alverstonedig's photostream

We are an environment, arts and education charity busy here on the Isle of Wight.
On August 5th 2005, Island 2000 Trust began the excavation of a large new conservation lake in a small field directly by the River Yar road bridge in the village of Alverstone. This work is tied to the enhancement of the Alverstone Marshes Site of Special Scientific Interest.
On 6th August our team made the first of what was to be a sequence of extraordinary discoveries. Four feet down into the sand and clay of the pond lay a cobble and brushwood track way, beautifully constructed and preserved.
Over the next week the true extent and quality of the archaeology became apparent; a network of late Iron Age wooden causeways and boardwalks over the marshes and saltings of the Yar’s estuary 2000 years ago; perhaps even the route of the first ford over the river itself. The timbers are worked, carved, jointed and drilled and held down by long oak dowels. There are woodworkers’ wedges, copper and bronze tools, spearheads, glass and jewellery.
In addition to these remains and artefacts we have uncovered environmental and climatic evidence of an astonishing quality: identifiable spiders and beetles; leaves, bones, tree fungi still attached to the host timber and cores of peat and silt containing detailed pollen and plankton prehistory that will chart the landscape and climate changes of the period.
Island 2000 contacted Island and mainland archaeologists in order to assess the importance of the find and plan for its conservation and study.
We have been very lucky in attracting the attention of the country’s leading wetland specialists: Dr. Francis Pryor, Dr. Charles French, Dr. Rob Scaife, Dr. Nigel Cameron, Dr. Alan Clapham, Dr. Mike Allen, and Maisie Taylor. Their opinion, and that of the Isle of Wight Archaeologists and the regional NGO English Heritage is that there is nothing like the site anywhere else on the Island, that it is certainly of national importance and quite possibly of international significance such is the range of activity and quality of preservation evident there.
We have continued working with our expert partners to plan for the study and interpretation of the site and its archaeology ever since the discovery. It is a slow, hard and expensive process! Simply assembling all the artefacts documents, drawings, photographs (some of which you’ll see here displayed) and raw survey data has taken us over a year, and we’re still not quite there.
However, we’re nearly at the point where we can actually hand over the proper writing-up and analysis of the whole project to an appointed archaeologist and at last see the extraordinary story of the Alverstone site properly explained and celebrated.
In the meantime we are doing our best to keep the story alive and well in the community that is after all a part of that same story, its people and its landscape of 2000 years ago, and the village of today.

Grateful thanks go to Jim Green for letting us use many of these excellent photographs, and to the Heritage Lottery Fund for helping us to fund the work.