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

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Headlines from the CBA office.

ISSN 1357-4442

Editor Mike Pitts

news

Welsh cauldron finds offer rare insights

A statutory investigation into a possible treasure find in a Welsh field has turned into an important research excavation, promising insights into a key time in British prehistory. Parts of at least nine cauldrons and bowls (late bronze age/early iron age, 800–600BC) and other rare metalwork already make Llanmaes (Vale of Glamorgan) unique: but house remains and refuse deposits with huge quantities of pig bones promise a rare opportunity to see how such metal items were consumed on a settlement. The original finds were not declared treasure.

In February 2003, Steve McGrory and Anton Jones reported an unusual collection of prehistoric metalwork via the Portable Antiquities Scheme in Wales. Objects included "Armorican" socketed axes from north-west France, "Sompting" axes, horse-related fittings, a handled ladle, and bowl and cauldron fragments, including parts of ringhandled bowls not seen before in Britain or Europe.

Mark Lodwick, portable antiquities co-ordinator for Wales, and Adam Gwilt, curator at the Department of Archaeology and Numismatics, National Museums and Galleries of Wales, visited the field north-east of Llantwit Major. They reopened some of the backfilled detector pits, but were unable to say which objects had come from which pit, so a geophysics survey and excavation were necessary.

It appeared the objects had not been hoarded, and were thus not legally "treasure". However the results were significant enough to merit further survey and excavation last summer. Post holes of a roundhouse were found, with part of a cauldron inside one, and two oval pits rich with late bronze age or earliest iron age pottery; a large red deer antler sealing one pit may have been ritually placed. The house was beneath a black silty deposit the archaeologists say is a midden or rubbish layer some 20m by 15m across, in which animal bones were well preserved, at least 80% of which are from pigs.

The famous Llyn Fawr hoard, found during reservoir construction in the Mid South Wales Valleys in 1911 and 1913, contained two complete bronze cauldrons. Their presence on settlements, however, is very rare. Excavation will resume this summer.

Broch buildershouse-proud, not warlike

Brochs, round stone towers up to 30m across and 15m high built in the few centuries around the Roman invasion, are unique to Scotland. Archaeologists have written much about the who, what, where and when. "But nobody", says professional dry stone dyker Irwin Campbell, "has really shown how they were built".

Campbell, a former meat salesman and paratrooper, set out to fill this gap by building a broch at Strathyre in the Loch Lomond and Trossachs National Park. With 20 fellow wallers, he spent five days constructing a 5m high segment.

The prehistoric architects, he says, passed on good building practices. They worked to levels, covered their joints, had stone going back into the wall for stability, used cover bands, through bands and lintels and were able to move very large stones. Flat stones were sloped in the thickness of the wall to expel rainwater to the exterior.

As Campbell's wall rose, they found it necessary to work on top, using the internal staircase for access. He thinks the inner scarcement would also have been a useful constructional device, for supporting a timber platform.

After monitoring the experiment, he says it would take 2,500 tons of stone and a year to complete an 8m high broch – or with time to collect the stone, two to three years. "They would have needed social stability", he says, suggesting brochs were not watch towers or forts, but "ostentatious signs of status and wealth".

"I think it's fantastic", says Beverly Ballin Smith, who directed excavations at Howe broch, Orkney, "because nobody's ever tried to construct one". This summer's plan is to build the entrance passage and guard cell. A DVD documents the project: see www.brochbuild.co.uk.

Reindeer hunters preceded Canary fans

A hunting camp dating from the end of the ice age has been found at Norwich City Football Club's ground at Carrow Road. Distinctive long flint blades lay where they had been made around 11,500BC, in a cold landscape swept by herds of reindeer and wild horse.

Norwich City's Carrow Road facilities have been substantially improved in recent years. Before the development of the new Jarrold Stand, the Norfolk Archaeological Unit excavated under the demolished old South Stand in 2003, examining an area of 2,400 sq metres. Finds analysis is at an early stage, but project manager David Adams says the site "is potentially of national importance".

The discovery was made when archaeologists reached the underlying sand. At this point, says Adams, "someone realised we had an in situ flint scatter in what we would normally call sterile natural". Some 300 pieces of flint were found in mint condition, lying in two groups. Most were waste products, but there were also a few cores, from which the pieces had been struck, and some distinctive "bruised blades", named after the crushed appearance of their edges.

Around 50 "Long Blade" sites of this type are known in the UK, mainly in eastern England. Roger Jacobi, a British Museum specialist in the period, says the blades, 12cm or more long, are like hunting knives, while the bruised blades (known in France as lames mâchurées) may have been for shaping sandstone hammers. The camp is likely to have been one of several on sand and gravel point bars in the River Wensum valley, where people could have found the flint they needed to hunt migrating game (though no bone survived on the site). At that time Britain was part of the continent, with a cold, dry climate and sparse vegetation. It is hoped to obtain a precise date using optically stimulated luminescence (OSL).

Norwich City is known throughout football for friendliness and the enthusiastic support of board member Delia Smith. Athird attribute can now be added: their ground is the only one to seat fans above a camp where, some 13,000 years ago, people prepared in near Arctic conditions to go forth and hunt reindeer.

Rock art find in rare context

Excavation at Traprain Law, East Lothian, has revealed ancient rock art carved into the volcanic hill beneath a later house. Significant art was found when the hill was quarried in the 1930s; casts were made, but the art itself was destroyed. It is very rare for such work to be found in a sealed context.

Traprain Law, an iconic hill-top site settled for millennia, is perhaps best known for a spectacular hoard of Roman silverware, dating from around AD400 and excavated in 1919. The hill is between Hadrian's Wall and the Antonine Wall. The local tribe, the Votadini, allied themselves with Rome and enjoyed classical patronage and goods until the collapse of the empire at the end of the 4th century ("Great sites: Traprain Law", February 2001).

However, poorly-recorded excavations early in the 20th century had revealed much earlier activity, and threats to the site from rabbits and fire inspired new work in 1999–2001 by the Traprain Law Summit Project. A devastating fire in 2003, which burnt underground for over two weeks, led to further assessment and rescue excavation in 2003–4, directed by Fraser Hunter (National Museums of Scotland) and Eiméar Nelis and Ian Armit (Queen's University, Belfast).

Last season finds included a hoard of four late bronze age socketed axes (1200–700BC) and the new art. Queens's postgraduate student Margaret McCartney had already been working with Armit on the 1930s casts in the National Museums of Scotland (NMS). Two styles are present in this art, found on the north-east side of the hill: complex "cup and rings", succeeded by unique linear motifs, also abstract, reminiscent of designs on bronze age pottery.

The new panel, on the cliff edge on the south side of the hill, is thought to be neolithic, the earlier of the two art phases, with a lozenge-shape typical of carved stones in Irish and Scottish tombs. The motifs are heavily worn or were shallow carved. A prehistoric or Roman era stone house was built over the panel. McCartney says the occupants "would have been aware of the art", which was near the hearth.

The excavations, sponsored by Historic Scotland and the NMS, are reported in the current issue of Past, the Prehistoric Society's newsletter.

New light on Prittlewell "prince" grave

The Essex grave, said to be one of the wealthiest of its day, was emptied in late 2003. Excavation of the Prittlewell man's treasures continues in the laboratory, however, as the fragile Anglo-Saxon objects are conserved and painstakingly removed from blocks of soil. The latest find, perhaps the last significant item to emerge in a total of well over 100, is a rare iron lamp.

Found in April by Museum of London Archaeological Services conservator Liz Goodman, the lamp was buried in the soil lifted with a large copper alloy cauldron that had been placed on its side against the chamber wall, at the foot of the coffin. The bowl of the lamp, around 15cm across, was lying the right way up with the remains of a broken stem flat beneath it. The lamp may have fallen from the top of the iron standard, found close by in the corner of the grave; alternatively it could have been free-standing, its feet still in soil to be examined.

Two similar Anglo-Saxon iron lamps have previously been found in Britain, both in rich graves of about the same date as Prittlewell, c600-650AD. The famous Sutton Hoo grave, Suffolk, contained a short-stemmed lamp with tripod base, while that from Broomfield, Essex, has a longer stem and four feet.

The Sutton Hoo lamp contained a hardened lump of beeswax. Excavation director Ian Blair says the Prittlewell bowl contains a "yellow concretion" that may also be beeswax.

The Prittlewell grave caused an international sensation when news of its discovery was announced early in 2004. Later, British Archaeology (May 2004) revealed that a silver spoon inscribed with Latin letters and a cross had been found during laboratory work.The original investigation was conducted in advance of proposed road alterations, which have now been approved. Further discoveries could occur in the field, as the rest of the site may be excavated later this year.

A Time Team special on the dig at Prittlewell was broadcast on Channel 4 on June 20.

In brief

Iron age midden

Evaluation ahead of a proposed bypass for Westbury, Wilts, has identified a large early iron age midden (700–450BC) comparable to those recently identified at All Cannings Cross (BA Jan 2004) and Chisenbury in the same county. Though smaller than the other two, at 3,800 sq metres, the Westbury midden has the same deep layer of refuse-darkened soil containing pottery and animal bones, with a probable underlying chalk platform. Following investigation by Wessex Archaeology for rps Planning, Transport and Environment, the bypass route has been moved to avoid the midden centre, though if construction occurs excavation at the edge and a contemporary enclosure will be necessary. Wiltshire County Council assistant archaeologist Sue Farr says the project shows the "proven benefits of conducting evaluation work at an early stage".

Ice age camp

Elsewhere in Wiltshire, revised plans have been submitted for the Harnham Relief Road south of Salisbury, after evaluation showed the original route would have destroyed much of an important 300,000-year-old early human camp (BA Jan 2004). The site is a unique case of well-preserved ice age animal bones and fresh flint tools found together on the chalk, close to the famous Little Woodbury iron age settlement. Helena Cave-Penney, Wiltshire County Council assistant archaeologist, says a new route has been agreed that avoids most of the archaeology, though excavation will be needed. "We'll get a lot more understanding about the site", she adds. Apublic inquiry is expected.

Square pot puzzle

A farmer reported finding an unusual early bronze age square pot during ploughing at St Ola, Orkney, leading to excavation by Nick Card of the Orkney Archaeological Trust with the University of Manchester (whose Colin Richards happened to be there at the time). They uncovered a cist burial in a c1700BC cemetery linked to ancient settlement at nearby Crossiecrown. The pot was at the centre of a new type of cairn, with a cremation burial laid on a flat stone slab. Aring of stones surrounded this, and the whole was covered in a 10m diameter rubble core.

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