. Smalley)
A number of spectacular finds have been discovered during years of community archaeology excavation at the site of Randall Manor. In 2011, at the end of the excavation season, a metal detector sweep revealed the non-ferrous signal of complete lead flask .
Details were published in “Mayfield, A. (2014) Enigmatic lead flask from Randall Manor, near Gravesend. Kent Archaeological Society Newsletter, Spring 2014, p.16.”, reproduced below (click on the image).
Mesolithic sites in Kent are less well understood than sites from other prehistoric periods therefore evidence of two substantial sites is important for our understanding. The first is in Shorne Woods Country park, where two Lottery-funded archaeology projects have been investigating a number of Mesolithic flint scatters. The other is at Ranscombe Farm on the Plantlife Nature Reserve.
Full details were published in Mayfield. A. (2012) Two important new Mesolithic sites for North West Kent, the Kent Archaeological Society Newsletter, Autumn 2012, p.16.
