Issue 110

Jan / Feb 2010

Contents

news

Burnt mound theory tested to perfection

Dig find proves flowers placed in bronze age graves

UK's first complete Roman lantern found in Suffolk

Research continues as Saxon hoard is valued at £3.3m

in the press

in brief & phase 2

features

Newhenge: Latest discoveries and interpretations from the Stonehenge Riverside Project team

Dig the beat: Exploring pop music from an archaeological perspective, including additional online content

THE BIG DIG Mellor: A hillfort in the garden: This long-running research excavation near Stockport, Greater Manchester, is now ready for publication

The Peat Men from Clonycavan and Oldcroghan: Findings of the Bog Bodies Research Project at the National Museum of Ireland, with Bibliography

letters

your views and responses

on the web

Caroline Wickham-Jones looks at archaeological gifts

Dan Pett summarises the website set-up and technologies for the Staffordshire Hoard

spoilheap

features

Dig the Beat

Most archaeologists like music, and some musicians like archaeology. But what happens when popular music making is examined from an archaeological perspective? Sara Cohen, Brett Lashua and John Schofield don their hard hats and headphones to find out.

When archaeologists get together they talk about archaeology. When that subject dries up the conversation often turns to music – generally popular and contemporary music of diverse genres: rock, blues, folk, indie or house, depending on their age and cultural situation; what bands they like; what gigs and festivals they have been to. Quite a few archaeologists are accomplished musicians and perform. Equally, some professional musicians are attracted to archaeology. Julian Cope and Bill Wyman have written about prehistoric sites; Billy Bragg collects Romano-British coins. And the sites themselves have featured in the music, from Pink Floyd playing in the Roman amphitheatre at Pompeii to Hawkwind at Stonehenge.

These are interesting connections which hint at something deeper. But do the worlds of archaeology and popular music have anything further in common? Is there, for example, justification for an archaeological study of popular music-making? Or is "heritage" the only common ground? In a project based at the Institute of Popular Music at the University of Liverpool, funded by the Arts and Humanities Research Council, and conducted in partnership with English Heritage and Liverpool Museums, we have attempted to explore more fully the links and connections between these very different worlds.

Digging for music

Some ten years ago, the idea of landscape character was emerging in archaeology: the view that places have distinctive characteristics, the result of historic processes which could be analysed, mapped, and used to inform future management of a region or place. One question concerned manifestations of character. As well as the persistence of ancient field patterns, might character not also be evident in other cultural forms: in literature, music and the visual arts?

To explore this potential Schofield was then trawling shelves in an unfamiliar section of a university library. He found a book edited by Martin Stokes, Ethnicity, Identity & Music (Berg, 1994), to which Cohen had contributed a chapter called "Identity, place and the Liverpool sound". Schofield recalls reading how the Manchester band Joy Division had captured the "alienated, terrible glee of a decayed city", and how "Bristol's character, particularly its pace, does seem to have influenced the music produced there". Schofield and Cohen met to discuss these perceived connections between character and music. These observations and conversations led to the project we describe here.

Archaeology and music-making have long overlapped. Ethnomusicology has included archaeological examinations of ancient instruments, while the acoustic properties of ancient sites have also now been studied. In terms of heritage, Jimi Hendrix has an English Heritage blue plaque, and the homes of Beatles are owned and managed by the National Trust. But our project is a significant departure from these more conventional perspectives.

Ours is not archaeology in the sense of excavating the homes of contemporary musicians, or examining the material culture of abandoned recording studios or record shops. Here an archaeological perspective involves understanding what some will consider a familiar world through the objects, places and landscape that are encountered in musicians' everyday lives. Heritage also is broadly defined. Questions here concern the influence of place on the music made there, and vice versa, as well as how people engage with their own personal heritage: their closely familiar environs.

The musicians we have spoken with may not describe this as "heritage" or "archaeology" – these are our words for it. But we are talking about the same thing: the places where musicians live and perform – places that matter to them and some which do not; the places they sing about; the places that influence the composition of the music they make, and the objects that represent that creative process. Some readers may think this is stretching the definitions of archaeology and heritage too far. We would disagree. While our academic backgrounds differ – from archaeology, anthropology through cultural studies – for us all this is a project about people, place, materiality and landscape. Should that not also be the focus of any good archaeological investigation?

The rock musician

Click above for larger image (126KB)

The map featured here was created for us by the lead singer-songwriter of a Liverpool rock band. It may be read as the journey of his career, highlighting venues where he got his start (MacMillans), or the gig when he knew he'd "made it" as a musician (at the Royal Court Theatre) – both near the centre of the map. It charts some (now legendary) Liverpool rock venues of the 1980s and 90s, many of which have since closed, moved, or disappeared completely.

While drawing, the singer-songwriter walked us through his map and memories of the city's transforming musical landscape. As we chatted about these changes, he suddenly realised he had forgotten to map a venue called the Picket. Established in 1984 on Hardman Street, the Picket started as a live music venue and music information service, later incorporating a recording studio with equipment donated by Pete Townshend of the Who. In the 1980s and 90s, the Picket became a key venue for local rock musicians, hosting performances by the La's, Rain and countless others. The singer described the Picket as "absolutely central" to his story as a musician, emphasising that "out of all of these venues, I come out of the Picket. That's my heritage, the Picket".

Here the act of creating a map provided an aid to memory, a prompt to remember the Picket, as it no longer occupies the premises where this singer has fondly remembered and mapped it. In order to understand the histories of musicians, their experiences of performing music in the changing city, we need to understand the histories of the venues and places in which performances take place. > Back

Mapping Liverpool

In order to explore the relationships between music and place, considering how music influences place and in turn how place influences music, we have been conducting research with groups of musicians in Liverpool, particularly those involved with rock and hip hop music. We are tracing the journeys and routes of these musicians as they engage in regular music-making activities. We are also exploring the real and imagined sites connected to their music-making, including buildings and neighbourhoods. We want to know how musicians inhabit and experience such sites and how they interpret them, associating them with particular ideas, emotions and memories.

We have been interviewing and hanging out with musicians, as well as consulting archives for relevant information on local music-making. In addition, we have been making use of maps as a research tool. This has involved collecting maps and showing them to musicians but also getting musicians to draw their own musical memory maps. We have considered the spatial, geometric patterns that emerge from these maps and what they might tell us about music, landscape and environment – the positioning and clustering of music sites, for example, as well as musical trails, boundaries, edges and zones.

Liverpool is a fascinating and appropriate setting for this research. Popular music has played a significant role in the construction of Liverpool histories and identities, while there have been rapid and dramatic changes to the city's landscape brought about by de-industrialisation and successive and intensive regeneration programmes. Moreover, Liverpool's status as world heritage site and European Capital of Culture 2008, in addition to its 800th anniversary in 2007, have accelerated elements of the regeneration process and heightened reflection and debate upon the meaning, significance and ownership of "culture"; local character and distinctiveness; and how culture and creativity shape, and are shaped by, specific urban environments.

The city is internationally known for its popular music culture, particularly the Beatles and the so-called Merseybeat scene and sound of the 1960s; the post-punk scene of the late 1970s and early 1980s associated with bands such as Echo and the Bunnymen and the Teardrop Explodes; and the dance or rave scene of the late 1980s and early 1990s associated with the Cream superclub. However, whilst Liverpool is most commonly identified with pop, rock and contemporary dance music, it has been a setting for diverse music scenes and sounds. They include a country music scene that thrived so well in the 1950s and 1960s that the city was labelled the Nashville of the north, and a contemporary and burgeoning hip hop and urban music scene.

Liverpool is made up of many diverse neighbourhoods. The port brought Liverpool great wealth, but it depended upon a large and unskilled workforce, and brought into the city immigrants often fleeing from hardship elsewhere. These circumstances shaped the geography of the city, producing striking spatial divisions between the wealthy and the poor, distinctive patterns of local settlement, and strong neighbourhood identities. Music has contributed in various ways to the character of such neighbourhoods. Here these relationships between music, place and urban change are illustrated through two examples drawn from our research (see map boxes ¹ and ²).

Journeys in the 'hood

These two maps, drawn by musicians – one involved with rock, one with hip hop – tell us something about musicians' interactions with physical urban environments, and their perspectives – about what matters to musicians and why, and what makes places distinctive and gives them value. They point to music's contribution to the characterisation of cities, to local musicscapes that are lived by musicians and created and recreated through their music practices, journeys and stories. Yet whilst emphasising the agency of musicians, and how they shape and transform physical environments and make them meaningful, it is important to consider how musicians' interaction with those environments is in turn shaped and constrained.

Click above for larger image (30KB)

The hip hop musician

A map drawn by a local hip hop artist named Pyro further illustrates the importance of place. It shows his Liverpool neighbourhood of Wavertree, which he has renamed, as a pun, Shake-a-bush. He has clearly identified the Pivvy ("Bingo", top right) along the border of his neighbourhood. The Pavilion (or Pivvy) opened in 1908 as the last of several new music halls built outside the city centre in Liverpool's fast-expanding suburbs. It later became a variety theatre and the Beatles performed there once, in 1962. After a fire part of the building was reconstructed, and it is now a Bingo hall.

Just beyond it lies Toxteth, or Liverpool 8 (L8), a different post code from Pyro's turf in Wavertree (L15). In UK hip hop and grime music scenes, post codes and home territories matter; gang wars are fought over these boundaries. Pyro told us of the palpable web of invisible borders that criss-cross the city whereby "you just know" when you've crossed a line. The Pivvy represents a small part of the Beatles story in Liverpool, and an older, bygone era of music hall; and to young musicians like Pyro, it marks a dangerous edge.

In Pyro's words: ^ Back

"Down here, there is not… a lot of light. So when people are down, like, if you fall off track from when you are young, you're pretty much, ain't no help, that you're pretty much done. That's probably universal to a lot of slums and to a lot of places, but it's just, for me, growing up in Liverpool, it's just, it's just f***ed."

The maps suggest, for example, ways in which musicians enact, through their music practices, landscapes influenced by the conventions of rock and hip hop. Unlike the maps drawn by musicians involved with rock music, which primarily focus upon public performance venues, Pyro's map, like those of other hip hop artists we have interviewed, shows a landscape populated with fellow hip hop musicians and DJs and their domestic homes ("cribs"), and local gathering spots such as the football pitch and corner shop. Other sites – the city centre, record shop, and college – are worlds apart. In hip hop music much emphasis has been placed upon the concept of "the ghetto" and "the 'hood" (ie neighbourhood), spatial concepts that delimit an "arena of experience".

The maps and interviews also suggest ways in which urban musicscapes are influenced by the organisation of urban space within the wider political economy. In doing so, they draw attention to relations of power and raise questions about cultural diversity and distinctiveness, social access and inclusion. Pyro's map, for example, which he has labelled his "bubble", raises questions about opportunities for local hip hop musicians to journey to and perform live in venues across the city. Without these opportunities Pyro's music will most likely stay in the bubble. In fact, the regulation, licensing and policing of live music performance in Liverpool have worked to restrict particular musical styles, including hip hop, to particular city neighbourhoods, and exclude them from others.

Meanwhile, the map of the city centre rock venues tells a story about the impact of de-industrialisation and redevelopment on urban musicscapes, highlighting sites of dereliction, zoning policies and the privatisation and gentrification of urban space. The Picket performance venue, for example, almost forgotten and left off the map, had been threatened with closure during the early 2000s after the building it occupied was put up for sale. Following a successful, high-profile campaign it was eventually relocated to a "cultural quarter" known as the Independent's District. In Liverpool, as in other cities across Europe and beyond, culture and creativity have been used as tools for urban renewal – hence Liverpool celebrated its status as European Capital of Culture 2008 against a backdrop of rapid physical change and regeneration as buildings were torn down and demolished, built and rebuilt.

Both maps thus point to the creation of musical landscapes through music-making and the movements or journeys, memories and stories involved. They provoke reflection on how music-making influences and characterises the physical urban environment, but is in turn influenced by that environment and by the organisation and re-organisation of urban space within the wider political economy.

The beat goes on

The research we have conducted on musicians and music-making has covered a range of different sites, from inner city shopping precincts to the river Mersey. Some of this research was drawn upon for an exhibition on popular music in Liverpool that ran from July 2008 until November 2009. The exhibition was produced through collaboration between National Museums Liverpool and the Institute of Popular Music and was staged at the Liverpool World Museum. As part of the exhibition and accompanying online resource, we shared some of our findings through maps produced on the basis of our research. They included digital maps of local music sites that incorporated text and interview material, audio files and related visual and moving images.

The exhibition also presented an eclectic assemblage of artefacts which together represent popular musicmaking in Liverpool: from the music itself, to posters, ticket stubs, records, album sleeves and artwork, clothing, marketing and advertising products, recording gear and instruments as well as personal effects. Places also were prominent: recording studios, record shops, live music venues, places featured in marketing and album artwork, and places associated with the performer, or lyrical content. Some of these places remain unaltered, some have changed and some are abandoned, demolished or beyond recognition. It may seem extraordinary that so much stuff has survived, retained by collectors, musicians, fans and enthusiasts, and that so many places are fondly remembered. But to archaeologists this comes as no surprise. "Stuff" is important, just as the music and music-makers are important. Stuff also endures. And place and landscape are where these tangible and intangible traces of musicmaking come together.

Sara Cohen is professor at the University of Liverpool where she is director of the Institute of Popular Music and of this project; having worked on this project at the University of Liverpool, Brett Lashua is now lecturer at the Carnegie Faculty of Sport and Education at Leeds Metropolitan University; John Schofield works for English Heritage's Characterisation Team. See the Beat Goes Online website.

Made in Liverpool

Paul Jones of the band Voo, recording in the University of Liverpool Studio in 2008. Voo feature among the downloadable tracks. [credit] INSTITUTE OF POPULAR MUSIC

A project soundtrack has been created specially for British Archaeology readers, with an eclectic playlist of some of the music encountered in Liverpool during the Popular Musicscapes project (2007–09). Tracks can be downloaded free of charge. Some of the tracks were recorded at the School of Music Studios, University of Liverpool, through collaboration between Lashua and participating musicians (mainly rock and hip hop). Additional tracks were acquired through historical and archival research, including on Liverpool's pub rock venues of the 1970s. This era represents a period of Merseyside music-making that is often overlooked, between the feverish 60s Merseybeat era and the advent of post-punk in the city from the late 70s.

Songs on the playlist include KOF's Listen, which describes the lasting effects of slavery on the city's Black youth; Alun Parry's My granddad was a docker, which portrays the city's shifting labour and class struggles; and Ian Prowse's Does this train stop on Merseyside?, which asks the listener to remember those places and events which have made Liverpool what it is widely thought to be. Above all, these songs invite listeners to ask how cities and urban environments are characterised through processes of musical composition and performance and the genre conventions involved, and in turn, to reflect upon how music is characterised by the places and environments within which it is created. Or you could just enjoy.

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