Why does pottery become scarce during the Saxon/Anglian period...

[P Prentice]

How safe is the 'absence of evidence'? I've recently had occasion to point out at the end of a lecture that, based on the current archaeological evidence, for a large chunk of Yorkshire the Roman period by-and-large only actually occurs in a 150m wide strip [the Roman Rural Settlement project looks like it's going to bear this out, judging by what I've seen of their 'spots on maps'], but of course this may or may not be entirely due to 90%+ of the archaeology in the area in the last 75 years having been done on a single on-going road improvement...

that would have been the view in the civilised south 30 years ago bu since then we have looked very hard and there are places we can be confident they didnt use pot or live in recognisable settlements between the 7th an 9th century

[Jack]

That would be a fascinating observation.

Is it backed up by much radiocarbon dating?

I only ask (in my ignorance of that region) as there is going to be an explosion of 5th-9th century settlement sites in East/North Yorkshire soon due to a number of pipelines and radiocarbon dating showing that the handmade pottery that has been called Iron Age grot pot for years can be Anglo-Saxon in date and contexts with or without dateable Roman pottery need to be independantly dated or you miss the early medieval activity.

Funnily enough before this the only (major) excavated Anglo-Saxon settlement in the region was at West Heslerton!

[P Prentice]

you could do worse than check out john blair's 2013 The British Culture of Anglo-Saxon Settlement, H. M. CHADWICK MEMORIAL LECTURES 24
Cambridge ISBN 978-0-9571862-9-3

plenty of dates on bodies

[Marc Berger]

I agree the romans did not return until teleported just off the A1 sometime in the 9th spraying lead glaze. I take this as an the equivalent of the inventing of saminan. That saminan died out is always a shock to me. As far as I am concerned is that if I don't find samian its not really real Roman as in somebody who might be from Rome. That Stamford comes in, is it by way of the road or is it cause the road meant it was the best place to make it so that it could be road tested on its way to Saxon Mints.

PS hosty have managed to get rid of the giggygiggy typing by changing the edit option in general settings from enhanced to standard- have not worked out what I am losing but basic was a bit too basic

still think that the answer is in the middens romans don't seem to have been that midden mad as all the others.

[P Prentice]

That would be a fascinating observation.

Is it backed up by much radiocarbon dating?

I only ask (in my ignorance of that region) as there is going to be an explosion of 5th-9th century settlement sites in East/North Yorkshire soon due to a number of pipelines and radiocarbon dating showing that the handmade pottery that has been called Iron Age grot pot for years can be Anglo-Saxon in date and contexts with or without dateable Roman pottery need to be independantly dated or you miss the early medieval activity.

Funnily enough before this the only (major) excavated Anglo-Saxon settlement in the region was at West Heslerton!

how about a sneak preview of this - it sounds nationally important?

[Jack]

how about a sneak preview of this - it sounds nationally important?

I'd say the stuff we got is regionally important with wider impact on past and future excavations in this area.

Difficult to preview...its a little in the heads of a bunch of people: pottery experts, older experienced digger's PO's etc. I'm writing a monograph for the two pipelines with our three settlement sites in question......however, being on pipelines, each site was the classic...'narrow area of investigation through an obviously larger area of activity'.

Still waiting on final pottery analysis and final radiocarbon dates and the projects are still under client confidentiality but can swap site plans etc via private message if you like (and promise not to publish them until we have! grin).

But in Summary the main site is 10m wide slice through some 150m of settlement with enclosure ditches, 'cess pits', SFB's, A timber structure, a pit rammed with metalworking waste/ off-cuts etc, a handful of keys, antler combs etc, lots of plain handmade pottery, bucket loads of animal bone....dating so far includes Early Bronze Age pits, Mid-Late Iron Age burial, 2xIron Age/RB ring gullies, a layer of RB soil sealing one bit, Very Late Roman pit and ditch, then 5th-6th, 6th-7th, 6th-8th, 7th-9th century radiocarbon dates across the site.

The word we used on site was 'busy'

The other two sites were smaller comprising two morass of intercut ditches and gullies ranging in date from 6th-7th to 7th-10th with plain pottery animal bone and a few other finds.

The impact will be by the end of it we will have some securely dated assemblages of plain pottery (not from deposits of a mixed date - so limiting the chance of it being naughty Iron Age/RB pot that has been re-worked).

Though it has been well know for ages that this pottery can be early medieval, so it wont be a surprise for many.

[Dinosaur]

and I've got a site where the same pot was declared by two very well known pot specialists to be (a) Anglian, (b) Iron Age, and ©, after we got the C14 dating and hired the correct specialist, as Neolithic ...just 'cos you've hired a 'big name' doesn't mean the report's worth the paper it's printed on.... Am constantly worried by just how much info a lot of specialists seem to need before they'll even look at the stuff, often you've pretty much got to tell them what date stuff is before they'll, errr, tell you what date it is :0

[P Prentice]

jack - i think you must be in the eastern zone, or at least defining the border between east and west.
dino - it was ever thus

[Dinosaur]

That saminan died out is always a shock to me.

Ah, but if it hadn't samian spindle-whorls wouldn't be so interesting :face-approve:

[Jack]

jack - i think you must be in the eastern zone, or at least defining the border between east and west.
dino - it was ever thus

They are closer to the east coast. East Riding.