Archaeology
How can we tell how people in the past thought? In literate societies such as ours, we can read the thoughts of other people, written down as words in diaries for instance, but for most of human history, people have not been able to read or write. Indeed, if you go back more than five thousand years, writing did not exist. Trying to work out how people thought in remote prehistory may seem an impossible task but very occasionally, clues survive that can help us.
Broken handaxe from Highbury, Hitchin (Accession Numbers 1976.693 and 1976.686)
One example of just such a clue comes in the shape of a handaxe from Hitchin. Handaxes were not axes for chopping wood but were multi-purpose tools, used for well over 1½ million years in Africa, Europe and much of Asia. Hitchin is an important find-spot of these tools, many of which were discovered while digging for the clay that was important to the town’s brick-making industry in the late nineteenth century. Local geologists and antiquaries became intrigued by the discoveries and began to collect them. One of the most prominent of these was William Ransom (1826-1914), who amassed a considerable collection of stone tools from sites around the town (principally The Folly pit on Stevenage Road, Benslow, Highbury and Bearton Green pit). As well as the stone tools, he was interested in animal bones and collected specimens of bear, straight-tusked elephant and rhinoceros, which show that the handaxes were dropped in a warm, fertile landscape. These tell us when the layers containing them formed: during the middle of a warm period during the Pleistocene known as the Hoxnian Interglacial, around 424,000 to 374,000 years ago.
This means that the Hitchin artefacts are extremely ancient, dating from about 400,000 years ago. This was a time when Europe was inhabited by people of a different species from us, Homo heidelbergensis, probably the ancestor of the Neanderthals but not of ourselves. So, you would think that their behaviour would be very different. One of the handaxes from Highbury in Hitchin suggests otherwise.
Papel label on the back of the handaxe
This is a broken handaxe; according to a paper label stuck to it, “The point found 4 days before the larger point about 4 ft apart and 6 ft deep. Nr Hitchin 29.XI.1880”. In other words, the two parts of the broken tool were not found together. Why might this have happened? We know from studies of handaxes that they were constantly reworked to sharpen blunted edges and to repair broken tips. This has not happened with this particular handaxe: when the tip snapped off, both parts were discarded without reworking.
A twisted ovate handaxe; this type shows evidence for considerable repair and reworking
This looks very like deliberate throwing away. In fact, it looks almost as if one of the broken elements (it is impossible to say which) was thrown a short distance in temper and the user was too angry to rework the tool into something useful. This looks just like modern human behaviour: who hasn’t been so frustrated when something breaks that they throw it down in disgust? Yet we are dealing with a completely different species from ourselves. What this seems to tell me is that at least some extinct hominids behaved like us, had similar emotions and were not the lumbering brutes of popular culture. Just because they lacked the complex technologies of modern society does not mean that they were “primitive” or “savages”: different, yes, but just like us in so many ways.
On Wednesday 5 June 2013, I was telephoned by a Mr King, who explained that a deep hole had appeared in his brother’s field in Kelshall, 4.8 km (3 miles) south-west of the centre of Royston. It had appeared during the beet harvest earlier in the year and the harvester had almost fallen into it. As it was close to a public footpath, the brothers were concerned that it might pose a danger to walkers (as well as hindering their ability to farm the field). They were keen to get an opinion on what it might be, so I arranged to visit the site on the morning of 7 June.
On the day of my visit, there was only a low growth of crop in the field, around 25 cm high, but this was enough to make the hole invisible from all angles. It only became visible as a slight depression in the field surface from around ten metres away. This alone made it dangerous, as it would be easy to stumble into it in poor light, especially if one were not paying attention: a running dog would be even more vulnerable.
The hole in the King brothers’ field at Kelshall
The hole proved to be a vertical shaft cut directly into the chalk. It was circular and had a diameter of around a metre. Above the chalk, there was a depth of about 70 cm of topsoil over the top of the chalk, more than double what I would expect in a ploughed field at the highest point in the village. This gives a valuable clue about the nature of the shaft. The bottom of the cut could not be seen in the strong June morning sunlight, so Mr King and I tied a stone to a measuring tape I had brought with me and we lowered it into the hole; it hit something solid at a depth of about 4.3 m, although I learned from the farmer that when it had first appeared, he had measured it as more than seven metres deep.
The edges of the shaft were clearly deliberately cut, with blade marks visible in places. This rules out a natural explanation, such as a sinkhole. At the same time, there were no hints that it had ever been lined, either with bricks or timber. No datable objects were visible in the soil around the top of the hole.
Cropmarks at Kelshall showing the location of an abandoned settlement
There were already clues about what the hole might be. Aerial photographs have revealed cropmarks of linear ditches, including a possible ditched trackway, running through the field, recorded in the Hertfordshire Historic Environment Record as number 6218. The field immediately to the west has also revealed cropmarks, including pits and ditches (Historic Environment Record number 16981). These suggest that this hilltop was formerly the site of human habitation and the presence of a ditched trackway suggests that it might have been occupied during the Roman period (AD 43 to 411).
This makes sense of the feature. During the 1970s and 1980s, a number of Roman wells were investigated at Clothall Common in Baldock, most of which had the same character as this hole: cut directly into the chalk bedrock with no lining, at least, not below the topsoil. Most of them had been left at least partly open when the well stopped being used to obtain water (perhaps when the water turned sour, as can happen), and the top would gradually erode and fall into the shaft. This creates a cone (known as a “weathering cone”) around the top of the well: this is what made the topsoil appear unusually deep in this example, as we were looking at the soil inside the weathering cone, not just the topsoil.
So the King brothers have a Roman settlement on their land. The abandoned well, which had probably never been filled in properly, suddenly appeared in their field when the fills at the top suddenly slumped and fell to the bottom of the shaft. In looking at the aerial photographs, it is possible to see the position of the well in relation to the buried ditches. It appears to have lain close to the track through the settlement, which seems to have been more extensive than a single farmstead. We have a new Roman village to add to the map, thanks to Mr King!
Whilst continuing our audit of the social history store at Burymead we have come across two interesting items; they are a human jawbone and an incomplete set of teeth.
The first object, the jawbone was dug up in the grounds of Hitchin Priory in 1852 and is believed to be that of a young male.
The second item is an incomplete set of human teeth with some detail of them being from the body of a Joan Biggs who was a suicide victim who was later exhumed in 1906 from what we believe to be the crossroads by the Radcliffe pub in Hitchin. The body was exhumed as the grave had become a landmark.
We have attempted to research who Joan Biggs was, but so far have been unable to find a record of her so feel she may have been from another area or perhaps an asylum or almshouse.
If you have any further information regarding these two items please comment on the post and we will be in touch!