News: British Archaeology 117, March / April 2011

They look like scrap – archaeologist Adam Daubney's first thought was that they might be exploded munitions. But if the Portable Antiquities Scheme officer is right, they came from a once dramatic bronze sculpture which celebrated the authority of Rome, towering over the citizens of Lincoln nearly 2,000 years ago.

Found during a metal-detecting rally last year at North Carlton, 2 miles (3km) north of Lincoln, the pieces of cast bronze seem to come from a robed figure. Together with part of a leg from a life-sized bronze horse said to have been found in Lincoln before 1800, the fragments could be the remains of a statue of emperor Domitian (AD81–96), mounted on a horse in the fashion of the famous gilded bronze of Marcus Aurelius in Rome.

The detecting rally was held by Northern England Weekend Searchers last September. Daubney (Finds Liaison Officer for Lincolnshire), Helen Fowler (FLO for Cambridgeshire) and Sam Moorhead (national finds adviser, iron age and Roman coins), worked from the back of a car, recording and advising on discoveries. Steven Allenby, a detectorist who regularly reports his finds to Daubney, recognised the significance of the first piece of bronze. After showing it to the archaeologists, he returned to the field and encouraged other detectorists to seek and report similar items. Three people recovered a total of eight fragments, all apparently from the ploughsoil and from an area of around 10 square metres.

Details of the casting, says Daubney, are distinctively Roman, including the use of rectangular plates to effect joins. There may have been other bronze statues in Roman Lincoln, he says, but all the pieces could be from the same one; metallurgical analysis may help to prove this. Moorhead recorded many later Roman coins from the field, but there are otherwise no strong signs of Roman activity on the site.

Both the horse fragment (which consists of a foot and foreleg, raised in the style of Marcus Aurelius's horse) and the pieces from the field show signs of having been deliberately broken up. Lincoln probably became a colony city (colonia) during Domitian's reign. After his death, however, the emperor was subjected to a damnatio memoriae, a practice which involved erasing all trace of a disgraced individual. If the statue had not been destroyed then, its high scrap value would have ensured its fate in post-Roman times. There was an Anglo-Saxon cemetery and probable settlement near the site, and geophysics survey has revealed three possible pits in the area of the find. Daubney thinks the fragments could have come from an Anglo-Saxon smith's hoard: in which case, there might be many more still underground.

"This is why we want to record detectorists' finds", says Daubney. The bronzes have been given to the Collection (Lincoln Museum), and will be subjected to further study.

Heathrow amber could be major prestige item

After 12 years excavating the site of the UK's largest free-standing building at the world's fourth busiest airport – Heathrow Terminal 5 – you would expect a few discoveries. Yet amongst all the finds, one small piece of amber is exciting, and puzzling, archaeologists.

The fine orange plaque is distinguished by bored holes, each only 2.2mm across. It was first thought to be a "spacer plate", a type of bead found in the graves of wealthy early bronze age people in Wessex (1950–1700BC). But Alison Sheridan, head of early prehistory at National Museums Scotland, says the holes' arrangement is unique: she suggests they were decorative, visible in the translucent amber.

The object was probably originally triangular, and as one of a pair it would have formed a diamond or lozenge shape. The ensemble matches four early bronze age lozenge-shaped objects. Two of them, excavated in 1808, were found in a rich grave near Stonehenge under Bush Barrow (see feature, Jan/Feb 2009, no 104); the plates are gold, as is the lozenge from Clandon Barrow, Dorset, excavated in 1882. A unique jet lozenge, decorated with engraved lines, was found in a pit in 2007 at Carlton Colville, Suffolk (News, May/Jun 2007, no 94).

The bored holes in the amber piece would have replicated the patterns engraved on the gold plates. If Sheridan is right, when new it would have been one of the most precious things in Britain at the time: she calls it a "symbol of power". It had later been broken, and someone had tried to drill a hole through it to make a pendant.

It was found deep in a pit, though with no further diagnostic finds the pit's date and function remain unknown. Neither was there any adjacent settlement or burial which might have offered a context for the use or loss of the piece. Elsewhere on the site only two pits are firmly dated to the early bronze age. The amber's presence at Heathrow is a mystery.

Archaeologists excavated 75 hectares (185 acres) at Heathrow Airport between 1996 and 2007, one of the largest such investigations ever seen in Britain. Most of the work was undertaken by Framework Archaeology, a joint venture between Oxford Archaeology and Wessex Archaeology and a client to BAA.

A landscape was mapped evolving over 8,000 years, from the passage of Mesolithic hunter-gatherers to the tending of fields and settlements in later times. Among significant moments were the creation of a ceremonial centre, with up to five cursus monuments, around 3600–3300BC; radical change to field layouts in late Roman times; and early Anglo-Saxon settlement in land otherwise not heavily used. The project is described in Landscape Evolution in the Middle Thames Valley 2.

Britain in archaeology

A prehistoric gold coin found on Carn Brea, Cornwall, in 1749 has been acquired by the Royal Cornwall Museum in Truro, where it is now on display. The coin, thought to have been issued under the authority of Cassivellaunus and known technically as a rare Westerham type stater, was one of over 20 discovered near the iron age hillfort. The hoard was dispersed, and while five coins are in the Ashmolean Museum, Oxford, one in the British Museum and a seventh in a Swiss museum, it is thought several were melted down. The stater was noted in the sales list of a dealer in 1999, identified from its publication in 1769, and was bought by a dealer in London last year.

The historic environment (amendment) Scotland bill was passed by the Scottish government in January, introducing provisions identified by Historic Scotland and local government. The aim is to make it easier for authorities to implement the intentions of existing legislation that seeks to protect listed buildings and ancient monuments; the new act makes several changes to the Historic Buildings and Monuments Act 1953, the Ancient Monuments and Archaeological Areas Act 1979 and the Planning (Listed Buildings and Conservation Areas) (Scotland) Act 1997. Amendments include introducing statutory duties for ministers to compile and maintain inventories of gardens and designed landscapes, and of battlefields; and making listed battlefields a material consideration in judging a proposed development. Prospects for the heritage protection bill for England and Wales, published in 2008, remain uncertain.

In late December Sotheby's cancelled the planned sale of an exceptional Benin mask. The ivory, estimated to fetch £3.5m–4.5m, was to have been sold in London on February 17, with five other Benin artefacts. It is thought to depict Idia, the mother of the Oba (king) Esigie (c1504–1550), and is in the possession of descendants of a senior British officer who took part in the attack and looting of Benin city in 1897. The proposed sale was condemned by Nigeria.

A man took an Egyptian stone bust he had dug up in his garden in Derby to the BBC's Antiques Roadshow, where it was dated to 1700–1750BC and valued at £10,000. When told the bust should be in the British Museum, the finder, who wished not to be named, said he had already shown it to the museum.

A birch bark canoe, said to be one of the world's oldest, is being restored by National Maritime Museum Cornwall, before being returned to Canada. The British soldier Lt John Enys brought it back to his estate in Penryn after fighting in the American War of Independence in 1776; his diary records in detail encounters with First Nations canoeists on the St Lawrence River. The canoe, which was known to have been brought to England but came to light only when a descendant of Lt Enys contacted the museum, can be seen in Falmouth until September, and will go to the .Canadian Canoe Museum, Ontario.

Ireland's Heritage Council called a 47% cut to its budget "punitive" and "completely disproportionate". Chief executive Michael Starrett said the fall, which comes after a 30% cut in 2010, will "decimate the heritage sector". The council, he said, will have to cease supporting local community groups, non-governmental organisations, charities, individuals, small businesses and local authorities, endangering the survival of conservators, archaeologists, conservation architects, museum curators and other specialists. Among threatened schemes is the Irish Strategic Archaeological Research Programme. €2m in 2008–10, this created 25 research posts to work on archaeological information generated by the economic boom.

The National Piping Centre, Glasgow, is displaying a 17th-century chanter from a highland bagpipe owned by Iain Dall MacKay, known as the Blind Piper of Gairloch and regarded as one of the finest pipers that has ever lived. MacKay's grandson took the melody pipe to Nova Scotia when he emigrated in 1805, and his Canadian descendant Michael Sinclair donated it to National Museums Scotland. Nova Scotian bagpiping specialists complained that the chanter should have stayed in Canada. "It's part of the founding culture of this country", said one. "At the time of Confederation, Gaelic was the third most spoken language."

A metal detectorist has found two gun barrel fragments on the Towton battlefield, North Yorkshire. Analyses have identified gunpowder, and the pieces are probably from two handguns, being made from different metal alloys. Both guns are said to have exploded in the hands of the firers due to faulty manufacture. The notoriously bloody War of the Roses battle, fought in 1461, occurred when guns were starting to appear beside bows and arrows. The detectorist, working for the Towton Landscape Project, had previously found a lead ball shot on the field, this being the oldest known physical evidence for the use of guns in this way in Europe. In 1996 a mass grave was excavated at the field containing the brutally wounded bodies of 43 men.

Glastonbury's Holy Thorn Tree, said to have descended from one grown from a staff planted by Joseph of Arimathea on the Somerset hilltop and now a focus of Pagan worship, was badly vandalised in December; it was planted after the 1951 Festival of Britain. A Hollywood movie, Glastonbury: Isle of Light is to be released in 2012. Writer/producer Daniel McNicoll said, "This is a British story so I think it needs to be told through British landscape. We want ancient Glastonbury to be shot in places like the Isle of Man, Ireland, Wales, and Somerset."

Snowball fights broke out at a white midwinter Stonehenge, when over 2,000 people gathered to celebrate the year's shortest day. The morning before (the actual solstice day) cloud obscured a total eclipse of the moon at sunrise, when sun and moon were opposite each other, and unusually for Britain, both above the horizon. At Newgrange, Co Meath, heavy snow clouds on December 21 also prevented the rising sun from entering the "roof box" and shining down the passage of the neolithic tomb. Over 25,000 people from around the world had applied to witness the spectacle. The ten selected did get a glimpse of the eclipse.

Clay pipes made 1608–10 and recovered by archaeologists from a well at Jamestown, Virginia, were stamped with English names, including those of Sir Walter Raleigh; Robert Cecil, Lord Salisbury, King James's secretary of state; and Sir Walter Cope, a Virginia Company councillor and London antiquarian. The names had been set in type, said director of archaeology William Kelso, making this the earliest known example of printing in English America. The pipes themselves were partly modelled on Native American designs, able to hold more tobacco than English examples. Jamestown was the first permanent English settlement in the Americas.

The future of many local heritage services and museums is under discussion as authorities seek savings imposed by central government – and positions change daily. Aberdeenshire council plans to close small museums, including Stonehaven's Tolbooth Museum. Two seasonal museums are to be closed in South Lanarkshire. York Museums Trust has asked its 120 contracted staff to apply for voluntary redundancy and early retirement. Stoke-on-Trent city council is considering closing the 17th-century Ford Green Hall and Etruria Industrial Museum. Nottinghamshire county council is to make most of its archaeology, buildings and heritage staff redundant. Lincolnshire county council is to cease funding Church Farm Museum, Grantham Museum and Stamford Museum, making nine redundancies in its museum service. The Town House Museum, Kings Lynn, is to close. South Somerset district council is to close its museum in Yeovil, and put the collection in storage. Meanwhile Croydon council, having suggested it might close the Museum of Croydon and "delete" its art and heritage service, is negotiating with the Heritage Lottery Fund.

Archaeologists from the Thames Discovery Programme have found six timber piles in front of the riverside MI6 building, radiocarbon dated to 4790–4490BC; contemporary late Mesolithic flint tools lay nearby, including a fine tranchet axehead. What the piles were for is not known, but mesolithic structures are rare in Britain, and this is the oldest known group of such posts in the country. Research will continue at the site, which is close to the proposed Thames Tunnel sewage conduit. Supported by English Heritage, the Museum of London and Museum of London Archaeology, the TDP is recording archaeological and historical remains along London's foreshore.

A rare visard mask was found during renovation of a thick inner wall in a 16th century stone building in Daventry, Northamptonshire, and recorded by the Portable Antiquities Scheme. The black velvet outer face is lined with silk and strengthened inside with pressed paper; the three layers are stitched together by a black cotton thread. Below the centre of the mouth is a loose thread of white cotton, for attaching the black glass bead found with the mask: the wearer would have held the bead in her mouth. Such masks were worn to protect the skin from the sun, and became fashionable for both audience and players in theatres; Samuel Pepys bought one for his wife after seeing many at a play in London. Shoes and bottles were commonly hidden in houses, it its thought for protection against witchcraft, but this is the first visard to have been found in such a context.

The Department for Environment Food and Rural Affairs has announced the end of the Aggregates Levy Sustainability Fund. The fund was set up in 2002 to reduce or ameliorate the environmental impacts of aggregates extraction. Money raised through an industry tax was distributed by "delivery partners", the main ones being Waste and Resources Action Programme, Natural England and the Centre for Environment, Fisheries and Aquaculture Science, who between them handed out £35m during 2008–11. Over the same period English Heritage received £4.5m for historic environment and archaeological projects.

Archaeolink Prehistory Park, an award-winning visitor attraction featuring re-enactments and reconstructed buildings 45 minutes' drive from Aberdeen, has closed. In October the Tarbat Discovery Centre, winner of best project at the British Archaeology Awards 2010, announced its imminent closure pending an urgent appeal. Funds have now been raised to keep the centre open for at least another year, but this was described as "merely a temporary reprieve". The museum, which features the only excavated Pictish monastery at Portmahomack, Ross-shire, relies on subsidies and local authority funding.

Excavations for new military tattoo stands on Edinburgh Castle esplanade have revealed a 17th century boundary wall that once separated the town from the castle. Last year CFA Archaeology found the foundations of the artillery bastion known as the Spur, part of the outer defences dating to the 1540s. When the esplanade was created in 1753 as a military parade ground, large amounts of material were dumped immediately in front of the castle, covering up earlier buildings and softening the castle approach. Peter Yeoman, Historic Scotland, said the excavations brought home "just how majestic the castle would have appeared rising up from the rock face".

Phase 2

In the last Letters (Jan/Feb 2011, no 116), we published Melvyn P Heyes's view that a geophysics survey at Stonehenge appeared to be at the site of a prehistoric burial mound. The editor added a comment that "some archaeologists are wondering if the distinctive 'henge' feature – a ring of pits – is in fact the site of a 19th or 20th century fence". This was noted by the Mail on Sunday, which printed a report in which the editor is quoted saying that he was "in no doubt that this was a modern fence line". This has caused considerable distress to Vince Gaffney, director of research and knowledge transfer at the University of Birmingham, and his colleagues in the Stonehenge Hidden Landscapes Project which conducted the survey.

The editor wishes to make it clear that the intention was never to question the significance or quality of the geophysics survey, which at this particular monument and in the wider world heritage site is making important new contributions to knowledge. He has seen no evidence to support the theory that the post ring is modern and not prehistoric. He did not make the above comment quoted in the Mail on Sunday, and neither does he think it to be correct. He apologises for any unintended damage that may have been caused to the good reputation of archaeology at Birmingham University and their colleagues at the universities of Bradford and Vienna.

David Bird notes that the people in his photo at la Graufesenque (Names on terra sigillata, Jan/Feb 2011, no 116, p34) are but a few of the many who have worked in the Black Hand Gang at a variety of sites. Lawrence Lai and colleagues' survey of the 1941 Hong Kong defences known as the Gin Drinker's Line (feature, Jul/Aug 2008, no 101) continues, and is reported in detail in Property Management 27 (2009), 16–41.

I am calling on the Egyptian army to head instantly to the Egyptian Museum. There is a fire right next to it in the party headquarters. As Egypt marches against its government in late January, film director Khaled Youssef appeals for help on the Al Arabiya television channel. There is damage in the museum holding Tutankhamun's treasures, but it, the New Library of Alexandria and Luxor Museum are protected by a spontaneous alliance of citizens, police and military.

Issue 117

Mar / Apr 2011

Contents

news

on the web

requiem

my archaeology

spoilheap

letters

features

10 big questions archaeology must answer

THE BIG DIG: Winchester

Return to La Cotte

Dear Lord Chancellor

The one with archaeological evidence to support it

The Varmints Show

news

From plinth to field: was this emperor's fate?

Heathrow amber could be major prestige item

Britain in archaeology

Phase 2

CBA web:

British Archaeology

CBA Briefing

CBA homepage