Tag Archives: ritual site

Cliffs End in the media

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The extraordinary Bronze Age and Iron Age ritual and burial site at Cliffs End is finally in the media. Have a look at one of these articles:

https://www.wessexarch.co.uk/blogs/news/2013/06/05/living-island
https://www.thetimes.co.uk/tto/science/archaeology/article3782800.ece https://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-2336094/Bronze-Age-burial-site-3-000-years-ago-contain-Scandinavian-western-European-migrants.html https://www.britisharchaeology.org/current
https://www.spiegel.de/wissenschaft/mensch/ausgegraben-der-internationale-friedhof-am-ende-englands-a-904261.html

Burial site at Pegwell Bay

Archaeology at Cliffs End

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The first article about the amazing archaeological site at Cliffs End Farm on the Isle of Thanet has now been published:

McKinley, J.I., Schuster, J. and Millard, A.R., 2013, Dead sea-connections: a Bronze Age and Iron Age ritual site on the Isle of Thanet, in Koch, J.T. and Cunliffe, B.W. (eds), Celtic from the West 2: Rethinking the Bronze Age and the arrival of Indo-European in Atlantic Europe, Celtic Studies Publications 16. Oxford, Oxbow Books, 157–83.

Download it here.

The site, excavated by Wessex Archaeology in 2004/05, contains as yet unparalleled evidence for ritual and funerary activity dating to the Late Bronze Age as well as the Early and Middle Iron Age. More than 100 radiocarbon determinations provide a tight chronological framework. Strontium/Oxygen isotope analysis of 20 individuals indicates a large proportion of migrants with probable origins in Scandinavia and the western Mediterranean.

The book is available from Oxbow Books. A monograph providing a detailed account of the excavation will be published as a Wessex Archaeology Report in the second half of 2014.