Stantons’ own ‘Time Team’ to get to work

 In 1938 a hollow in a garden in the village was excavated after worked flint was found.  Eventually after a huge effort a ‘black earth’ floor belonging to a Stone Age hut was completely uncovered. The ‘floor’ resulted from the continual use of rushes, bracken or straw used as flooring material, mixed with charcoal from the central fire hearth, and other domestic debris including spilt food and bones etc. This occupation floor was found to be saucer-shaped and twenty-four feet in diameter. It varied from 6 inches thick towards the edges, to 12 to 18 inches thick at the centre. The edge of the saucer was only 18 inches below the present surface whilst the centre of the floor started at a depth of four feet. The entire black earth floor was sieved for finds and 200 flint artefacts, together with bones and teeth of sheep, pig, cattle and a dog were recovered. No potsherds were found at all. Bone, teeth and carbonaceous material from the floor were sent for radiocarbon dating at the beginning of the Second World War but all were unfortunately lost in the post, so the exact age of this Stone Age hut floor is unknown. It may date to any time from the late Mesolithic through into the Neolithic period, between 6,000 and 2,000 B.C. It is thought that this hut would not have existed on its own but much more likely was one of a small local settlement.

As the dark colouration of the black earth floor is so different to the overlying light-coloured sandy subsoil and from the hard-beaten light yellowish earth below, a small group of local historians have devised a project to try and find another occupation floor. Subject to permission of those landowners close to the original site on Browns Lane it is proposed to take a series of  5-foot deep soil core samples at fixed intervals. The cores would only be three quarters of an inch in diameter to minimise disturbance to fields and gardens. If black earth of another hut floor is sampled, then an exact date for the settlement would be gained by submitting the material for radiocarbon dating.

The proposed project was submitted to the British Council for Archaeology for approval and possible funding. We have received their official blessing and have been given a grant sufficient to purchase special soil sampling probes from America. The project should start in October and updates of progress will appear in future Newsletters and on the village web site.

A cross-section and a plan of the excavated occupation floor may be seen in the archaeology page "Prehistory.htm"

A third Neolithic axe and possibly a fourth

 Residents will have been saddened by the recent death in January 2010 of a Stanton parishioner from Melton Road. As he had already lost his wife some years before, the task of house clearance fell to his executors. A surprise ‘find’ buried in a drawer was a complete flint axe head. This flint axe is smaller and rougher and probably more than a thousand years older than the beautiful ground and polished axe head that was found at Stanwold Kennels on Stanton Lane in 1948. The drawer contained no note of where and when the axe head was discovered, however conversation with his executors suggests it was found in the back garden after some trenches were dug. While this is another important find as far as the history of the village is concerned, it is marred by the lack of accurate detail of its discovery. Your editor would like to make an appeal to all parishioners, if you have anything you have found in your garden or elsewhere in the parish, for instance a coin, a clay pipe or old pottery sherds, do please record the place and date as accurately as possible. Consider showing your ‘treasure’ to one of the Councillors who can then contact myself to arrange an appraisal and recording of the object as necessary. A full description of the new axe can now be found in section e) of the page on "Prehistory" in our 'Archaeology' section of the Stanton web.

Some of you may have read the new pages (Archaeology) on the Stanton Parish Council’s web site that covers archaeological finds within the parish. In  section b) dealing with the “Prehistory” (that before written records were kept) there is a description of the brilliant ‘dig’ carried out by Mr and Mrs Bird of the Rectory on Browns Lane in 1938, when they uncovered a Neolithic hut floor. Among the hundred plus ‘finds’ that were recorded, there is a statement that a piece of flint with the shape of a celt was recovered nearby. A celt is derived from the Latin celtes a chisel and was the old term for a stone axe. Unfortunately this again was not recorded in any further detail. The discovery of one axe at the north end of Stanton Lane, two axes along Browns Lane and another from the Melton Road suggests that the Neolithic population of hunter gatherers and early farmers favoured the tops of the local wolds. It is important to remember that whenever a deep cultivation is done or foundations are put in,  something very interesting could be turned up.