Field Report East Kennett by Mike Callahan July 27th, 2005

It was a dull, cloudy day and there had been a lot of rain and I’m sure a few visitors so keep this in mind when reading the report. 

My initial thoughts were that it is a superb location, overlooking the Silbury mound and West Kennett burial chamber. Even though it was raining I felt that it was indeed a special place in terms of a setting. On entering the formation the crop had been flattened somewhat, not surprising considering the weather and the visitors that may already have been there. However, there were still a few standing stems, undamaged, in the outer ring ..The lay was in a neat and tidy clockwise direction.

I spent a lot of time walking around the circumference getting wetter and wetter, and examining the nodes for expulsions, elongations and bending. After a while I did find some evidence of nodal bending but it was not common. The photograph shows a good example of the bending. The nodal bending that I did find was mainly confined to where the tramlines were and this would be quite natural. I lifted the crop and it was consistently broken at ground level as opposed to being bent at the nodes. Again, bear in mind the number of visitors. No visible elongation and no expulsion cavities.

Next I studied the inner sections of the formation. Again mainly clockwise and the crop was flattened. Naturally, there was a lot of mud. The corners of the lay showed a swirl which was overlapped by broken crop to form a right angle. The 12 flattened nests were very impressive and consistent in design and shape.

In the interior of the design there were some places where there was an overlap of the crop. Also, there were areas where the crop had been pushed down in a V-shape. I lifted the crop in many places looking for crop anomalies but I could not find any. There was no evidence of any dead insects etc but lots of happy slugs and snails!

It was well worth a visit to this very special place even though I came back very wet and muddy. It’s a pity I couldn’t have been there sooner or on a better day in terms of the weather.