HOLED up in a small room with only a pot found on Petersfield Heath for company is not everyone’s idea of a good time.
But, for archaeology volunteer Jane King, it was sheer bliss.
Jane spent six weeks at the Hampshire Cultural Trust at Chilcombe near Winchester meticulously emptying out the contents of a 4,000 year old funeral urn.
This large cremation container was one of the exciting finds made on the People of the Heath project, overseen by Petersfield Museum.
The intact Bronze Age urn was found in May and next year it will be the centrepiece of an exhibition at the museum about the digs on the Heath barrows.
Jane was tasked to sift through the soil inside the pot to recover tiny fragments of cremated bones, which were then sent off for extensive analysis.
She said: “It was very satisfying and I felt really, really privileged to be involved. It is up there in the top ten things I have done in my life.”
But it doesn’t end there for Jane’s.
She will be at Chilcombe in that small room once again to empty another pot of its contents. This slightly smaller funeral urn, with just its base not intact, was found in this year’s summer latest dig.
It was also a Bronze Age cremation pot and, when the analysis tests are complete, adds to the picture of how our ancestors went about life, and death, in this area.
The urns have been given the same CT scans people are given at Salisbury Hospital to find out as much about them as possible.
There have now been four cremation containers found in barrows on the Heath – the remains of a box and a bag, and the two urns.
Project co-director George Anelay said it would be wonderful to find more. His aim is to find the remains of a settlement on the Heath along with the burial sites.