SPRING MAG ED1. 2023

New releases

To purchase your copy go to www.canterburytrust.co.uk/new-releases

Farming, Everyday Life and Ritual By James Holman, Robert Masefield, Jonathan Rady and Jake Weekes

The Lower Lines By James Holman and Peter Kendall The Lower Lines formed a key part of the defences of Chatham Dockyard during the early part of the nineteenth century. While they were never used in combat, they became the focus for siege training during the later part of the century, and for the development of innovative new military technologies by the Royal Engineers. They were repurposed during the Second World War as part of the land defences for the Nore Command. The archaeological work undertaken between 2005 and 2009 focussed on two sites, at Mid Kent College and the Black Lion Leisure Centre. This work allowed study of the defences, but also provided an opportunity to investigate how the Royal Engineers were using the area. They constructed elaborate siege exercises, involving many hundreds of men, while also experimenting with new technologies such as electric searchlights.

Sixty centuries ago, someone placed a large broken bowl in a pit at Thanet Earth. Handfuls of wheat from the homeland followed, and fragments of saddle quern for grinding it, and more pottery, and flint tools, and ancestral bones... These were some of the first farmers in the British Isles, pioneers of a revolution that would affect everyday life for ever, and ritual too.

Farming, Everyday Life and Ritual continues this story as it develops over millennia at Thanet Earth, the previously unknown story of lives lost to history, rediscovered through their archaeological remains, the evidence unearthed during excavations by Canterbury Archaeological Trust.

The archaeology and contemporary records provide us with an intimate picture of what was taking place on the site throughout the nineteenth and into the twentieth centuries.

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