What is the greatest dig or greatest artefact you have found you have ever been on? Eliza Jennings (11)

Hi Eliza!

That’s a tricky question as all the sites I’ve worked on have been fascinating. I think if I had to pick one, the greatest may have been the Time Team dig I worked on at Speke Keeill in the middle of a golf course on the Isle of Man.

The site was in use for a long time with Bronze Age activity and burials from the 6^th and 7^th century surrounding a small chapel, called a keeill, which was built after the 9^th century when the Vikings were living on the Island.

The keeill was built of stone and turf and was a one roomed building, probably home to a monk. At one end was an altar and around this we found lots of smooth, round white quartz pebbles that may have been left as offerings, collected from a nearby beach, perhaps because they were believed to help heal sick people.

Another discovery was a stone slab carved with an ogham inscription, this was found next to a stone lined or cist grave. Ogham is an ancient British and Irish language and was written by creating different strokes off a continuous line. It is really difficult to translate ogham today but the inscription might say something about a group of 50 people.

My absolute favourite find from the site was inside another cist grave. The grave contained the burial of a woman in her twenties and what was really rare and unusual about the burial was that her plaited brown hair survived.

The picture below shows us working on the excavation of the keeill and you can see a stone carved with a cross inthe middle of the picture. I’m the person kneeling on the ground talking to Time Team’s Phil Harding. 

If you’d like to find out more and see all of the things we discovered you can watch the episode of Time Team on YouTube.