One of the star’s of the archaeology programme, Time Team, is in our little village of Uphill working on the archaeology of the ruined church up on the hill. The village isn’t called Uphill because it is Up-hill, it is named after a local Saxon chief who had a wharf or pill on a creek of the River Axe which flows into the sea here.
Phil Harding is a very experienced archaeologist and is famous for his hat, and his love of beer and flints; beer to drink, and flints as used for so many different tools by the people who lived on our islands tens of thousands of years ago. There is no natural flint in Uphill, but someone came along to the dig today with something her father had picked up while walking the dog twenty years ago. She handed it to Phil who had no doubt that it was a hand axe and gave us a little explanation of how it had been made and how it was used. he couldn’t say for certain but he felt although it might have been Neolithic, so about four to six thousand years old, he actually thought it was probably Mesolithic, and could be anything up to ten thousand years old. I find that period of history so interesting, and would have loved to hold the little hand axe, but it was put away and Phil returned to digging his test pit.
These sort of projects are very much about involving the community in which they take place; dozens of children from the local school were brought up and shown around and they all seemed very interested… I wonder how many future archaeologists were among them? Then to my great excitement, i was given a trowel and spent a couple of hours digging in another test pit! We didn’t find anything very exciting, plenty of stones with plaster on, and bits of mortar and plaster, some slate roof tiles, possible bits of brick and possible bits of floor tile, but it was just so interesting.
I shall go up again tomorrow and hope I’ll be able to have another go… in the meantime, as Phil Harding says, digging is thirsty work, so we may have to go to the pub and find some beer tonight!
The test pit I helped dig – not my hand, I was digging at the front of the pit in the left hand quarter
Lois Elsden 