Manure scattered ceramics and their distributions across Thetford Forest.

Light background scatters of small abraded sherds of pottery are often detected during field surveys. Archaeologists usually consider such finds to represent so called manure scatter . Until the recent introduction of refuse (garbage) collection services, and the development of modern fertilisers - household and courtyard waste was not always left to form into middens, but was often spread onto arable fields close to settlements. This not only kept settlements clean and tidy, but also provided a valuable fertiliser for crops. Rubbish tipped onto the manure heaps included floor sweepings, and broken pottery from the kitchens. These manure and garbage heaps would be carted out to the fields, to be ploughed into the soil. Although the manure quickly degraded into the ploughsoil - the sherds of pottery often survive to the present day as manure scatter.

Incidentally, ceramics are not the only surviving materials of domestic manuring practises. Here in the UK, metal detection is legal, and extensively practised. I am sure that a large percentage of metal detector finds were also dispersed as manure scatter - hence the abundance of odd finds in ploughsoils, such as furniture fittings. This is not to say that all metal detected finds are manure scatter - many were deposited as casual losses by field workers and their livestock, especially items such as buttons, buckles, horse mounts, etc. Other metal detector finds can represent 'sites', such as hoards, settlement or cemeteries.

The Thetford Forest Survey

Archaeologists frequently ignore manure scattered ceramics in the top soil - homing on to the clusters of large sharp fragments and sherds of pottery that are more likely to represent 'sites' of settlement or industry. However, this is to take the information contained in manure scatters for granted. Rather than ignore the waste scatter, I have chosen to record it as data for comparison. Breckland has extremely variable soils that may have been exploited in a variety of ways in the past, and as the following evidence suggests - not just as pasture.

Prehistoric manure scatter?

Several sherds of Bronze Age pottery were recovered during forest-walks 1 to 3 on the edge of uplands at West Stow. The presence of any prehistoric ceramics here was very unexpected - five kilometres from a river; and on brown earth soils on the edge of uplands.

Prehistoric pottery is very frail, and has a poor survival rate in acidic Breckland topsoil's, which are prone to both frequent ground frosts and high temperatures under the sun. Subsequently such finds - baked and frozen each year, are rare on the surface. When they do occur, they are often automatically associated with 'settlement'. However, could the sherds have been deposited with manure, as in later ages, or alternatively, their moderate presence in the West Stow case, could be the result of another process, e.g. burial; ceremonial; hunting lodges; men's or women's retreats, etc. They may even represent settlement, and have been dispersed by later ploughing. The presence of any prehistoric ceramics on these compartments was very unexpected, the location seems unattractive for either cultivation or settlement. However, the surveys also recovered evidence of cultivation here both during the Roman period, and in recent centuries. Could the prehistoric ceramics be indicating the same land-use? Did local bronze age farmers pile up domestic waste into middens? Or could they transport it out to fields, if so, how far from settlements?