Issue 107

July / August 2009

Contents

news

Scottish dig has big surprise in the post

Urine to navel fluff: the first complete witch bottle

Celtic tankard adds value to Welsh treasure

In the press

In Brief & Phase 2

features

on the web

Recommended websites
Websites of univeristy archaeology departments and a community site for Digging Vindolanda.

letters

your views and responses

CBA Correspondent

Some recent projects benefiting from Challenge Funding.

my archaeology

Simon McBurney is a writer and actor; his father, archaeologist Charles

ISSN 1357-4442

Editor Mike Pitts

news

News is written by Mike Pitts

Scottish dig has big surprise in the post

Some 3,200 years ago, on a valley side overlooking the river Thurso in Caithness, people erected a tall pine post to forgotten beliefs. What makes this event unique in our knowledge of prehistoric Britain is that the timber, probably a tree trunk, was already over 1,000 years old. Excavation directors Richard Bradley and Hugo Lamdin-Whymark suggest the pine had been pulled from a bog, and was known to be ancient. When the post was later uprooted, its base snapped off and was preserved by the wet ground.

This was but one feature at a "hengiform" monument at Pullyhour. Common in Scotland, these small earthworks are likened to the great neolithic henges by their circular banks and interior ditches, but very few have been excavated (Time Team had no result at one beside Loch Migdale, near Bonar Bridge, in 2003).

Pullyhour, at least, seems to be part of a later and different bronze age tradition. The earthwork began as a circular enclosure with a water-filled internal ditch some time after 1620–1450BC. It was altered around 1320–1120BC, when the pine post (itself dated to 2580–2340BC) was erected just outside the single, southern entrance. The site was later "decommissioned": the post was taken out and its packing stones smashed, the entrance blocked with stones and walling stones thrown into the ditch.

Bradley, archaeology professor at Reading University, says that while cremation burial was practised at some analogous sites, the space at Pullyhour was too small for ceremonies. He suggests that what mattered was the view out, towards a major salmon river, a burial cairn and, around midsummer, the rising full moon.

The site today is in waste ground in a bog, so to avoid summer midges the dig took place at Easter – when it snowed.

Urine to navel fluff: the first complete witch bottle

In 2004, Greenwich workmen found a sealed jug about 1.5m below ground. It was a bartmann or bellarmine – a salt-glazed jar made in the Netherlands or Germany, stamped with the face of Cardinal Roberto Bellarmino (1542–1621). When the jug was shaken it splashed and rattled, and the Greenwich Maritime Trust asked retired chemist Alan Massey to study it. Massey has told British Archaeology what he and colleagues discovered: a unique insight into 17th century witchcraft beliefs.

Immediate X-ray revealed pins and nails stuck in the neck, consistent with the jug having been buried upsidedown. Computed tomography scans at Liverpool University showed it to be half-filled with liquid. It was clear that this was a witch bottle. Burial of vessels holding personal items, typically from someone suffering an illness and believing themselves persecuted by a witch, was a common practice. Until now, however, the best example, a glass bottle buried after 1720 in Reigate, Surrey, had been opened years before it could be examined (also by Massey).

Liquid was drawn through the cork of the Greenwich bottle with a long-needled syringe. Complex chemical studies that included recording a proton nuclear magnetic resonance spectrum, and then gas chromatography/mass spectrometry analysis of organic acids by Richard Cole (Leicester Royal Infirmary) and inorganic analysis by Helen Taylor (British Geological Survey), allow Massey to say that the liquid "is unequivocally human urine". Past claims for urine in witch bottles have rested solely on inorganic material.

Cole identified cotinine, a metabolite of nicotine: the urine had been passed by a smoker (probably of a clay pipe). Acting on a hunch, Massey tested a black solid in the urine, and showed it to be iron sulphide. "It is virtually certain", he says, that sulphur in the jar had reacted with the iron nails. In other words, the bottle contained brimstone, recalling the passage in Revelations when "the beast" and "the false prophet" were "cast alive into a lake of fire burning with brimstone".

Scientists then removed the cork, which disintegrated, and the rest of the contents: 12 iron nails, eight brass pins (one very severely corroded), quantities of hair, a piece of leather pierced by a bent nail, which "might just be described as heart-like" (paralleling cloth hearts found in other witch bottles), 10 fingernail parings (not from a manual worker, but a person "of some social standing") and what could be navel fluff.

At the Old Bailey in 1682 a plaintiff, believing his wife afflicted by witchcraft, told how a Spitalfields apothecary had advised him to "take a quart of your Wive's urine, the paring of her Nails, some of her Hair, and such like, and boyl them well in a Pipkin". He might instead have buried a bottle upside-down in a select place such as under a fireplace or doorway. Urine, fingernails and hair of the "victim" were believed to draw the spells, tormenting or even killing the witch.

Massey and co-authors Brian Hoggard and Graham Morgan are now seeking an archaeological journal for publication of their full report.

Celtic tankard adds value to Welsh treasure

In December 2007 Craig Mills dug up a tankard and two bronze bowls and a strainer while metal-detecting near Langstone, Newport. The bowls are decorated in late La Tène style, suggesting they were made cAD25–60 and buried when the Roman army marched against the Silures tribe between AD47 and 75. The yew-wood tankard with bronze fittings is one of half a dozen surviving whole tankards of this type from Britain and Ireland; it dates from AD50–350 and could be contemporary with the bowls. Metal objects buried together are deemed treasure if prehistoric (in Wales, before AD78). The bowls were pronounced treasure on March 19, but found on its own 13m away, the tankard was not.

Mills informed the National Roman Legion Museum in Caerleon of his find. Early in 2008 Mark Lodwick of the Welsh Portable Antiquities Scheme coordinated the excavation of two test pits at the site, revealing that tankard and bowls were from the same peaty layer, though they could have been buried on separate occasions.

Then a boggy area at the edge of a standing lake, the location is typical for late iron age sacrificial deposits. Recent geophysical survey suggests that a possible Roman villa identified a few years ago on a gravel island near the site may be accompanied by a prehistoric or Roman temple.

With a flimsy handle but holding 4 pints, the tankard would have needed two hands to lift when full. The communal drinking implied is more native than Roman in style. Appropriately, says Adam Gwilt, curator of the iron age collections, National Museum Wales, the conservation process will involve immersing it in alcohol.

In the press

Gardaí got more than they expected when they recovered stolen goods following an investigation into the break-in at a pharmacy safe containing drugs, cosmetics and antique jewellery in Strokestown, Co Roscommon. Nestling in the haul was a gold lunula and two gold sun discs. National Museum of Ireland director Dr Patrick Wallace said, "I would consider this to be a very important discovery". 8 Apr

George Hedges, who died on 10 March aged 57, said he was most proud of overturning a death sentence. As well as being a Hollywood lawyer, he was also an archaeologist who distinguished himself for the part he played in the discovery of the lost city of Ubar on the Arabian peninsula. 30 Apr.

Eco warriors who set up camp close to the Bronze Age Nine Ladies' Stone Circle to prevent quarrying have moved on after almost a decade. The protesters came from across the country to occupy old gritstone quarries at Lees Cross and Endcliffe, on Stanton Moor, near Bakewell, and were part of a successful campaign to stop them being reopened. The quarry operators gave up the old planning permissions in exchange for an extension at another, less-sensitive site. In January, the Government formally revoked the 1950s permissions. 29 Apr.

A judge has ordered Druid protester King Arthur Pendragon to dismantle his camp at Stonehenge. Wiltshire Council said he was blocking a public byway, and with no facilities for rubbish disposal and the prospect of more Druids joining the picket there was every chance of "serious damage" to the World Heritage Site. Surrounded by colourfully-clad supporters, Mr Pendragon declared: "I have no intention whatsoever of moving at this stage. All my human rights and all my religious rights have been ignored." 27 Apr.

New book series

Working on his PhD at the Ulster Museum, Belfast, Peter Woodman found mesolithic flint axes and microliths from Mount Sandel. He started digging there in 1973, and such was the quality of the evidence, put in a total of 52 weeks of excavation, finding some of the first identified houses of that era and Ireland's oldest habitation site. That and other achievements were celebrated on May 30, when the Prehistoric Society presented Woodman, now emeritus professor of archaeology at University College Cork, with a book. From Bann Flakes to Bushmills is the first in a new series of research papers published by the society with Oxbow Books.

The Romans came

Assisted by funding from Renaissance Yorkshire, Craven Museum & Gallery celebrated Roman heritage with a free public day on April 5. The Romans are coming... brought together community outreach projects organised by the museum and Archaeology in Action. Visitors could talk to Ulfric a Roman weapon smith, make Roman pottery with Graham Tailor, and taste Roman foods. Archaeology in Action, owned by Hannah Russ and David Griffiths, won a Bradford University business award in February for its archaeological events, workshops and classes for schools.

In brief

Saving maritime archives

Securing a Future for Maritime Archaeological Archives is a project investigating UK archives and collections, confronting the fact that there are few museums able to curate material from the marine and intertidal zone. The project is keen to hear from holders of such archives, with records and artefacts relating to shipwrecks, aircraft, submerged sites and landscapes, or anything else found below high water mark. It is supported by English Heritage, Historic Scotland, the Royal Commission for the Ancient and Historic Monuments of Scotland and the Society of Museum Archaeologists, and is being managed by The Hampshire & Wight Trust for Maritime Archaeology, the Institute for Archaeologists and the Archaeology Data Service. A questionnaire and further information can be found online.

Eccentric hero dies

John Michell, author of books on megaliths, flying saucers, feng-shui and sacred geometry – anything that remained unorthodox – died in April aged 76. Michell's new age fame (musician Julian Cope called him "one of my long-time heroes [and] megalithic adventurer") stemmed from his second book, The View Over Atlantis (1969), in which he revived the forgotten theories of Alfred Watkins and ley lines. But he also offered a perceptive critique of the traditional archaeology of the 50s and 60s, relishing bouts with professors who could seem over-possessive of the past. At the front of Megalithomania (1982), he teasingly quoted Glyn Daniel's words, "The problem in archaeology is when to stop laughing".

HLF £ms could help the past

In April the Heritage Lottery Fund announced first-round passes totalling £7.9m through its landscape partnership programme, for six rural regeneration and landscape conservation schemes. Windermere (Cumbria), the Llyn Peninsula (north Wales) and Magnesian Limestone landscapes in Derbyshire, Nottinghamshire and County Durham amongst them, the projects all deal with areas rich in archaeology and heritage, with extensive opportunities for research, conservation and public engagement. See also Culture24 News.

Phase 2

Archaeological websites have been busy. Among them, Digital Digging (On the web, Sep/Oct 2008) now features Martin Green's work on Cranborne Chase, Dorset. The Society of Antiquaries of Scotland (On the web, May/Jun 2008) has added videos of Trevor Watkins delivering the latest Rhind lectures. And field books in the John Wymer archive at the ADS (feature, May/Jun 2008) have been scanned, and their texts, drawings, watercolours and photos can be viewed.

I wondered how a Newsnight byline for the Mar/Apr issue could ever be matched, but BA's sophisticated media office spread the word again. Scottish journalists enjoyed the story of the Biggar field group's and Alan Saville's discovery of upper palaeolithic flints, so much so that a request for fieldworkers led to Howburn Farm coming "under siege". The Times (April 10) seemed to miss the point rather, reporting that the efforts of early settlers from "warmer, southern areas of Europe were thwarted by glaciation, which suggests that the country's reputation overseas for poor weather has changed little over the years". BA was name-checked with the story on the Radio 4 Today Programme.

In the House of Lords on May 5, during the debate on the marine and coastal access bill, Lord Bridges described the May/Jun issue as "compelling reading", and strongly recommended it to ministers.

Apologies for errors noted in the last issue, over the spelling of Meare, Somerset (News: not to be confused with Mere, Wilts), and the origin of the fossil Lucy in Ethiopia (Spoilheap: not Kenya as stated).

The elusive air photographer at Catholme (feature Mar/Apr and Letters May/Jun) was Graham Clewes.

Stone Age man was fitter, faster and leaner than his modern counterpart, and he lived a healthier and far more natural life, before dieing at the age of 19.
Dr Hilary Edmund advocates a stone age diet of meat, fish, fruit and raw vegetables on the satirical Sunday Supplement, Radio 4 February 4 2004

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