Monument record TR 36 SW 114 - Late Neolithic to Early Bronze Age features, Oaklands Nursery site, Cliffsend

In 1998 an evaluation and an excavation were carried out by the Trust for Thanet Archaeology on the Oaklands Nursery site at Cliffsend.The late Neolithic/early bronze age period is represented at this site by the angle of two ditches and a third length of ditch. A further two ditches and two pits may have also belonged to this period, as they had similar fills, but there were not finds to confirm this. where sectioned the ditches cut down through about 0.3m of colluvial silty sand into the Thanet beds sub soil. Toward the south-south western end of the site the features are lost under the line of the Medieval flood bank and are not found beyond it, this is presumably because the deepening colluvial deposits through which they were cut were intermittently scoured away by the sea, leaving perhaps vestigial traces. An example of this being the flint nodules and horse skull which may have originally been ditch bottom deposits. The remains which were observed appear to represent part of a ditched enclosure of unknown plan and extent. Finds of Late Neolithic/Early Bronze Age material from the ditch sections gave a date span of 2500-1800 BC, but the objects were all found in the upper 20cm of the fills, so they may post date the life of the enclosure. That what was seen of the enclosure plan is rectilinear rather than curvilinear is significant and may suggest field boundaries or a domestic enclosure, perhaps a farmstead or settlement. (information summarised from source) (1-2)

<1> Trust for Thanet Archaeology, 1998, Oaklands Nursery Site, Cliffsend, Ramsgate: Archaeological Evaluation (Unpublished document). SKE17301.

<2> Trust for Thanet Archaeology, 1998, The Oaklands Nursery Site Development, Cliffsend, Ramsgate; An Archaeological Excavation Report (Unpublished document). SKE17302.