Three-year dig ends

ARCHAEOLOGISTS from Durham University have completed their three-year dig on Herm.

Led by Professor of Archaeology Chris Scarre, the group includes students from the university and volunteers from La Societe Guernesiaise.

This year they have been working on the common, in three different areas, near Bears Beach, Petit Monceau and close to the obelisk.

Most of the work centred around a circular stone structure that was uncovered in 2008.

The area was excavated by Lukis in 1840. He thought the stone structure connected all the way over to nearby Tomb 15, but this year they were able to find that this was not true. The stones have been dated to the Iron Age.

'Lukis thought the wall probably led to a pit and drew a diagram of this area,' said Janice Graf, a PhD student who has been part of the project from the beginning. 'We found a depression in the earth which we thought may be the pit and that turned out to be right.

'The circular stones connect to a wall which runs the length of it.'

They have uncovered a building with a prehistoric floor, which was embedded with lots of pieces of flint and one piece of pottery.

'The fact that there is so much flint in the area is indicative of work having been done and of humans existing there,' said Janice.

Within the structure there is a circular wall with a floor on a slightly different level.

Around the edge are lumps of material, which could possibly be daub.

'More investigation is necessary to date this more accurately,' said Janice, 'but it is definitely prehistoric – and prehistoric buildings are very rare.'

Luminescence dating, which examines every grain of sand, can tell much more but is extremely time-consuming.

Beneath one of the trenches were found lots of old gin bottles, tonic bottles and bottle caps. This baffled the students, until they realised they had accidentally uncovered the clubhouse of Herm's short-lived 1920s golf course. Beneath the rubbish was Roman material and beneath that a prehistoric floor with items of pottery and flint.

The path to Bears Beach was also hiding lots of pottery, working flint and tools.

The north side of Petit Monceau uncovered very deep sand – almost two metres – compared with the rest of the common, which has much more hard, compact dirt.

Although this is the end of the three-year dig, Professor Scarre plans to come back next year to carry out one or two smaller projects completely separate from this one. With so much history to investigate on Herm, there is always more to learn.

'We will be holding a public conference in Guernsey at the end of the project,' said Professor Scarre. 'This will be before summer, possibly May. The public will be able to attend and learn of everything that has been found.'

The findings and pictures from the entire dig may eventually end up in book form.