Issue 86

January/February 2006

Contents

news

Flight of the eagles

Unearthing the ancestral rabbit

Counting the treasure

Tools for learning

Round and about in historic Leominster

In Brief

features

700,000 years old found in Suffolk
Full report from the scientists who found the first Northern Europeans.

Easter Island statues explained
Brett Shepardson takes issue with stories of doom - thanks to Edwardian women.

50 years on
Celebrating industrial archaeology, but what is it? Michael Nevell knows.

Evacuees Christmas and other war art
Soldiers who draw: English Heritage report on a new study of old graffiti.

on the web

Recommended websites

letters

Views and responses

CBA News

Headlines from the CBA office.

ISSN 1357-4442

Editor Mike Pitts

letters

Digger power

by Charles Abdy

The review of Martin Biddle's book on Nonsuch Palace by Paul Stamper (Books, Nov/Dec) provides a useful account of the publication. However, his remark that the excavation was undertaken by Oxbridge students requires comment. In Martin Biddle's own words, "The work on the site through the brilliant summer of 1959 was in the hands of a group of supervisors, then mostly like the Director, undergraduates at Cambridge or Oxford". Most of the actual digging was carried out by a large force of local volunteers: it has been estimated that some 500 must have worked on the site for varying periods, the daily attendances averaging 80, over the 12 week period of the excavation. John Dent, the then borough librarian of Epsom and Ewell, played a major part in organising and running the project. His book, The Quest for Nonsuch, first published in 1962 [2nd ed Hutchinson 1970, ISBN 0091051401], provides a great deal of information on the palace and the excavation. In the absence of the official report it has been an invaluable source of reference.

The camaraderie among the volunteer diggers led to the setting up of a group that eventually became Nonsuch Antiquarian Society and is now known as Epsom & Ewell History & Archaeology Society.

Charles Abdy, secretary Epsom & Ewell History & Archaeology Society

Unfenced past

by Ged Cassell

The article Feel only glass (Nov/Dec) reinforced the widely-held view that Stonehenge is a place where people go to be disappointed but I also thought the students' visit to White Horse Hill was a missed opportunity. Treating the horse itself simply as "a site" to visit is surely missing the point: it is just one feature in an astonishingly rich archaeological landscape. If you're prepared to spend a little time here, and you don't mind walking, you'll find the area extremely rewarding.

The view over the Vale from the White Horse, taking in Dragon Hill and the broad sweep of the Manger, is both beautiful and powerfully evocative. Jessica Reynolds describes it as "natural", "untouched" and "England as it has always been". In fact it is the result of thousands of years of human activity and neither Jessica's "prehistoric native people" nor Jane Austen's contemporaries would recognise it today.

This is a landscape to be explored and enjoyed. Turn your back on the horse: a two-minute walk brings you to the ramparts and ditches of Uffington Castle. Alittle further on you reach the Ridgeway. Turn right and follow this ancient track for a mile to the burial chamber at Wayland's Smithy. Finally, a short drive in the opposite direction will bring you to the Blowing Stone. Press your lips into the hole on the top and blow: if you get it right the stone bellows and you can almost see Alfred's troops appearing on the horizon. This is interactive archaeology at its most enjoyable – and certainly the best antidote to the roaring traffic and barbed wire fences of Stonehenge.

Ged Cassell, Geddeb@aol.com

Old sport

by Anthony Fox

Jason Wood (Team effort, Nov/Dec 2005) is to be congratulated on elevating the issue of sports heritage. Two comments are offered.

Firstly, it might be better to regard the current attention-deficit for sports heritage as (hopefully) a temporary lapse rather than never having existed. The initial, general volumes of the Victoria County History of England for Sussex and Essex (and doubtless other counties) include accounts of sporting traditions in amongst the histories of schools, religious institutions, industrial activities, flora, fauna, etc. These volumes date from the end of the 19th and start of the 20th centuries.

Secondly, the intimate relationship between sport and the history and archaeology of the nation needs exploration. For example, archery is now considered a sport. But in the time of the Tudors, its compulsory practice on Sundays, to the exclusion of any other sport, and the apocryphal relationship to the growing of yews in churchyards, brings this sport well within the ambit of social history and churchyard archaeology.

Anthony Fox, Rancho La Cost, California

Moving deadlines

by Bob Ruffle

If Mr Cutting (Letters, Nov/Dec) really thinks that people in universities don't live a world of fighting for funding, adhering to deadlines and working to budgets, I wonder what world he inhabits, and why it's more real than anyone else's. I had thought this kind of prejudice a thing of the past, but the tired old stereotype of the cloistered, unworldly academic in the ivory tower keeps re-emerging, however many times it's slapped down. If academics fail to meet publication dates (and they are by no means alone in this), Mr Cutting can be assured that something even more important came up, like fighting for funding, adhering to other, even more urgent, deadlines, and trying to work to (inadequate) budgets.

Bob Ruffle, Great Malvern, Worcs

Liberal consultation

by Karl-James Langford

I am writing in my capacity as a National Executive Council policy committee member of the official Liberal Party, but I am also a professional archaeologist.

We are undertaking a consultation with archaeological bodies, societies and individuals in respect of completing a new policy area for our 2006/2007 manifesto. We will be the only political party in Great Britain with a strict policy area in our manifesto concerning archaeology.

We are particularly interested in setting strict guidelines for the monitoring of metal detecting and its licensing, and putting fresh legislation areas in place so that infringements of the licensing scheme can be understood more clearly and successful prosecutions undertaken. On a similar note few individuals and bodies are prosecuted for damaging listed and scheduled ancient monuments due to the many loopholes that exist in present legislation. We would invite you to make recommendations on how we can improve legislation to allow greater protection of our cultural heritage.

Archaeology in Great Britain is seeing a decline in standards, although the Institute of Field Archaeology is slowly addressing this. We in the Liberal Party also wish to undertake a consultation into how fresh legislation can improve standards.

Please write to me at: DinasHouse, Wick Road, Ewenny, Bridgend CF35 5BL

Karl-James Langford, convenor Liberal Party in Wales, Bridgend

Long musket

by Catherine Hall

I was interested to read the article about the "white badges" (In marches upon the heavenly plain, Nov/Dec). I recently came across a picture of a 1642 engraving of a musketeer.To my eyes, there is a striking similarity between his pose and that of the Long Man of Wilmington. In view of the recent speculation by Dr Joe Bettey about a possible association between the Cerne Abbas Giant and Cromwell [see Back to modern culture, Jul 2004] I wondered whether the Long Man could be intended as a Civil War "regimental badge" of sorts, possibly making a political statement. This is of course pure speculation, and I am neither a historian nor an archaeologist but I thought that I would pass my idea on to your readers to investigate/debunk as they see fit!

Catherine Hall, hall.email@virgin.net

Hands off reenactors

by Raymond Perry

Kim Biddulph believes that reenactors should always have knowledge of the wider social and political history of the time they are representing (Opinion, Nov/Dec). Although not a reenactor myself those that I have met have always seemed pretty knowledgeable about their period. Perhaps more important is the enthusiasm they exhibit and the good work they do by increasing the public interest in history and archaeology. The suggested application of the dead hand of modern bureaucratic managerialism – "events managers have to be firmer about what they will and will not accept" – is the last thing we all need. There are plenty of examples in modern British society of how this tends to corrode and destroy the very things it is meant to support. Perhaps a hands-off approach might be more beneficial.

Raymond Perry, Gloucester

Organic decay

by Michael Heaton

Richard Brunning and his colleagues are to be applauded for their work (Last days of the Somerset Levels, Nov/Dec), but the problem of decay of organic archaeological remains within sites that have been the subject of physical investigation is far more widespread: I understand that similar phenomena have been observed in York, where organically rich sites investigated 20 years ago have been revisited and found virtually devoid of organic content; it has been observed recently at a cemetery site in Croydon and I observed it 20 years ago at Windsor.

The causes are well know to soil science and mycology: physical disturbance of the soil structure and introduction of oxygen sets off a biological and chemical chain reaction that results in the rapid digestion of organic materials within hundreds of metres of the point of disturbance. I stumbled upon this scientific fact whilst working on Salisbury Plain, but my publication of it (Heaton & Cleal 2000, Wiltshire Natural History & Archaeology Magazine 93, 71–81) was treated with ridicule by English Heritage and other archaeologists. Defence Estates took the matter more seriously and invited Professors Karl Ritz and Jim Harris of the National Soil Resources Institute at Cranfield University to explain the phenomenon I had observed. It made for alarming listening.

Together with David Jordan of Terra Nova Limited we have spent the last four years arguing that this serious issue affects site and landscape management and site investigation techniques, to no avail.

We believe that an urgent and rapid survey of anecdotal evidence must be commissioned, followed by scientific investigation of burial environments and the affects physical investigations have on them.

Michael Heaton, ASI Heritage Consultants, Warminster

Small flights

by Martin Ecclestone

Using a model aircraft carrying a digital camera to get aerial photographs as a record of archaeological sites is indeed cheap and effective (News, Nov/Dec).

I suspect that this technique is now being used by a number of amateur groups; the Gloucester & District Archaeological Research Group (GADARG) is most grateful to Patrick Thody of Shipton Moyne for helping us since mid-2002, and two of his photographs have been published in our journal Glevensis.

Martin Ecclestone (GADARG honorary secretary), Rodborough, Stroud

No archaeology?

by Alison Brown

I have reluctantly decided not to renew [my subscription] since I no longer feel that the magazine contains very much archaeology. Under its new editor, most of it seems to be about personalities, television and culture studies.

Alison Brown, Newtown, Powys

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.

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