Wooston Castle - What Next?

After a busy few weeks at the Wooston Castle hillfort, the archaeologists and volunteers who have been working through a particularly wet and windy Dartmoor spring have finished their excavations. As they left site at the end of their dig with the stories of their discoveries fresh in their minds, the atmosphere was buoyant; the sun had come out. Though they have uncovered a lot about the past human endeavours on the hillfort there are still more mysteries to be revealed and the final analysis is yet to play out.The dig team battled through some harsh weather which created a feel for the hard work of the original construction team around 2500 years ago. The apparent size of the structure was impressive and, standing at the top of the bank, looking way down at the archaeologists below, it was clear to see just what an important structure this would have been to the Iron Age people. This was an influential building of its time, indicating the value of what was behind those defences.As with many archaeological excavations, only a part of the story of our ancestors can be told from the dig. Simon Hughes from AC Archaeology explained, “By excavating a slice across the perimeter defences to the fort the archaeologists and volunteers exposed the bottom of the ditch to establish its overall dimensions at over 6m wide and 4m deep. The excavation showed that towards the base of the ditch the Iron Age inhabitants had carved deep into the bedrock. To the side of the ditch, the team dug through dumps of clays and rock, which had originally been excavated from the ditch and then used to construct the bank. Beneath the bank was a preserved soil layer that represented the original ground level present before construction started in the Iron Age.”Although the archaeologists have understood how the fort defences were constructed, there are still questions to be answered about what the inhabitants of the hillfort were doing. What did the landscape look like at the time? To get to the bottom of these questions some soil samples from the soil layer beneath the bank have been taken to a laboratory for analysis. These samples contain pollen grains which, due to their dense structure can survive intact for thousands of years. Under the microscope, it may be possible to identify species of trees, grass, flowers and even crops. Identifying and counting the pollen grains from that sample will then tell the archaeologists which plants were most common on the site. This type of analysis will give us some clues about the lifestyle of the people at the time. Was the landscape forested or was it open grassland? If so, were they grazing livestock or even growing crops? For us in the 21^st Century, we will have to wait to find out these results but, as we have already waited for 2500 years, it’s just a little longer!At the nearby excavation of a charcoal platform, another story is emerging from around the 18^th Century. Simon described what had been uncovered during the excavation, saying “evidence suggested that there were at least two phases of charcoal production represented by separate build ups of waste charcoal. This is thought to reflect the cycles of regeneration of coppiced woodland where the platform would have been returned to after a period of time. Although the date that this platform was used is not certain, these would have produced the charcoal that was vital to fuel a range of local industries; be it iron smelting and smithing, wool processing or even making clotted cream. More recently, charcoal production was needed for the manufacture of munitions and gas masks during the Second World War, and, as a result, large-scale charcoal production again became important.”Further information on charcoal can also be found in a laboratory. The cellular structure of charcoal fragments examined under a microscope should reveal the species of wood that was being converted to charcoal. Again, this will tell us what the landscape looked like, but it will also reveal something about the process of charcoal making and the purpose of the finished product.What will the archaeologists discover next? Only time will tell! by Matt ParkinsPhotos – Dave Rickwood and Matt Parkins