News: British Archaeology 118, May / June 2011

British Archaeology has learnt that after reviewing the 1857 Burial Act, the Ministry of Justice has decided that archaeologists in England and Wales will not routinely be required to rebury all excavated human remains, as has been the case since 2008. Newly issued licences stipulate the retention of remains in suitable facilities after immediate study is completed.

"This is great news for archaeology", commented Duncan Sayer, lecturer in archaeology at the University of Central Lancashire. Last October he helped British Archaeology launch a campaign requesting re-interpretation of the law, which had been drafted long before now standard excavation practices had become established (feature Jan/Feb 2011, no 116). In February, 40 archaeology professors wrote to Kenneth Clarke, secretary of state for justice, seeking long-term retention of remains (Mar/Apr 2011, no 117). That wish appears to have been granted. "We are very grateful to the ministry for listening to our case", added Sayer, "and also to the many archaeologists who supported it".

The decision to change the process was taken in February. Attention now focuses on resolving details of interpretation and practice. Jonathan Djanogly, under-secretary of state for justice, wrote to Sayer noting that the department had "come to the conclusion that there is room to apply the provisions more flexibly than previously seemed to be the case". Djanogly expressed confidence "that a more satisfactory way forward can be found which will allow the retention of human remains in appropriate circumstances… I have directed any new licence applications to be considered on this more flexible basis".

Oxford Archaeology is one of the first excavating practices to see the effect of this change. Louise Loe, head of heritage burial services at OA, said the previous system had generated "a huge amount of admin, applying for licence extensions and keeping tabs on different cases". In March a request for an extension of the reburial deadline on an existing license was granted with the condition that the remains should be passed to a museum. A new licence stipulated that human remains should be "retained in accordance with the requirements of the county archaeologist", who was responsible for that particular excavation.

Mike Parker Pearson, professor of archaeology at University of Sheffield, and like Sayer an acknowledged expert on the study of human remains, said, "Everyone in archaeology will be delighted that internationally important remains will now be available for long-term study". However, he questioned what should now happen to remains reinterred since the present system was introduced. One example is a bronze age cremation burial recovered at Stratton St Margaret, near Swindon, by Bernard Phillips and Mogs Boon on an archaeological watching brief during building construction. The remains were reburied at the site. "These should now be re-excavated", commented Parker Pearson, "so a fuller study can be conducted".

Kent plough find challenges farming history

"This is the object I have been waiting for all my life", says Peter Fowler, former professor of archaeology at Newcastle University. When the object in question is a piece of plough, and the speaker has devoted much of his career to understanding Britain's farming history, the significance of the find is clear. For this is how he describes an iron coulter excavated last summer at Lyminge, Kent.

The coulter, a bar mounted like a knife to cut through the soil ahead of a share and mouldboard, was lying on the base of an Anglo-Saxon sunken-floored building. Excavation director Gabor Thomas says there is no doubt the coulter was in a sealed context. In the deposit above it was a large collection of artefacts that include many "type fossils" – jewellery, glass, pins, beads and pottery dated from grave assemblages elsewhere in Kent to the first half of the seventh century AD; articulated animal remains will be radiocarbon dated to confirm the age. Such a rich group of objects is itself unusual for an Anglo-Saxon building. Yet Thomas says a second sunken-floored structure on the site contained an even bigger assemblage: the discovery is unique.

The coulter's significance lies in its date and its function. The simple ard is efficient at breaking light ground. By contrast, the "heavy plough" breaks and turns the earth, and pulled by a team of up to eight oxen can cope with conditions beyond an ard's capacity. The Lyminge coulter weighs 6kg – Thomas describes it as "a substantial piece of metal" – and it would have been part of a valuable piece of farm machinery. Thomas thinks the coulter had been laid on the floor as a votive offering when the building was abandoned.

The heavy plough was known in Roman Britain. It is thought to have fallen out of use after Rome left in ad410, and its later re-appearance is commonly held to be a key factor in the growth of medieval farming. Prehistoric-style ards are illustrated in manuscripts throughout Saxon times, and years of excavation at numerous Anglo-Saxon settlements had seemed to confirm the heavy plough's absence until depictions first appear in the later 10th century.

Thomas, lecturer in early medieval archaeology at Reading University, initiated excavations at Lyminge to understand how its origins related to a known Anglo-Saxon monastic centre there. In 2008–09 they found C8th–9th occupation, and last year the unexpected separate focus dating from the seventh century. What the coulter was doing there at that time is an open question – or even whether it was made in Britain. But it is set to open up a new debate about the history of the British landscape.

On 21 March, the National Heritage Memorial Fund announced substantial grants that allowed museums to acquire two recent metal-detected finds. Four iron age gold torcs from Stirlingshire, which include half an ornate example of southern French origin – the first found in Britain – and another of Mediterranean-style braided gold not seen before, were bought by National Museum Scotland for £462,000, with £154,000 from the NHMF, £100,000 from the Art Fund and £85,000 from the Scottish Government, the rest coming from NMS. Dating between the first and third centuries BC, the torcs were dug up in 2009 by David Booth. The NHMF also gave the Museum of Somerset £294,026 towards its purchase of the Frome hoard of Roman coins, found by Dave Crisp last year (News, Sep/Oct 2010, no 114). Further contributions including £50,250 from the Art Fund, £20,000 each from the MLA/V&A Purchase Grant Fund and the Headley Trust, £13,657 from public donations and £10,000 from the Somerset Archaeological and Natural History Society, raised the total to cover the full £320,250 purchase price and £105,000 conservation costs.

In March. archaeologists claimed that a structure thought to be Roman in origin is in fact Britain's first iron age road. Excavated in 2009 at Tarmac's Bayston Hill quarry, Shropshire, the road was previously known from low earthworks and cropmarks, and a small dig which appeared to confirm its Roman date. However, Tim Malim, who directed the new excavation for SLR environmental consultancy, said OSL dating had shown there to be an 82% chance that a sequence of three building stages topped with cobbles ended before the Roman invasion in AD43. Parts of the 400m of exposed road were very well preserved, especially where the route crossed a boggy area. Here a brushwood elder mat at the base was radiocarbon dated to the second century BC; Malim suggests a large post dated to 1500BC marked an earlier trackway on the same route. He defended the claim against scepticism from some Roman archaeologists, saying the dating was based on a sequence of samples, two separate techniques and well-tried mathematical modelling.

Research published in online journal PLoS Pathogens supports the theory that the Black Death (1347–53), was caused by the flea- and rat-borne Yersinia pestis. DNA and protein signatures specific for the bacterium were identified in human skeletons from mass graves in northern, central and southern Europe, including a cemetery in Hereford, where genotypes identical to some found near Narbonne support historical evidence that the plague reached England from France.

Historian and MP for Stoke-on-Trent Central Tristram Hunt called for the "metropolitan, club-class government" to charge entrance fees for London museums, proceeds from which could aid provincial museums, such as the Potteries Museum and Art Gallery, Stoke-on-Trent. In February the DCMS/Wolfson Museums and Galleries Improvement Fund announced the availability of £8m for 2011–15, as capital funding for museums and galleries in England.

A 15th century wooden crucifix that survived a chapel fire (with charred feet) at the Battle of Waterloo in 1815 and was described in Victor Hugo's novel Les Misérables, has been stolen from the battlefield near Brussels. Thieves dismantled and then restored stonework to gain access to a commemorative chapel housing the cross.

Archaeologists have criticised plans by University of Glasgow to merge the departments of history and archaeology. Restructuring last year saw archaeology become one of six subjects in a School of Humanities; Glasgow University Archaeological Research Division (GUARD) was the seventh, until let loose as an independent company on January 1. Critics say the merger will weaken archaeology's independence, and savings will come only from cutting staff.

While clear felling a Norway Spruce plantation in Puddletown Forest, near Dorchester, Dorset, the Forestry Commission uncovered substantial remains of a Roman road of 26m total width, comprising a cobbled street and outer droving roads for livestock. The road, thought to be part of the first century AD Ackling Dyke, is to be preserved and signed.

In February classics professor Mary Beard blogged that the Museum of London was to "make most of the senior pre-modern curators... redundant", thought to involve the loss of the prehistory and Roman curators, and the freezing of the post of medieval curator. Meanwhile Museum of London Archaeology announced the launch of MetroMOLA, to extend its archaeological business across the UK and overseas from offices in Birmingham, Manchester and Portsmouth.

A pilot for a national scheme to combat heritage crime has been launched in Gloucestershire, Wiltshire and Somerset. The project addresses damage to historic sites, artefact theft (including diving at protected shipwrecks), removing items from historic buildings and structures, and unlawful alteration or demolition of listed buildings. The new heritage police force will co-ordinate existing officers in the various constabularies, with chief inspector Mark Harrison seconded from Kent Police advising English Heritage.

In March, the London Natural History Museum said 138 items from the Torres Strait Islands would be the subject of the largest Australian repatriation of human remains to date. No details have been released, but the museum said it hopes the remains will be accessible for study, and has offered a placement for a Torres Strait islander. Most of the material was removed in the 19th century from a sacred cave on Pulu Island.

Up to 40% of the 85 skulls from the neolithic "Tomb of the Eagles" at Isbister, Orkney, show traumatic injuries, said archaeologist David Lawrence. Some injuries had healed, while many were the apparent cause of death. The 5,000-year-old tomb takes it name from the many remains of white-tailed sea eagles found in excavation, though there is debate as to how they came to be there.

The Institute for Archaeologists published figures which show a fall of 7.6% to 5,827 people in UK archaeological employment in the six months to 1 January 2011. The fall is even more dramatic in the commercial field, where 13.1% lost their jobs since July 2010. "The overwhelming majority of businesses", said the IFA, expect things to get worse in 2011, and to see some archaeological practices cease trading.

On No Smoking Day the Museum of London publicised the effects of smoking seen in remains from the cemetery of St Mary and St Michael, Whitechapel (open 1843–54). Among 705 individuals, males exhibited a high prevalence of teeth wear and staining indicative of pipe smoking. Smokers had lower life expectancy and higher levels of skeletal evidence for lung disease. The research is described by Don Walker and Michael Henderson in Post-Medieval Archaeology 44 (2010).

The Midlands Sunday Mercury reported that the financial beneficiaries of the Staffordshire hoard, finder Terry Herbert and landowner Fred Johnson, remain estranged, accusing each other of obsession with the £3.3m award. "It's a real shame Fred won't let me on the fields anymore", said Herbert, "because I am convinced there is more to be found. The archaeologists would not listen to me, even though I found artefacts 100 yards from where they investigated."

English Heritage and the Heritage Lottery Fund announced £15.7m for urgent work to 154 Grade I and II* listed places of worship in England, under a joint repair scheme. In a separate initiative the HLF gave £7.4m for improvement work at the medieval monastery at Torre Abbey, Torbay, the University Church of St Mary the Virgin, Oxford and the Harris Museum and Art Gallery, Preston, home to the skeleton of a 10,000-year-old hunted elk.

Phase 2

Martyn Barber described how Lt Sharpe photographed Stonehenge from a balloon in 1906 (Jul/Aug 2006, no 89), thought to be the first archaeological air photography in Britain; he was able to add a third print to the two then known. Now he has found two more in the National Archives: associated data show the summer flight, not September as thought, was well planned.

Several stories featured in British Archaeology have come to full (or fuller) publication in academic journals. Nedham, Lawson and Woodward's penetrating analysis of Bush Barrow (Jan/Feb 2009, no 104) is in the Antiquaries Journal 90 (2010), along with Everill's portrayal of the men who actually dug it in 1808 (Sep/Oct 2009, no 108). In the same volume is a preliminary description of the recovery of the Staffordshire hoard (Nov/Dec 2009, no 109), which is discussed at greater length in Antiquity no 327 (March 2011), where it is called the "Staffordshire (Ogley Hay)" hoard. Agreed explanation is distant for this exceptional find, two options being that it was "part of the proceeds of ambush and robbery of an escort travelling along the road", or a votive deposit by an unidentified building; late in the seventh century is the currently favoured date.

In the same Antiquity is further analysis of Paul Jacobsthal's work on Celtic art by Crawford and Ulmschneider (Nov/Dec 2010, no 115). Proceedings of the Prehistoric Society 76 (2010) contains reports by Carter, Hunter and Smith on the iron age chariot burial from Newbridge, Edinburgh (News, Apr 2001, no 58); by Chapman, Hewson and Watters on the neolithic ritual complex at Catholme (Mar/Apr 2009, no 105); and by Steve Burrow on the Bryn Celli Ddu neolithic tomb, Anglesey (News, Jul/Aug 2006, no 89). In the last issue, question 10 of the cover feature should have read, "Who are the British?" We never said it was easy.

In popular culture, archaeology's star has rarely risen so high. But politicians behave as if it were unloved... It is further evidence of Westminster's distance from the national bloodstream.
Jonathan Jones comments on cuts to the Stonehenge project, Guardian June 2010. English Heritage has announced that building at the new visitor site will start in the year of the 2012 Olympics.

Issue 118

May / June 2011

Contents

news

on the web

letters

features

THE BIG DIG: Gough's Cave, Somerset

6 Threatened Sites

Overthrowing Egypt's Past

news

Human remains to be retained, pending details

Kent plough find challenges farming history

Phase 2

CBA web:

British Archaeology

CBA Briefing

CBA homepage