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A 'blade' style flint tool from the Mesolithic period (9,600-4,000 BCE).

Link road archeology exhibitions opens

An exhibition on the archeological investigations along the route of the Bexhill-Hastings Link Road has opened at Bexhill Museum. The display shows the archaeologists’work in progress, where they are digging and what they have found so far, East Sussex County Council reports. The selection of archaeological finds has objects dating from just after the last Ice Age up to the Saxon period.

The background to the exhibition is explained by county archaeologist Casper Johnson.“The Bexhill Hastings Link Road is providing an opportunity to significantly increase our understanding of the archaeology and history of this part of East Sussex in an area which has seen relatively little large-scale archaeological work and where there are significant gaps in our understanding,” he says.

A Roman 'Renish Ware' cup found at Upper Wilting Farm which dates to mid-late 2nd century CE.

“Oxford Archaeology began the main programme of excavations in April 2013 and have recorded evidence of human occupation from the Upper Palaeolithic through to the present day. More than 70 flint scatters, some associated with possible structures, pits and hearths have so far been excavated, whilst the development of the landscape in later prehistory can be charted through the construction of a ring ditch, field boundaries and ditched trackways.

An archeologist taking samples of fired clay from a hearth feature for archeomagnetic dating.

“A number of iron working sites of Late Iron Age to Roman date are being investigated, with one terraced into a hillside and comprising well-preserved furnaces with ore-roasting pits, charcoal dumps and extensive slag heaps immediately adjacent to a possibly contemporary ditched enclosure of Roman date on the hill top above. This particular site was then occupied in the Early Medieval period and continues in use with the present day farmstead lying just to the south; an illustration of how the Link Road is providing us with an opportunity to understand change at a landscape scale.”

 

 

The Bexhill-Hastings Link Road Archeology Bexhill Museum, Egerton Road, Bexhill, East Sussex TN39 3HL. To December 2014. Mon-Fri 10am-5pm, Sat-Sun 11am-5pm. Tel 01424 787950. www.bexhillmuseum.co.uk.

Photos: ESCC. Captions: Oxford Archeology.

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Posted 14:11 Monday, Apr 7, 2014 In: Home Ground

1 Comment

  1. Barbara Rogers

    I notice there is no provision for comments on the “link road” item, so I will comment anyway. We shouldn’t call it a link road because its real purpose is a service road for development – industrial, housing estates and retail. Doing the archaeology is fine but to me is a bit like covering up the real issues of this road, which is providing for ribbon development between Bexhill and Hastings (to the vast profit of the investors) and generating an enormous amount of car and lorry traffic in the process, with no bus routes to the new developments. It doesn’t solve traffic problems through a “link”, it makes them worse. So please, let’s call this the Bexhill-Hastings service road.

    Comment by Barbara Rogers — Friday, Apr 11, 2014 @ 09:46

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