Spencer Carter
► ARCHAEOLOGY | http://timevista.co.uk
► ARCHAEOLOGY | https://clevelandarchaeology.com/
► OVERVIEW
Honorary Research Fellow in the Department of Archaeology, Durham University | FSA Scot | Managing Director at Cleveland Archaeology Trust CIC
Holding a BA (Hons) in archaeology from Durham University, I have been involved in extensive fieldwork, excavation and post-excavation engagements as an accomplished practitioner, supervisor and trainer. I am available for commercial and non-profit field activities, project consultancy, lithics characterisation analyses, education delivery and community outreach.
While maintaining archaeological interests, I have worked in a variety of international roles for hi-tech global corporations. These include senior management positions in business and sales operations, with substantial business and customer-focused experience in project and change management, organisational leadership, budget control, cross-functional team building and customer service—a unique suite of problem-solving management skills that complement my archaeological and heritage portfolio.
Phone: +44 (0)779 86 500 86
Address: info@timevista.co.uk
Twitter @microburin
► ARCHAEOLOGY | https://clevelandarchaeology.com/
► OVERVIEW
Honorary Research Fellow in the Department of Archaeology, Durham University | FSA Scot | Managing Director at Cleveland Archaeology Trust CIC
Holding a BA (Hons) in archaeology from Durham University, I have been involved in extensive fieldwork, excavation and post-excavation engagements as an accomplished practitioner, supervisor and trainer. I am available for commercial and non-profit field activities, project consultancy, lithics characterisation analyses, education delivery and community outreach.
While maintaining archaeological interests, I have worked in a variety of international roles for hi-tech global corporations. These include senior management positions in business and sales operations, with substantial business and customer-focused experience in project and change management, organisational leadership, budget control, cross-functional team building and customer service—a unique suite of problem-solving management skills that complement my archaeological and heritage portfolio.
Phone: +44 (0)779 86 500 86
Address: info@timevista.co.uk
Twitter @microburin
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REAPING TIME is a banner for a community-inclusive venture, a true adventure, to discover more about East Cleveland in north-east Yorkshire. Our ancestry, no matter where we have all come from, dates back to the last Ice Age, over 12,000 years ago. People, just like us, have been artisans, creative folk, canny traders, farmers and, more latterly, industrialists, all against a backdrop of changes to our environment and circumstances.
The project prospectus also demonstrates the benefits of how ‘feel-well’ communities can attract investment, philanthropic and commercial, as well as enjoying our potential as a diverse, evolving and friendly region. We are more than a set of villages; we may sometimes be consumed into greater pools, yet our identity in East Cleveland remains unique. Our past is as much of that identity as our aspirations are.
All costings are estimates within a scope-range and are subject to ongoing review around the results from the initial 'Explore & Evaluate' phase 1A Aug-Sep 2018. These include geophysical survey of 30ha, field-walking of 40ha, walk-over surveys and mapping regression. https://clevelandarchaeology.com/reaping-time/
Eston Hills Rescue Archaeology Project Test pit excavations July 2017
This is an interim PXA-level catalogue, with images, pending full analyses after future fieldwork and subsequent standards-conformant archive submission (destination identified & approved).
Related to 2018 Interim Report (EHP17-HLF01, e-published) at https://estonhillsproject.wordpress.com/publications/
The project has made excellent progress in its first season, rallying many voices around a single ‘landscape’ community cause. The aim is to turn around perceptions and behaviour, across generations and backgrounds, to make the destruction by a minority of residents socially unacceptable. estonhillsproject.wordpress.com
Please note that the PDF file is going through minor iterations (website link does not change) head of hard-copy printing.
Project Website | https://estonhillsproject.wordpress.com/
Marsh Awards | http://www.marshchristiantrust.org/default.asp?V_ITEM_ID=675
A recommended reading list, much available online, and links to related resources are included at the end of the article.
The blade-based implement is of partially patinated, speckled, semi-translucent flint consistent with that derived from glacial till and boulder clay deposits and beach pebbles along the Yorkshire coast. Modification by way of invasive, unifacial pressure flaking and marginal edge-retouch appears to indicate an intention to create a lenticular, convex-sided implement with a point at the proximal end, removing the bulb of percussion. Small notches to the left edge are suggested as post-depositional damage rather than being related to the implement’s function (e.g. to facilitate hafting) or damage through use. However, and while equivocal, the curvature of the left edge and extent of pressure flaking might also suggest that this was an unfinished tool. The form and metrical attributes indicate that this is one of (a) an as-is leaf-shaped projectile (Green type 2B); (b) an unfinished leaf-shaped arrowhead (Green type 3A); or (c) a unifacially-retouched plano-convex knife. There is nothing, in terms of the artefact’s morphology, to preclude its use as a projectile, and this is the favoured interpretation.
Whether a leaf-shaped arrowhead or cutting tool, the lithic is consistent with Neolithic activity in the area, and across the Yorkshire Wolds as a whole. Leaf-shaped arrowheads have a long chronology from c. 4000 BC to c. 2000 BC but with a floruit in the earlier fourth millennium phases and association with, amongst other lithic tools, early to middle Neolithic pottery traditions such as Grimston, Towthorpe and Peterborough Wares. Where such artefacts are not isolated finds within a broader landscape, depositional contexts include funerary, monumental (e.g. henges) and domestic sites. However, if this was a plano-convex knife, noting an association with Food Vessels and Beakers, a late Neolithic to early Bronze Age date range, c. 2200 BC to c. 1800 BC, would be a more appropriate proposition.
The lithic is recommended for retention as part of the associated archaeological archive. While not significant on its own, it attests to activity extending back potentially into the Neolithic, alongside the Historic Environment Records for at least Bronze Age activity in the proximity of Fosters Wold Farm, and hence contributes to a cumulative regional dataset.
Recent palaeoenvironmental work at Esklets (Albert & Innes 2015) also adds compelling granularity to our understanding of environmental, ecological and anthropogenic change through the early Holocene (Simmons 1996). Despite that, the archaeology of the Mesolithic period, and especially the later/terminal Mesolithic and transition to the Neolithic in the area, is less well understood, with poor chronological resolution (see Roskams & Whyman 2007; Manby et al. 2003; Spratt 1993; and earlier Hayes 1988; Radley 1969).
Field observations over the last three decades suggest that some vegetational regeneration of eroded areas has taken place, but that deflation of the remaining fragile peat has been substantial, estimated at more than 30% to 50% in places where previous sections were recorded and possibly exacerbated somewhat by periodic burning of the heather as related to the upland grouse-shooting industry. More recently, land management activities have included the construction of trackways for vehicular access, and of substantial shooting butts—with associated surface disturbance and drainage cuts. Unfortunately, any remaining archaeology at one Esklets site (site 2) has been entirely removed, or substantially damaged, by such activities within the last year; another (site 6) remains at risk from further erosion and unrecorded flint collecting. A consideration of future potential for fieldwork against national and regional research priorities (e.g. Blinkhorn & Milner 2013; Waughman 2006; 2012) is also offered here.
More detailed analyses of all the Esklets lithics collections, together with others at White Gill and Glaisdale High Moor, are in progress, adding 10 new radiocarbon determinations for White Gill (see Carter 2014 for an interim summary), and three for Esklets site 2 (included in this document).
This brief report relates to freelance research and collaboration, largely self-funded, and is not part of any commercial enterprise. Site-related data remains of a sensitive nature in that unrecorded flint collecting, with evidence for selective removal of archaeological artefacts, continues to take place (Brightman 2014, 10).
A more detailed lithic analysis catalogue is provided as a supplement spreadsheet, document KIP14-L04, and contains more detailed typological, metrical and raw material data along with related typological and raw material definitions. The present assessment offers an overview characterisation of the lithics (although they should not be treated as an integral, cohesive assemblage) including post-depositional state (damage), and concludes with a tentative period-based interpretation. The publication of a formal monograph by Solstice Heritage is anticipated in 2016.
The North York Moors is the backdrop for one of the densest concentrations of Mesolithic lithic scatters in the UK based on current evidence—second only to the Central Pennines—and yet it is one of the least understood.
This poster outlines the emerging results from on-going analyses of artefacts recorded during a systematic rescue excavation of a typologically Late Mesolithic upland lithic scatter at White Gill, Westerdale on the North York Moors, UK. The excavation provided unequivocal evidence of hearth features with associated, discrete knapping events surrounding them, artefact associations with flat-stones, and a tentative structure. The early results of the lithics analysis reveal complex chaînes opératoires including the possible expedient use of legacy lithic material, and the possibility that one of the knappers was a juvenile or ‘apprentice learner’.
Evidence is emerging for possible site “pairing” suggested by lithic re-fits between neighbouring sites at Esklets in the proximity of a palaeolake, the transport of raw materials, including the presence of finished Pennine chert tools. The project therefore affords a rare opportunity to analyse potential coeval activity and mobility over distance. Being the first comprehensive study of its kind in an area hitherto ignored or largely unrecorded, the micro-scale of the analyses described in this poster provides a keyhole view that not only confirms a rich data set, but also opens up new research questions that allow us to begin unpicking a persistent, palimpsestual, complex Mesolithic taskscape in a largely over-looked period and region.
Latest Update | Spring 2014
Funding has been sourced for three further radiocarbon AMS determinations for Corylus avellana (hazel) from firespot [F7] in order to clarify its chronology. Calibrated dates (Rosaceae) thus far indicate an exceedingly late Mesolithic (actually Early Neolithic) burning event or charcoal intrusion. C14 measurements from a Neolithic mortuary structure at Street House, Loftus are earlier - also mirrored in the earliest Neolithic dates from other features and monuments in Yorkshire, often associated with Grimstone Ware pottery."
"Intertidal peat beds dating from the mid-Holocene (Later Mesolithic) are well known north of the Tees estuary (North-east England) near Hartlepool and Seaton Carew. The peat beds south of the Tees at Redcar are less well known and studied. They are infrequently revealed on the beach. An opportunity to inspect them this year (2013) provided possible evidence for coppicing (or copparding) and one tree stump (betula) displayed possible stone axe marks. Historical finds recorded in the regional HER are also briefly summarised.
I am grateful to Francis Pryor and Maisie Taylor for commenting on the images."
The presentation touches on the pros and cons of Internet presence - Websites, Blogs, Social Media, Email Engines, Document Storage - and offers a rationale for maintaining a printed paper journal.
The importance of a professional look-and-feel and consistent branding are emphasised throughout. While there are many examples of best practice in the archaeological community, many organisations still find the "technology" intimidating and are challenged to find the expertise (and resource/time) to make effective use of Internet presence. The conference concluded that, while younger generations are comfortable with social media and digital materials, the older majority that still firm the foundational membership of all county and local societies remain endeared to printed materials as a value-token of their subscriptions and support. However, some local groups take a firm line on "Internet only". Since there remain significant barriers to Internet (and IT) adoption in older and marginalised groups, "Internet only" risks disenfranchising a considerable community. The debate continues!
Project Website | https://estonhillsproject.wordpress.com/
Belief in the North-East Website | www.beliefne.net/
of Delgovicia.
https://archaeopress.com/ArchaeopressShop/Public/displayProductDetail.asp?id={BADEC09B-A9AF-45DF-B963-383C6E511AE8}
REAPING TIME is a banner for a community-inclusive venture, a true adventure, to discover more about East Cleveland in north-east Yorkshire. Our ancestry, no matter where we have all come from, dates back to the last Ice Age, over 12,000 years ago. People, just like us, have been artisans, creative folk, canny traders, farmers and, more latterly, industrialists, all against a backdrop of changes to our environment and circumstances.
The project prospectus also demonstrates the benefits of how ‘feel-well’ communities can attract investment, philanthropic and commercial, as well as enjoying our potential as a diverse, evolving and friendly region. We are more than a set of villages; we may sometimes be consumed into greater pools, yet our identity in East Cleveland remains unique. Our past is as much of that identity as our aspirations are.
All costings are estimates within a scope-range and are subject to ongoing review around the results from the initial 'Explore & Evaluate' phase 1A Aug-Sep 2018. These include geophysical survey of 30ha, field-walking of 40ha, walk-over surveys and mapping regression. https://clevelandarchaeology.com/reaping-time/
Eston Hills Rescue Archaeology Project Test pit excavations July 2017
This is an interim PXA-level catalogue, with images, pending full analyses after future fieldwork and subsequent standards-conformant archive submission (destination identified & approved).
Related to 2018 Interim Report (EHP17-HLF01, e-published) at https://estonhillsproject.wordpress.com/publications/
The project has made excellent progress in its first season, rallying many voices around a single ‘landscape’ community cause. The aim is to turn around perceptions and behaviour, across generations and backgrounds, to make the destruction by a minority of residents socially unacceptable. estonhillsproject.wordpress.com
Please note that the PDF file is going through minor iterations (website link does not change) head of hard-copy printing.
Project Website | https://estonhillsproject.wordpress.com/
Marsh Awards | http://www.marshchristiantrust.org/default.asp?V_ITEM_ID=675
A recommended reading list, much available online, and links to related resources are included at the end of the article.
The blade-based implement is of partially patinated, speckled, semi-translucent flint consistent with that derived from glacial till and boulder clay deposits and beach pebbles along the Yorkshire coast. Modification by way of invasive, unifacial pressure flaking and marginal edge-retouch appears to indicate an intention to create a lenticular, convex-sided implement with a point at the proximal end, removing the bulb of percussion. Small notches to the left edge are suggested as post-depositional damage rather than being related to the implement’s function (e.g. to facilitate hafting) or damage through use. However, and while equivocal, the curvature of the left edge and extent of pressure flaking might also suggest that this was an unfinished tool. The form and metrical attributes indicate that this is one of (a) an as-is leaf-shaped projectile (Green type 2B); (b) an unfinished leaf-shaped arrowhead (Green type 3A); or (c) a unifacially-retouched plano-convex knife. There is nothing, in terms of the artefact’s morphology, to preclude its use as a projectile, and this is the favoured interpretation.
Whether a leaf-shaped arrowhead or cutting tool, the lithic is consistent with Neolithic activity in the area, and across the Yorkshire Wolds as a whole. Leaf-shaped arrowheads have a long chronology from c. 4000 BC to c. 2000 BC but with a floruit in the earlier fourth millennium phases and association with, amongst other lithic tools, early to middle Neolithic pottery traditions such as Grimston, Towthorpe and Peterborough Wares. Where such artefacts are not isolated finds within a broader landscape, depositional contexts include funerary, monumental (e.g. henges) and domestic sites. However, if this was a plano-convex knife, noting an association with Food Vessels and Beakers, a late Neolithic to early Bronze Age date range, c. 2200 BC to c. 1800 BC, would be a more appropriate proposition.
The lithic is recommended for retention as part of the associated archaeological archive. While not significant on its own, it attests to activity extending back potentially into the Neolithic, alongside the Historic Environment Records for at least Bronze Age activity in the proximity of Fosters Wold Farm, and hence contributes to a cumulative regional dataset.
Recent palaeoenvironmental work at Esklets (Albert & Innes 2015) also adds compelling granularity to our understanding of environmental, ecological and anthropogenic change through the early Holocene (Simmons 1996). Despite that, the archaeology of the Mesolithic period, and especially the later/terminal Mesolithic and transition to the Neolithic in the area, is less well understood, with poor chronological resolution (see Roskams & Whyman 2007; Manby et al. 2003; Spratt 1993; and earlier Hayes 1988; Radley 1969).
Field observations over the last three decades suggest that some vegetational regeneration of eroded areas has taken place, but that deflation of the remaining fragile peat has been substantial, estimated at more than 30% to 50% in places where previous sections were recorded and possibly exacerbated somewhat by periodic burning of the heather as related to the upland grouse-shooting industry. More recently, land management activities have included the construction of trackways for vehicular access, and of substantial shooting butts—with associated surface disturbance and drainage cuts. Unfortunately, any remaining archaeology at one Esklets site (site 2) has been entirely removed, or substantially damaged, by such activities within the last year; another (site 6) remains at risk from further erosion and unrecorded flint collecting. A consideration of future potential for fieldwork against national and regional research priorities (e.g. Blinkhorn & Milner 2013; Waughman 2006; 2012) is also offered here.
More detailed analyses of all the Esklets lithics collections, together with others at White Gill and Glaisdale High Moor, are in progress, adding 10 new radiocarbon determinations for White Gill (see Carter 2014 for an interim summary), and three for Esklets site 2 (included in this document).
This brief report relates to freelance research and collaboration, largely self-funded, and is not part of any commercial enterprise. Site-related data remains of a sensitive nature in that unrecorded flint collecting, with evidence for selective removal of archaeological artefacts, continues to take place (Brightman 2014, 10).
A more detailed lithic analysis catalogue is provided as a supplement spreadsheet, document KIP14-L04, and contains more detailed typological, metrical and raw material data along with related typological and raw material definitions. The present assessment offers an overview characterisation of the lithics (although they should not be treated as an integral, cohesive assemblage) including post-depositional state (damage), and concludes with a tentative period-based interpretation. The publication of a formal monograph by Solstice Heritage is anticipated in 2016.
The North York Moors is the backdrop for one of the densest concentrations of Mesolithic lithic scatters in the UK based on current evidence—second only to the Central Pennines—and yet it is one of the least understood.
This poster outlines the emerging results from on-going analyses of artefacts recorded during a systematic rescue excavation of a typologically Late Mesolithic upland lithic scatter at White Gill, Westerdale on the North York Moors, UK. The excavation provided unequivocal evidence of hearth features with associated, discrete knapping events surrounding them, artefact associations with flat-stones, and a tentative structure. The early results of the lithics analysis reveal complex chaînes opératoires including the possible expedient use of legacy lithic material, and the possibility that one of the knappers was a juvenile or ‘apprentice learner’.
Evidence is emerging for possible site “pairing” suggested by lithic re-fits between neighbouring sites at Esklets in the proximity of a palaeolake, the transport of raw materials, including the presence of finished Pennine chert tools. The project therefore affords a rare opportunity to analyse potential coeval activity and mobility over distance. Being the first comprehensive study of its kind in an area hitherto ignored or largely unrecorded, the micro-scale of the analyses described in this poster provides a keyhole view that not only confirms a rich data set, but also opens up new research questions that allow us to begin unpicking a persistent, palimpsestual, complex Mesolithic taskscape in a largely over-looked period and region.
Latest Update | Spring 2014
Funding has been sourced for three further radiocarbon AMS determinations for Corylus avellana (hazel) from firespot [F7] in order to clarify its chronology. Calibrated dates (Rosaceae) thus far indicate an exceedingly late Mesolithic (actually Early Neolithic) burning event or charcoal intrusion. C14 measurements from a Neolithic mortuary structure at Street House, Loftus are earlier - also mirrored in the earliest Neolithic dates from other features and monuments in Yorkshire, often associated with Grimstone Ware pottery."
"Intertidal peat beds dating from the mid-Holocene (Later Mesolithic) are well known north of the Tees estuary (North-east England) near Hartlepool and Seaton Carew. The peat beds south of the Tees at Redcar are less well known and studied. They are infrequently revealed on the beach. An opportunity to inspect them this year (2013) provided possible evidence for coppicing (or copparding) and one tree stump (betula) displayed possible stone axe marks. Historical finds recorded in the regional HER are also briefly summarised.
I am grateful to Francis Pryor and Maisie Taylor for commenting on the images."
The presentation touches on the pros and cons of Internet presence - Websites, Blogs, Social Media, Email Engines, Document Storage - and offers a rationale for maintaining a printed paper journal.
The importance of a professional look-and-feel and consistent branding are emphasised throughout. While there are many examples of best practice in the archaeological community, many organisations still find the "technology" intimidating and are challenged to find the expertise (and resource/time) to make effective use of Internet presence. The conference concluded that, while younger generations are comfortable with social media and digital materials, the older majority that still firm the foundational membership of all county and local societies remain endeared to printed materials as a value-token of their subscriptions and support. However, some local groups take a firm line on "Internet only". Since there remain significant barriers to Internet (and IT) adoption in older and marginalised groups, "Internet only" risks disenfranchising a considerable community. The debate continues!
Project Website | https://estonhillsproject.wordpress.com/
Belief in the North-East Website | www.beliefne.net/
of Delgovicia.
https://archaeopress.com/ArchaeopressShop/Public/displayProductDetail.asp?id={BADEC09B-A9AF-45DF-B963-383C6E511AE8}
https://www.solsticeheritage.co.uk/portfolio-items/leawood-knoll-bow-wood/
In 2017, Solstice partnered with the DerwentWISE Landscape Partnership and the Dethick, Lea and Holloway Heritage Group to investigate two fascinating sites in Derbyshire’s Derwent Valley. Bow Wood and Lea Wood cover the flanks of twin hills, prominent on the east side of the Derwent to the south of Cromford and Matlock.
In Bow Wood, Solstice led volunteers and provided landscape survey training. Woodland archaeology has specific complexities, and in Bow Wood we were identifying and recording the remains of medieval and post-medieval industry.
Leawood Knoll is a flat saddle of land at the top of Lea Wood, bounded by an earthwork enclosure. Volunteer excavations led by Solstice in 2017 revealed that the knoll had been transformed in the medieval period, at a time when great tracts of the enclosed ‘forests’ were being brought into agriculture to feed a growing population. The book recounting the excavations will be published in 2018.