British Archaeology

In 2004 a large-scale excavation covering some 30 ha was undertaken at the site of Imerys Minerals' Scarcewater tip, St Stephen-in-Brannel. The archaeological investigations focused on three roundhouses and a ploughed-down barrow of Middle Bronze Age date, together with a range of structures and pits, an enclosed Late Bronze Age roundhouse and pits, an Iron Age cairn and Romano-British settlement and funerary activity. The excavations demonstrated shifting settlement and changes to the character of settlement and ceremony over a period spanning the Bronze Age to the Romano-British period (c 1500 cal BC – AD 410). This paper presents a summary of the major findings from the project, namely the Middle and Late Bronze Age settlements, an Iron Age ceremonial site and the Romano-British burials.

Excavation of a Scheduled burial mound on Whitehorse Hill, Dartmoor revealed an unexpected, intact burial deposit of Early Bronze Age date associated with an unparalleled range of artefacts. The cremated remains of a young person had been placed within a bearskin pelt and provided with a basketry container, from which a braided band with tin studs had spilled out. Within the container were beads of shale, amber, clay and tin; two pairs of turned wooden studs and a worked fl int fl ake. A unique item, possibly a sash or band, made from textile and animal skin was found beneath the container. Beneath this, the basal stone of the cist had been covered by a layer of purple moor grass which had been collected in summer. Analysis of environmental material from the site has revealed important insights into the pyre material used to burn the body, as well as providing important information about the environment in which the cist was constructed. The unparalleled assemblage of organic objects has yielded insights into a range of materials which have not survived from the earlier Bronze Age elsewhere in southern Britain.

The excavation of the Whitehorse Hill cist took place in the late summer of 2011. It had been assumed that the most significant aspect of the project would be the environmental recording and that the cist itself would be empty. In the final event, the cist was found to contain one of the most significant Early Bronze Age burials to have been found in southern Britain.

In 1990 a stone covered pit containing a Trevisker Ware vessel was eroding from the cliffs at Harlyn Bay and excavated. The vessel contained cremated bone from several individuals with some animal bone, quartz pebbles and a small bronze pendant. A radiocarbon date on the cremated bone fell between 2120-1880 cal BC and is a valuable addition to the small number of securely dated Early Bronze Age burials in Cornwall with metalwork associations. This early date also makes a contribution to the debate on the sequence of Trevisker Ware as the vessel, of gabbroic clay, has a band of incised chevron decoration. Lipid residue analysis showed traces of ruminant dairy fat. This paper examines the significance of unmounded burial sites in Cornwall and ssesses the importance of Early Bronze Age burials around Harlyn Bay which have produced an unusually wide range of artefacts.

Gathering Time presents the results of a major dating programme that re-writes the early Neolithic of Britain by more accurately dating enclosures, a phenomenon that first appeared in the early Neolithic: places of construction, labour, assembly, ritual and deposition. The project has combined hundreds of new radiocarbon dates with hundreds of existing dates, using a Bayesian statistical framework. Such formal chronological modelling is essential if significantly more precise and robust date estimates are to be achieved than those currently available from informal inspection of calibrated radiocarbon dates. The resulting dating project included over 35 enclosures - the largest study so far attempted in a Bayesian framework. This chapter establishes a new chronology for causewayed and related enclosures in south west Britain.

This study proposes that archaeology should adopt an integrated approach combining archaeology and folklore. As a case study, the legend of “The Devil‘s Footprints on pendle and the stones dropped by him on Apronful Hill” is considered in the context of both the folklore of Lancashire and also the archaeological evidence for rock cut footprints from calderstones and elsewhere in Northern Europe. A possible ancient connection between the two is proposed based upon a close reading of the evidence.

Hawkins 1964 proposed that Stonehenge (TPQ 3000 BCE) was designed as a " Neolithic Computer " to time eclipse danger periods. This paper updates the evidence that the constructions at Stonehenge deliberately incorporated astro-architectural features consistent with serving as an analog computing device to predict eclipses based on local horizon alignments to the solstices (+/- 24° declination) and major lunar standstills (+/-29° declination), as well as digital numerical artifacts designed into the architecture encoding luni-solar cycles, viz.: 19 Bluestone(s) Horseshoe :: 19 year Metonic Cycle; 56 Aubrey Hole(s) Circle and Avenue's gap :: 19 +18+19= 56 year Stonehenge Cycle (where 56/3 = 18.66 is an approximation of Halley's 18.61 year Saros Cycle); 29.5 Sarsen Circle uprights and 29Z & 30Y Holes, 29+30 = 59 Bluestone(s) Circle :: double month averaging the 29.5-day lunar synodic period. An additional numerical artifact is proposed, viz., the 5:12 ratio of the sides of the Station Stone Rectangle was selected from among an infinite number of possible rectangles precisely because each of its twin component 5:12:13 Pythagorean triangles uniquely delineates in space (Area = 30 Ratio Units sq.; Perimeter = 30 Ratio Units), i.e., the integer which most closely approximates in time the moon's synodic period (29.53  days).

In September 2011 archaeological investigations were carried out on a Bronze Age settlement at Bosiliack, near Lanyon in West Penwith. The project was undertaken to gain further information by excavating one of the roundhouses and to ascertain the effects of bracken rhizomes upon buried archaeological deposits. During the course of the project, eight 1m square test pits and a small structure, house 3, were excavated.
Excavation revealed the substantial impact of bracken but also led to the recovery of Middle Bronze Age pottery which suggests a second millennium cal BC date for the roundhouse. Later activity dating to the Middle Iron Age was revealed by two radiocarbon determinations.
In 1984 two roundhouses and an Early Bronze Age entrance grave were investigated in the same area.  These sites have been published elsewhere. However, a summary is included in this paper to provide a wider context for the 2011 excavations and to make the results more widely available.

A major landscaping project by York Museums Trust (YMT) intends to reclaim unused land between the York Art Gallery and Kings’ Manor area and the North West corner of the precinct of St. Mary’s Abbey as part of a wider scheme of
landscaping developments within the environs of the Museum Gardens, York. In advance of these developments, investigations to establish the nature and condition of
deposits immediately below a bowling green on the site were required. An archaeological watching brief undertaken by York Museums Trust on 30/09/2014 recorded the two trenches excavated as part of this scheme of works.

OASIS ID - yorkmuse1-193957

This article provides an edition, commentary and the provenance of an exemplar of Ashurnasirpal II’s Wall Inscription (RIMA 2 A.0.101.26) which is kept in the Australian Institute of Archaeology (Melbourne).  The inscription’s excavation number is ND 1121 and is now registered in the AIA with the catalogue number IA5.034

A rare Chalcolithic rolled-gold bead-like ornament dated to c. 2400–2200 cal. BC was found in association with sherds of early Beaker ware in an Early Bronze Age Collared Urn burial dated
to c. 1545–1450 cal. BC. The grave was located at Pendleton, Lancashire. This paper reports on the AMS radiocarbon dates for the burial context along with X-ray composition analysis of the
gold ornament, which shows the object had a high platinum content consistent with alluvial, placer, deposits possibly originating in Brittany, France rather than the British Isles. This
unparalleled rolled-gold ornament is compared to the corpus of British and French rolled-gold ornaments and contemporary goldwork and a provenance, manufacture and biography of the find is explored. Both curation and fragmentation are considered in the context of a dated Beaker ware assemblage from the local domestic site of Lower Brockholes, Preston, as well as existing corpora of Beaker and Collared Urn ware from the region.

This report covers the Iron Age (Paul Robinson) and Roman coins (Sam Moorhead) found at Urchfont, Wiltshire, and the recent survey work and excavations (David Roberts et al).  The site remains enigmatic, but a ritual element seems plausible. The Roman coin profile does have similarities to the Silbury region of Wiltshire.

Castle-an-Dinas is one of the largest and most impressive hillforts in Cornwall, situated on a visually distinctive hill with extensive views over the surrounding countryside. Excavations were undertaken over three seasons by Bernard Wailes in the 1960s but the results were never fully published. Since the 1990s the hillfort has been managed by the Cornwall Heritage Trust and following the return of the excavation archives to Cornwall the Trust commissioned work on the archive and preparation of a publication. As part of the project a selection of the archive drawings have been redrawn for publication and the surviving finds and samples analysed. Six radiocarbon determinations were obtained, of which two are medieval or later. Three fall in the Middle Iron Age, one of which could extend back into the Early Iron Age, and a fourth indicates the Late Iron Age. These dates are significant because they provide the first scientific dating from the hillfort and, aside from Killibury, are the only secure radiocarbon dates associated with a Cornish hillfort.

In 2010 an incised pebble was discovered amongst the archived flint assemblage from Trevose Head. The flint scatter, which was published in Cornish Archaeology in 1982, is of Mesolithic date and the find represents a significant addition to the small number of incised pebbles dating to this period in Cornwall. This note provides a description of the find and a brief outline of its background and context.

A well-preserved burial, discovered during peat clearing on Langwell Farm in Strath Oykel, Easter Ross, consisted of a stone cist that held the skeleton of a woman who had died in 2200–1960 cal BC. Although the cist contents were disturbed and partly removed before archaeological investigation took place, the burial rite can be interpreted to some extent. The woman, who died in her late 20s, had been wrapped in brown cattle hide, and wooden and woven objects were placed with her body. Periodic waterlogging created conditions that allowed the rare, partial preservation of the organic materials. Analysis of bone histology indicated that decay of the human remains had been arrested, either by deliberate mummification or by waterlogging. The cist had been sent into a low knoll on the valley floor and it may have been covered with a low cairn or barrow. This spot had been the site of a fire several hundred years earlier, and it may have been a node on a cross-country route linking east and west coasts in the Early Bronze Age. The use of animal hide suggests the creation and use of particular identities, linking the dead to ancestors and to powerful spiritual properties attributed to the natural world. The work was carried out for Historic Scotland under the Human Remains Call-off Contract.

To read full article:
http://archaeologydataservice.ac.uk/archiveDS/archiveDownload?t=arch-352-1/dissemination/pdf/vol_144/144_0065_0132.pdf

Abstract: The British Department of Antiquities (DOA) in Palestine intentionally constructed historical discontinuities to distance British rule from its Ottoman predecessor and tie it instead to earlier periods in the history of the land. To do this, however, the DOA had to unwittingly rely upon, and revalidate, political and cultural patterns laid by the Ottomans in the age of reforms. The article exposes this dynamic by delving into the written and visual record of the DOA in one of its first preservation projects in the " Tower of Ramleh. " The case of the tower as a multifaceted ruin shows that the " post-Ottoman " historical framing for the twentieth-century Middle East is not merely a matter of analytic investigation in hindsight, but a reality acknowledged and shaped by historical actors. It reveals thus far hidden agendas of the British rule in Palestine and enables the re-introduction of the history erased by it.

This chapter covers the period from the onset of the Neolithic (c 4000 cal BC) through to the end of the Early Bronze Age (c 1500 cal BC). During this period the first tangible signs of alteration to the landscape occur in the form of monuments, such as chambered tombs, and the end of it coincides with the construction of the last of the large ceremonial and funerary monuments. The end point marks the time when the landscape became transformed in an altogether different way by field walls, settlements and subsequently by enclosures.

Geophysical survey in advance of development at Penmayne, identified a series of curvilinear anomalies thought to represent late prehistoric settlement. Targeted evaluation trenching revealed three ring-gullies associated with roundhouses of probable Middle Iron Age date. Three smaller structures, superimposed upon the ring-gullies indicated a later phase of Iron Age settlement.

The work also discovered an Early Neolithic pit, associated with sherds of carinated bowl pottery and providing two radiocarbon dates in the mid fourth millennium cal BC. The investigation has added further information about the character of Early Neolithic occupation in north Cornwall and is particularly important for providing close dating for carinated bowl pottery in the south west.

A third determination of 380-190 cal BC came from a hearth associated with a small assemblage of broadly Middle Iron Age pottery. The archaeological recording has provided another late prehistoric unenclosed settlement site for comparison with others in lowland Cornwall and increases the number of open settlements dating to the Iron Age.

In December 2013 archaeological investigations were carried out at Quintrell Downs, near a large cropmark enclosure at Manuels, in advance of the construction of a housing estate. A few small pits were uncovered and were notable for containing selected stones. One pit contained some probable cremated human bone, which gave a radiocarbon determination in the period 997–844 cal BC. This paper considers the wider context of the pit and its significance and also discusses the undated pits, which are also likely to have prehistoric origins.

This paper focuses on the need to ensure that all archaeologists receive focused training and development opportunities from the start of their professional careers. The paper describes simple routes to provide relevant archaeological training for all site staff, within their day-to-day work environment in the working week. A ‘training hour’ is proposed as a mutual commitment to embed training within the working week and throughout the year, with shared ownership of training and a personal log linked to a scheme such as the BAJR skills passport. This paper is based on a presentation made at the Winchester University 2012 day conference ‘21st Century Archaeologists’.

Díaz-Andreu, Margarita 2004. Britain and the Other: the archaeology of imperialism. In Phillips, R. and Brocklehurst, H. (eds.), History, Identity & the Question of Britain.  New York, Palgrave: 227-241. SUMMARY: Britain and 'informal' imperialism within Europe; cultural imperialism beyond Europe: British archaeology in the Ottoman Empire; Colonial archaeology - India; Archaeology as the hegemonic discourse

This is an extract of my piece 'Metal Detector Finds' that was part of a joint paper. The full reference for the paper is: Hankinson, R., Lewis, J., Chapman, E., Toller, H., Webster, P., Owen, W., and Silvester, B. 2015. ‘Recent work in the environs of Brecon Gaer Roman fort’. Archaeologia Cambrensis 164, 89 - 130.

Over 450 finds are known to have been recovered by metal detectorists searching the fields surrounding the scheduled area at Brecon Gaer Roman fort. This paper summarises the metal detector finds and reassessed the dating and chronology of the site.

The exhibition of the Seahenge timber henge circle and interior excarnation platform (Holme I) is reviewed from the point of view of both Early Bronze Age prehistory and Museum Studies. Critical comments are made regarding the display of an internationally significant heritage monument.

In August 2017 Cornwall Archaeological Unit was commissioned by Qila Energy to undertake an archaeological watching brief at Penans Farm near Grampound, during the phase 2 groundworks associated with the construction of an anaerobic digester / gas injection plant. Two significant features were uncovered: a pit which produced a middle fourth millennium cal BC radiocarbon determination and, a tree throw hollow with prehistoric pottery and flint. A small quantity of mostly residual and unstratified flint from the site is of later Neolithic or Early Bronze Age date. The context of the Neolithic pit is reviewed in the light of radiocarbon dates from similar sites across Cornwall and Devon.

Geophysical survey coupled with trial excavation and cartographic analysis have revealed large but discrete regions in south Somerset and Dorset in which rectilinear field systems have been fossilised in the modern landscape. Excavation has shown these field systems to originate in the late prehistoric period and continue in use, albeit in a modified state, and with fluctuating intensity, into the modern era. This observation is of great significance for the early medieval period, because it suggests that there was relative stability in the rural economy from the Late Roman to the Late Saxon period. Land division and land holding may also have continued, until the establishment of manors and nucleated villages during the Late Saxon period.
Further analysis of communications and dispersed settlement patterns associated with these field systems has given rise to a new model for the distribution of dispersed settlement and the subdivision of land units within areas of rectilinear field systems.

The archaeological objective of the mission was to try to locate the wreck site of the HMS Romney, a fourth grade ship-of-the-line that sunk during the 1707 Royal Navy disaster, with the ultimate goal of having the site legally protected under the UK’s Protection of Wrecks Act 1973 and subject to further archaeological study.

In April 2013 archaeological investigations were carried out at Tresavean, near Lanner in advance of the construction of a housing estate. Ten pits were uncovered, a number of which had charcoal-rich fills. Although no artefacts were recovered, post-excavation analysis revealed that two of the pits contained cremated bone which is likely to be human.

Three samples were s_ubmitted for radiocarbon dating and these produced determinations which fell in the period 1600-1400 cal BC, at the transition between the Early and Middle Bronze Age. This paper discusses the wider context of the pits and offers an interpretation for their function.

Both David Clarke and Martin Wobst have had a significant impact on archaeological theory and practice through their critical insights into the nature of archaeological inquiry and their respective challenges to assumptions about what we know and how we know it. This paper examines the development and historical context of some of their ideas, and highlights how their notions of responsibility, self-awareness, and relevance influence or intersect with contemporary archaeological practice.

Archaeological monitoring during the redevelopment of playing fields at Penryn College, Cornwall, revealed activity dating to the Late Neolithic and to the Iron Age – Romano-British period. The Neolithic evidence took the form of pits containing Grooved Ware, the eighth occurrence of this pottery type to be found in Cornwall. Three radiocarbon dates were obtained, indicating activity in the period 2900–2400 cal BC. The investigations also revealed a Middle to Late Iron Age ditched rectilinear field system, over which a settlement of two curvilinear enclosures and several post-built structures developed between the Late Iron Age and the second century AD. A Romano-British toilet set, the only example found to date in Cornwall, appears to have been deposited in one of the structures as a votive object.