Issue 83

July/August

Contents

news

Welsh cauldron finds offer rare insights

Broch builders house-proud, not warlike

Reindeer hunter preceded Canary fans

Rock art find in rare context

New light on Prittlewell "prince" grave

In Brief

features

From Universal Bond to Public Free-For-All
100 years at stonehenge: They may not have built it, but Druids ruled the last century

When Rome invaded: Gerald Grainge considers the Channel crossing

Freedom Fighter - or Tale for Romans?
The real Boudica: Richard Hingley looks for the native terrorist leader

Finding the Way
In Hadrian's footsteps: English Heritage report on the threat to the Roman wall

on the web

Recommended websites

letters

Views and Rsponses

CBA news

Headlines from the CBA office.

ISSN 1357-4442

Editor Mike Pitts

letters

Fresh airing - Star Letter

by Gill Hovell

As one of the "unqualified enthusiasts" scouring the Yorkshire landscape in the Community Archaeology Projects or caps ("Not just batter puddings", Mar/Apr), I would like to add a further endorsement of this broadening of archaeological horizons.

The varied nature of these guided groups, as shown in Kevin Cale and Ian Pearce's report, is such that wideranging skills gleaned through lifetimes spent in the "outside world" are brought into play, giving the archaeology new and exciting dimensions. Some bring academic skills while others have impressive it skills, lecturing and business knowhow, local and rural knowledge, etc. The list is endless.

By taking this blend and making it work for archaeology a breath of fresh air is injected into the discipline: the CAPS abound with fresh, open-eyed pioneers whose enthusiasm is unfettered by stereotyped attitudes. Your In View article in the same issue highlighted a crisis in presenting archaeology to the outside world – the dynamism and dedication of groups like the caps could be an essential factor in archaeology's future in the public domain.

Their enthusiasm is already having an "outreach" effect. Several Yorkshire CAPS are involved in taking archaeology into local primary school classrooms – with breathtaking results. Proof perhaps that there is no-one so eager to preach to the masses as the converted!

The amateur archaeologists are also sufficiently educated to continue work begun by the CAPS, taking it further and deeper than the grants enable. This is energy which established archaeology could channel in enterprising ways.

So, perhaps it is with the help of these creative, well-informed and committed "amateurs" that the good news of archaeology can be spread in the broadcasting and education sectors. Don't marginalise them – Use them and give archaeology a fresh airing to the hungry masses.

Gill Hovell, Birstwith, North Yorks

Paying for the past

by Peter Davies

The page headline "The decline in funding represents a failure by archaeologists to muster political support" was well placed next to the letter "Time to campaign" (Letters, May/Jun). [It was from that letter. Ed]

Perhaps the many eminent signatories to that letter (and others) might have spent their time better doing less archaeology in the past decade or so and more time teaching their students the rudiments of the arts of archaeological politics (NOT – I hasten to add – the vacuous internecine politics of the various archaeological theories!). Money doesn't grow on trees. What there is has to be extracted often by devious means. This is not done with a trowel – or by Reports published ten years after an excavation! One is, possibly, reminded of the Ivory Towers of Academe! To paraphrase, man does not live by Planning Policy Guidance Note 16 (PPG16) alone.

Peter Davies, PeterWDavies01@aol.com

by Bruce Watson

Following from the ongoing debate in British Archaeology about the future level of funding for English Heritage. Tessa Jowell (Secretary of State, Department for Culture, Media and Sport) appears to have forgotten two very important statistics.

1. A recent mori poll revealed that 87% of the population of England thought that public funding should be used to preserve the nation's heritage and that our heritage also played an important part in the cultural life of the nation (Power of Place, English Heritage 2000).

2. In 2001, only 59% of the population voted in the general election, a figure which clearly shows what % of the population has any interest in politics.

Perhaps Tessa Jowell would care to comment on the stark discrepancy between these two figures.

Bruce Watson, Senior Archaeologist, Museum of London Archaeology Service (MoLAS)

Important TV

by Hilary Daniels

At the risk of boring everyone to death about this, it seems that Philippe Planel is the one who missed the point (Letters, May/Jun). I love having archaeology on TV. I am delighted that TV is bringing archaeology to the widest possible audience. I make no objection to an (occasional) intelligent discussion in British Archaeology of how TV can bridge the gap between archaeologists and the rest – the last issue's In view was a useful nod in that direction. I recognise that TV is important. More important to me than to most – I work in TV. But I still question whether, given the limitations of a bimonthly magazine schedule, this is the best use of two pages. (Dare I suggest it is a cheap way of filling space?)

Hilary Daniels, Mere, Wilts

Rock and roll

Priscilla Gadzinski

I looked at the picture of the Fylingdales stone from all sides (Letters, May/Jun) and decided:

1. It was a board game layout. The only person to play it with the inventor got angry because there were so many rules and only the inventor could remember them that he turned the rock over and stalked away.

2. It is the advertising sign for a rockcarving artist. "Would you like straight lines? How about lines made of little dots? Big triangles, little triangles, triangles with lines in them? Triangles with one dot? How about big wavy triangles?" As it seemed everybody was into circles nowadays he turned his sign over and left town.

Priscilla Gadzinski, White River Jct, Vermont

Poetic prose

Fred Mustill

Hey – lay off the Professor! ("Intricate themes and magic harmonies", May/Jun). I grew up in a village near WG Hoskins' Oxfordshire home in the 50s. It was not until I read his Making of the English Landscape that our landscape was explained in any meaningful way.

As for his "sentimental bias which limits our confidence in his judgement" we should remember that the 50s were a watershed in a long, long continuum of rural and industrial life. Traditional village society was terminally withered by the time the English Elm was doing likewise and our old industrial base has now followed suit.

The social continuum described by Hoskins is now "historical heritage". Even the British car industry is now ripe for the attention of the archaeologist.

Hoskins' "moral" message was no more than direct observation and his poetic prose was a great relief from dry academic style. "Ethnic minority" was not even in the dictionary.

I am not sure what H would have thought about our historical and archaeological studies of WWII airfields but I do not see how he could have found fault with it.

Hoskins lived under the flight path of the "obscene atom bombers" at Upper Heyford airfield. The noise was awesome, windows vibrated and all teaching in the village schools ceased (I loved them). Air photos show a pattern of Romano British fields under the later enclosures. Now, H would have liked that.

Fred Mustill, Newmill, Penzance

Finding Boats

John Coates

The decision by the National Maritime Museum to abandon its Archaeological Research Centre and its archaeological gallery (and indeed anything earlier than about AD1500!) was a terrible blow to infant nautical archaeology in this country (Books, Mar/Apr). It grieved Ted Wright, the discoverer of the Ferriby ships in 1937, very greatly particularly as he was then (or had recently been) a trustee of the museum. Ahalf-scale model of Ted's reconstruction of Ferriby 1, as published by him in 1990, has now been built with private funds and tested successfully by Edwin Gifford. It took Ted's death to make that happen! But the most-published reconstruction of Ferriby still remains a somewhat implausible flat bottomed thing clung to against the weight of evidence in favour of Ted's version.

You are quite right to infer that something more seaworthy than the Dover boat carried goods by sea in the bronze age. The only candidate for which there is evidence is Ted's reconstruction of Ferriby which, over 70 years since their discovery, has never attracted the interest and thought which they have deserved. It is all very strange. However, it now seems possible that a full-scale reconstruction will be built at Hull and tested to show something more convincing about bronze age seafaring in nw Europe. I amhoping to have a more general article on this subject in The Mariner's Mirror next February.

John Coates, Bath

by Samantha Glasswell

Sean McGrail (Letters, May/Jun) was asking for the whereabouts of boats formerly at the National Maritime Museum.

I can help with one. The Anglo-Saxon log boat, dating to around 460AD, from Mattersey Thorpe in Nottinghamshire will soon be coming home. At present it is with the Mary Rose Trust undergoing conservation. When this is complete it will return to Nottinghamshire to take pride of place at Bassetlaw Museum in Retford. We are very excited about having such an important find where local people will have access to it, and we wish to promote its national significance. When the boat arrives in the autumn we will let you all know.

Samantha Glasswell, curator Bassetlaw Museum

by Arthur Percival

To clear up any misunderstanding, the Graveney Boat (Spoilheap Mar/Apr, Letters May/Jun) has not yet been dispersed by the National Maritime Museum. We are just starting to see whether (as we hope) it can come to Faversham.

Arthur Percival, honorary director Faversham Society

Complex Ships

Valerie Fenwick

For the sake of your readers for whom Dr John Haywood's erudition commands respect, it is necessary to correct the unwarranted wild aspersions he cast on nautical archaeologists generally (Letters, May/Jun).

More adequately than any amount of literary evidence available to historians, the waterlogged timber studied by nautical archaeologists demonstrates the complexity and diversity of ship construction in northern Europe from as early as the bronze age. We certainly do not view it "as a linear process culminating in the Viking longship"!

"Clinker" ships built entirely of overlapping planks merely represented one form of construction in northern Europe, and like sail-propulsion these were in use centuries before monkish chroniclers biased the written records. Lest Dr Haywood should claim that this is new or novel nautical archaeological opinion I would suggest that he look again at Chapter 8 of my report on the Anglo-Saxon Graveney Boat (British Archaeological Reports 53) published as long ago as 1978.

Valerie Fenwick, Netley Abbey

Red tails

by Gerald Rix

Avoiding the temptation to get into the philosophical arguments concerning fox hunting ("The extreme sport of hedge-laying", Mar/Apr) I cannot let one error of fact pass.

The wearing of a red coat (Hunting Pink) by the senior hunt employees and members is not a "distinctive dress to emphasise a social gap". It is a means for other hunt followers to be able to see the hunt leaders at a distance in the countryside and join them and follow the hunt discipline. The choice of red for this function continues today amongst those still hunting as well as hunters and shooters in North America and elsewhere.

It would need a social historian to explain why the Glasgow "Tobacco Barons" of the late 18th century adopted red tail coats as a virtual uniform although the migration of the dress code to Scottish regions by the new whisky owners of the early 19th century is more understandable.

Gerald Rix, rix@ctacom.fr

Happy readers (and writers)

Yet another splendid magazine/Looks great and is full of interesting (and worrying) things/You did a great job/Great new look... I like the new saucy attitude/A cracker issue... must dash for interview with cbs news!

Paul Woodfield/Andrea Gáldy/William Foot/Kellam Throgmorton/Peter Fowler

We welcome letters from readers. They may be emailed to Mike Pitts the Editor at editor@britarch.ac.uk or faxed to 01904 671384. They may be edited.

CBA web:

British Archaeology

CBA Briefing

Fieldwork
Conferences
Noticeboard
Courses & lectures
CBA Network
Grants & awards

CBA homepage