Excavating antler headdresses

In the excavations directed by Clark, a total of 21 antler frontlets (often called headdresses) were found. These are extremely rare artefacts – this is the only site in the whole of the UK where they have been found and only a handful are known from sites in Northern Germany. This link with Northern Germany again shows that there were connections over a large expanse of north western Europe.

During our excavations we found a number of other headdresses – some from around Clark’s area and in his baulk but also others from around the detrital wood scatter and the western platform showing that people were depositing them over a long period of time.

Surprisingly, these headdresses have not really been well studied until now and even more suprisingly, given their iconic status, most of them have not been put on display in museums until recently after we started excavating again at the site.