Issue 93

March/April 2007

Contents

news

Police station had old rifles in foundations

Why did hunter-gatherers dig row of pits in Scotland?

Child's boot and bible found in chimney

Oldest cremation burials

Demand to rebury 'Druid' child

In Brief & Phase 2

features

Let the games begin!
Dan Garner and Tony Wilmot found footprints and a sword at Chester amphitheatre

The nomads of Wessex
Andrew J Lawson finds inspiration in central Asia

Heating flint in Boston Spa
Malcolm Barnes describes an intriguing community experiment

on the web

Recommended websites

letters

Views and responses

CBA news

Headlines from the CBA office

ISSN 1357-4442

Editor Mike Pitts

on the web

The hidden world of archaeology

Caroline Wickham-Jones finds the historic depth of landscape under-presented.

I have concentrated on archaeological websites, but archaeology features on many other sites. Archaeological sites preach to the converted. It is important to look at other disciplines: we should know how others see us. What sort of archaeology features? It is not always obvious, but it is there — sometimes.

Our colleagues in the natural world are undoubtedly aware of archaeology, but many regard it as of little relevance. English Nature (www.englishnature.org.uk), Natural England (www.naturalengland.org.uk) and Scottish Natural Heritage (www.snh.org.uk) all provide links to archaeological material, but coverage is hard to find and generally related to technical documents or specific events. There is little indication that the landscape might have been shaped by people, or might even hold the record of our ancestors. The Countryside Council for Wales, however, provides archaeological and historic information within a couple of clicks with the Register of Welsh Historic Landscapes (www.ccw.gov.uk/generalinfo/index.cfm?Subject=Landscape). In Northern Ireland DOENI holds responsibility for both the human and the natural environment (www.doeni.gov.uk).

The Forestry Commission is a UK-wide body. There are no overt links to archaeology on their home page, but a search brings up plenty of information across Britain, including in-house research on heritage and archaeology, though there are as yet no results for this project (www.forestry.gov.uk/forestry/KIRN-5LDHFF). Archaeology, though present, is rather less well represented on the National Farmers Union website (www.nfuonline.com).

Planners are more aware. There is no dedicated link to archaeological material on the home page of the Royal Town Planners Institute (www.rtpi.org.uk), but it does feature and is included in their downloadable careers booklets. The Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (www.defra.gov.uk), however, finds archaeology of less direct relevance, though its search engine brings up links to over 4,000 technical documents with archaeological content.

The Environment Agency views archaeology as something to protect (www.environment-agency.gov.uk/subjects/conservation/840878/316304) rather than an element of the world in which we live. The Scottish Environment Protection Agency (www.sepa.org.uk) is less interested, though archaeology does find a place in their technical documents. The Sustainable Development Commission (www.sd-commission.org.uk) does not consider archaeology, though at least one archaeologist is present on the newly set up Sustainable Development Panel (www.sd-commission.org.uk/pages/sd_panel.html) which solicits a wider view. Good coverage of archaeology is provided by the Department of Trade and Industry's strategic environmental assessments prior to offshore energy licensing (www.offshore-sea.org.uk). The technical reports for each area include useful overviews of archaeology and maritime history as well as much other material of interest to archaeologists such as up to date reviews of geology and fauna.

Finally, the tourist boards. Wales (www.visitwales.co.uk) and Scotland (www.visitscotland.com) provide easy to find informative pages with wide ranging coverage from Roman artefacts in Wales to Scotland in prehistory. England (www.enjoyengland.com) has buried its archaeology.

If archaeology is to take its place at the heart of Britain we must note how others present and use archaeological information. We need to develop their enthusiasm and help to fill the gaps.

Websites from the other side

• Visit Wales – www.visitwales.co.uk
  • Informative and easy to find pages on archaeology.
• DTI Strategic Environmental Assessments – www.offshore-sea.org.uk
  • Sounds grim, but the section on Completed SEAs has interesting reports.
• Countryside Council for Wales – www.ccw.gov.uk
  • Plenty of archaeology, especially in the landscapes section of Our Work.
• US National Park Service – www.nps.gov
  • Archaeology is well represented from the home page at History and Culture.
• UK National Parks – www.nationalparks.gov.uk
  • Not as obvious as it is with their US brethren, but the archaeology is there.

Mapping the layers of an English county

David Gurney, Tim Arnold and Sheila Bullard created Norfolk E-Map Explorer – the web at its best.

Anyone who wants to track down maps and aerial photographs of an area is probably resigned to the need to visit a number of museums, libraries and record offices or archive centres to collect the information. For one part of England, Norfolk County Council's cultural services has changed all that with a site that has brought together a wide range of resources on the web.

The Norfolk E-Map Explorer (www.historic-maps.norfolk.gov.uk) was developed as part of the East of England Sense of Place Project (www.senseofplaceeast.org.uk), a lottery-funded digitisation project to create an internet bank of learning resources offering access to the culture, heritage and diversity of the region. Within this bigger initiative, the E-Map Explorer fulfils an essential part of Norfolk County Council's commitment to make freely and widely available its superb resources on the county's archaeology, historic environment, museum collections and archives.

Norfolk E-Map Explorer was completed in April 2005. It gives access to more than 12,000 vertical aerial photographs of the county from surveys by the Royal Air Force in 1946 and Norfolk county council in 1988, and 1,200 maps, including tithe maps, enclosure maps and first edition six inches to the mile Ordnance Survey maps from the Norfolk Record Office (www.archives.norfolk.gov.uk) and the Norfolk Library and Information Service (www.library.norfolk.gov.uk). By bringing these together on the web, the site allows users to make detailed comparisons of the Norfolk landscape between the mid and late 19th century and the mid and late 20th century, something that cannot be achieved when using the documents stored at disparate locations.

At the touch of a button, archaeological curators, consultants, contractors, researchers and local historians can obtain key information without having to visit up to four different locations across the county where the original resources are housed. The site has proved to be even more popular with non-professional archaeologists and the general public, sparking widespread interest in the Norfolk landscape, its field patterns and historic buildings.

Within the collections each individual photograph or map was scanned and georectified. This presented some interesting challenges, as the largest tithe map in Norfolk is more than six square metres in size! The digital images were then cleverly joined together to form continuous and seamless layers. Users of the website can select an area by postcode, place or grid reference, choose which resources to view or compare, pan in any direction, zoom in and out, make images transparent and superimpose them, view as large images or view original maps. The number of pages on the website is actually unlimited, as each one is generated dynamically to meet the individual user's specific requirements.

The site has received more than 100,000 visits since its launch, and during 2006 there was an average of over 300 visits per day. In 2005 the Norfolk E-Map Explorer won an Alan Ball Local History Award, the only website to do so, and in 2006 the site was runner-up for a British Archaeological Award in the Channel 4 information and communication technology category. Work on the site continues, and there are several ideas being considered to make the site even bigger and better!

Other Norfolk County Council websites include the Norfolk Museums & Archaeology Service (www.museums.norfolk.gov.uk), and Norfolk Online Access to Heritage or NOAH (www.noah.norfolk.gov.uk) where you can do cross-domain searches of Norfolk archives, library catalogues, museum collections, photographic collections and newspaper articles. These will be joined in 2007 by The Norfolk Heritage Explorer, an online version of the Norfolk historic environment record, with 50,000 records of the county's monuments, finds and historic buildings.

David Gurney is principal archaeologist at Norfolk Museums & Archaeology Service, Tim Arnold is ICT officer (systems) at Norfolk County Council and Sheila Bullard is their ICT services manager.

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