Top 10 ARS Ltd. Discoveries of 2018. Counting Down…

We have had so many exiting discoveries this year and not all have been able to feature, but in tenth place we have the excavation of a series of back-to-back Early 19th Century workers houses in Manchester.

Among the range of artefacts recovered from the excavation included coins dating from the reign of George III to rolls of fire-damaged wallpaper which came from a nearby shop demolished in 1971.

For ninth place we have chosen the identification of a Roman road during excavations to the west of Derby. Though this road was known previously, its exact location had never been confirmed until our work took place.

Likely built by the Roman military in the 1st Century AD during the early occupation of Britain, this road would have formed a key part of the Roman military machine by ensuring communication and transport links between forts in modern-day Derby and Stoke-on-Trent.

In at number eight is the discovery of four Middle Bronze Age post-built roundhouses at one of our sites in Moray, Scotland, which included an area of domestic midden pits

Amongst the finds within one of these pits were the charred remains of over 800 emmer wheat grains, which can be used to make bread. These discoveries form a window into the lifestyle and diet of the inhabitants of this farming landscape.

Seventh goes to the identification and excavation of parts of Richard Arkwright’s 1777 mill near to our Head Office here in Bakewell. Lumford Mill, as it is known, was Arkwright’s third mill and the discovery of walls and flooring associated with this building have offered an important insight into a building which was part of the cradle of the Industrial Revolution.

If you’re interested to learn more about Lumford Mill then come along to Derbyshire Archaeology Day on Saturday 12th January 2019 at Pomegranate Theatre in Chesterfield, where two of our staff will be presenting on their discoveries.

Sixth placed was the excavation of a Medieval high-status building pre-dating a Pele Tower during the community archaeology project at Cresswell Tower in Northumberland. The community project directed by ARS Ltd. in conjunction with Barry Mead, who recently won a national award for his contribution to community archaeology, has been a huge local success.

This latest discovery adds to the long history of occupation at Cresswell as revealed by Bronze Age cist-burials, Neolithic and Mesolithic flints.

Number five was the discovery of a pair of Roman copper-alloy tweezers from a site we have been working on in Derbyshire. This well-preserved high-status artefact is one of a number of finds recovered on this archaeologically-dense site, which formed a focus for Romano-British settlement.

In fourth place comes the radiocarbon results from Killerby Quarry in North Yorkshire. Though excavated in late 2017, the results of the radiocarbon tests have this year confirmed that the timbers discovered within the kettle hole date to the Late Mesolithic period c. 5500 BC.

Our approach at Killerby represents the first deliberate archaeologically excavated kettle hole in Britain. We discovered the stunning remains of an oak timber platform with associated timber posts which we believed was used as part of a tanning pit (for processing cattle hides).

Third on the podium for this year was the discovery of a Middle Bronze Age Collared Urn on a site we excavated in Lancashire. What’s most interesting about this urn is that it had a smaller inverted urn inside which contained cremated human remains.

The urn and its cremation were one of a number of urned and un-urned cremations found within the centre of a circular ring-ditch which demarcates a sanctified area for burial.

Our runner-up in the vote was the discovery of 11 Early Anglo-Saxon burials at Bishop Middleham Quarry in County Durham. These 7th – 8th Century AD rock-cut burials were excavated in the summer and represent an interesting window into changing burial practices during a period of religious and social transition in England.

The burials, though all aligned east-west in a Christian fashion, had some placed in a crouched position, a practice usually associated with pagan burials. This reveals a community undergoing a transition from Paganism to Christianity.

It was a close vote in the end but the winner for our top discovery of 2018 was the excavation of an Early Neolithic post-built rectangular house at Lanton Quarry in Northumberland which has been radiocarbon dated to c. 3700 BC. Excavated in the summer, as part of a long-term series of works at the quarry, it has since been confirmed that the structure is the northernmost example of its date and type to be discovered in England.

The midden pits and postholes associated with this building contained quantities of Early Neolithic Carinated Bowl pottery which would likely have been used for cooking. One of our specialists has produced the above digital reconstruction which shows what the structure may have once looked like.