I decided to see if I could find the other end of the dry drain in area B/2, so I cut a trench on the southern edge of B/2 in order to do this. This is now called B/3. It was also a valuable exercise to find out how the green clay platform was made too.

However, I discovered that the green clay platform was superimposed over a previous manmade blue silt mound topped with an orange clay cap. In the blue silt I noticed every so often some single human hairs. It could be clearly seen that the silt mound was manufactured and not just river silts because it appeared that it was peeled from a rock that was very iron rich. Wedges of this silt had been roughly thrown together to make up this mound. In some cased the iron stain was placed vertically and some times at a 45 degree angle.

 However, under this silt was a fine brown sand that had swirls of bright alluvial copper grains within it. I carefully excavated this sand and found chunks of axe chopped wood and a small piece of very course textile in the sand on top of what appeared to be a pale blue clay surface. I had excavated so many of these surfaces or platforms I delighted that I had found another. Yet, there seemed to be dips in the surface and I was disappointed that the surface appeared to have been damaged in some way. I excavated the dip with a small spoon as it was very curvy and then found there was another next to it. It was only when I sat back and looked at it I realized it was it was a hoof print! The rest of the area took two days to fully excavate although it was not more than one and a half metres square. There were so many different prints superimposed on one another. In areas the clay was missing to reveal sand underneath and under that in some areas a black peat could be seen.

After much conjecture this is what at we believe happened. The area called Main Site is situated is on what was a south facing peat bank on the bend of a river between two shallow lakes. The entire peat deposit is over a constant spring line that is in no way affected by climate. (In 1975 and 1976 the drought years in Britain one of these springs that feeds the house I live in was pumping out 50,000 gallons a day.) Sand must have been washed over this peat bank during river flooding and then a lump of clay from upstream deposited on this. This clay formed a slip over a wet period and then another deposit of sand was washed over that. Thus leaving a thin sandwich of clay between two layers of sand. These creatures then stomped over this sandy beach and there we have our prints. I was working on a Time Team programme at Goldcliff on the Severn estuary the week after I excavated these hooves and fortunately a hoof and footprint expert Rachel Scales was there to show pictures of our find to. She travelled down to Cornwall a few weeks later and planned and took casts of the hooves and will be writing a report on them for us. The main prints are of a bovine animal either Auroch or primitive domestic cattle. The average width of a modern cow’s hoof is 13cm whereas one of ours is 17cm. Apparently it is very difficult to determine what is young  Auroch or large domestic cattle. However, Prof. Martin Bell who runs the Goldcliff excavation and an old friend came to look at the hooves this spring and thought that there might be small horse prints there too, plus possibly deer. There is also a strange square print which it has been suggested might be a bear print, but we are waiting for confirmation of this.

    During the last season I decided to finish trench B/3 to see if there were any more prints, but the terrible weather we had in August hindered this. I plan to finish this trench at the beginning of next season. If we can find a really large bovine hoof print in this other area then it will confirm our suspicion that the bovine hooves we have which range from 7cm dia. to 17cm dia. are a group of calf’s and juvenile Auroch’s. We have taken a core through the peat under the hooves and these are at present being processed for pollen analysis too,