First of all, a big thank you to everyone who helped to make the latest season at Abinger such a success. It may seem odd to say that in view of our failure to finish the trench, but this was a result of finding that there was more surviving archaeology than anticipated. Much of this must be down to your hard work in tackling the difficulties of finding archaeological features in sand. As a result we have a much better understanding of the site and how to approach it in future. We can now say with certainty that there is a pre-Roman site on the hilltop but also that activity continued in some form into the Roman period. Given the proximity of the villa site there can be little doubt that we are looking at continuity of occupation from the Late Iron Age, and at some point yet to be determined a shift of the central focus from the hilltop to the lower site. Expert analysis of the pottery will be required to give us the likely dates, and may indicate activity on the hilltop earlier than Late Iron Age. We certainly have Mesolithic and probably Neolithic worked flints, so the ground stone axe may indicate occupation at that date rather than an item reused in the later periods. If so, it is worth noting that it would have been a prestige item.