Surrey Archaeological Society will hold a Heritage Open Day at their Research Centre in Abinger Hammer. The central Lithics Group will be in attendance studying and cataloguing lithics collections (mainly flint items) and there will be an opportunity to explore the Society Library. Other activities are under consideration.
A community test-pitting program took place in 2019 at Rowhurst near Leatherhead in Surrey. The site has a Grade II* listed building on the site dating back to 1346 and surface finds on the site included Bronze Age and Roman pottery and an Iron Age gold stater. The public were given experience in both test-pitting and finds processing.
The Annual Symposium of the Society will take place in East Horsley Village Hall. Online booking via PayPal at £12 per person is now available by clicking on the BOOK tab above. Due to difficulty in paying them in cheques cannot now be accepted. Online booking enables us to assess the catering requirements and streamlines the administration process.
Payment by cash on the day is discouraged but will be possible and exact change would be appreciated. Tickets cost £12 per person.
A Zoom talk by Dr Matt Pope for the Prehistoric Group discussing the possibilities of cross channel similarities during early prehistory. Register your interest via martintrose@aol.com
A free online talk by Dr Barney Harris of University College, London about this Leverhulme funded project. The research is comparing the two periods where tangible large scale territoriality emerged in the British landscape: the Iron Age and the early middle ages.
Booking for this is available from martintrose@aol.com
In March 2022, a small team of volunteers from Surrey Archaeological Society carried out a geophysical magnetometry survey and fieldwalking exercise on Neale’s Field, Chipstead as part of a small community project. This work was undertaken in order to investigate an unusual concentration of early metal-detecting finds, most notably a number of rare 15th century coins, which led to speculation of the site being the possible location of a medieval fair which was recorded at Chipstead from the 13th century, and to define, date and characterise the site.
A brief fact sheet on lithics has been put together by the Society's Lithics Group.
The Iron Age period c. 800 BC - AD 43
Though the study of late prehistory in Britain has commonly focused on the introduction of metallurgy, many important developments also took place, including changes in the agricultural landscape and technological advances. Just as the transition from the Late Bronze Age is often an unclear boundary, many aspects of Late Iron Age culture also remained largely unchanged into the Roman period, particularly in the countryside.
The Bronze Age c. 2500 - 800 BC
Although it is common to generalise late prehistory – and the Bronze Age in particular – as the period which saw the introduction of metallurgy, other important developments took place, including open settlement and field system patterns. At the same time, many practices continued from the Late Neolithic which preceded it, making it a complex period with cultural change very gradual over time.
The Neolithic period c. 4000 - 2200 BC
Although the ‘New Stone Age’ is traditionally seen as the period when farming was introduced to Britain, the vast timeframe of early prehistory can make it easy to generalise on the many – often complex – developments which took place. Rather than too much focus on ‘settling down’ however, emphasis has shifted to the real change being a new world view comprising notions of time, descent, origin, ancestry, community, nature, etc.
