Posted on 07/27/2002 4:30:10 PM PDT by vannrox
Martin Wainwright
Friday July 26, 2002
The Guardian
The most baffling settlement ever unearthed from iron age Britain was revealed by English Heritage archaeologists yesterday, inside a prehistoric fort on former marshes by the Humber estuary. Eerily spick and span, the rows of rectangular wooden buildings have yielded an almost complete lack of artefacts, remains or even litter, apart from one macabre find - fragments of crushed human skulls.
Guarded by stone and wooden pallisade defences, the complex also had a ceremonial gateway, vast by the standards of 600-400BC when it was built by the largely farming tribes of what is now South Yorkshire.
"It is extraordinary, like a kind of ghost village which can scarcely ever have been inhabited," said Robert Van der Noort, of Exeter University, whose students are excavating the site at Askern, near Doncaster, with a team from Hull University's archaeology department.
Checking an unusual wood-lined well - normally a prime iron age rubbish dump but in this case clinically clean - Dr Van der Noort said growing evidence suggested the complex, which is the size of two football pitches, was used for infrequent ceremonial purposes.
An artist's reconstruction shows human skulls on a strange row of spiked wooden poles, which were discovered leading up to the gate, with the fragments of cranial, cheek and jaw bones below them.
"It is particularly unusual to find a well without anything dropped or thrown into it, just clean sediment," he said. "But where is the tidiest archeological site in Britain? Stonehenge, possibly the greatest ceremonial centre of them all."
The £200,000 dig at Askern, a former pit village, has also established that the defences form the biggest marshland fort in Britain. Henry Chapman, of Hull University, said: "The building techniques and architecture of the ramparts closely resemble those of early iron age hill forts. But there are no hills here, so the impassable wetlands were used instead, to create an impregnable site."
Whether the silent, scrubbed central buildings were quiet religious shrines, or something more sinister, may be established by further trenches due to slice through the flat, formerly agricultural turf. David Miles, chief archaeologist of English Heritage, said: "We will fund further excavations next year with the aim of resolving the enigma of this site."
The remains were damaged by intensive farming but have now been bought by a local trust, which hopes to open the site and possibly finance some reconstruction, as part of plans to revive tourism.
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