Issue 97

November/December 2007

Contents

news

Curlew care leads to lost royal residence find

Wat's Dyke dated: was it Coenwulf's dyke?

Little dig goes to big festival

Orkney finds confirm early Scottish colonisation

In Brief & Phase 2

features

Made in China
The exhibition that you will never forget opens in London

Viking treasure
An early inside look at the Viking hoard from Harrogate

Caribbean tragedy: under the volcano
David Miles and Julian Munby say island heritage matters on Montserrat

on the web

Recommended websites
Archaeological science, and digging up a hearth (and home)

letters

Views and responses

CBA correspondent

Campaigns, comment and communications from the CBA
Dan Hull explains the CBA's pioneering initiatives in archaeological publishing

ISSN 1357-4442

Editor Mike Pitts

news

Curlew care leads to lost royal residence find

Excavations west of Basingstoke, Hampshire have identified a substantial royal residence that was probably built by Henry II and perhaps continued in use through the reigns of Richard I and John, before being abandoned and quarried for building materials. County archaeological records had suggested the flattened structure, visible in air photos, might have been Roman.

Tidgrove Warren Farm, Kingsclere is the focus of a long-term project to investigate the area's landscape history by the Kingsclere Heritage Association and archaeologists at Southampton University, directed by Kristian Strutt with help from Dominic Barker, David Hinton and David Wheatley. The farm is managed under a countryside stewardship scheme. The owner, an enthusiastic amateur archaeologist, was ploughing breeding sites for stone curlews when he noticed a rectangular area outlined by a band of chalk close to an ancient track known locally as the King's Way. Geophysics in 2003 confirmed the presence of an earthwork enclosure of about 0.6ha. Excavation began on the site in 2005, and continues annually as training experience for university students, with local volunteers.

The enclosure ditch, some 2m deep, is larger than those at some medieval defensive sites, and was perhaps preceded by a slighter earthwork; massive postholes may indicate an impressive gate-house. The space within is tightly packed with buildings, including what may be a timber-framed hall and at least one stone structure. The latter is now represented chiefly by its cellar, terraced into the valley slope, with plastered flint walls up to 2.5m deep and accessed via carved stone steps. It is thought the cellar or undercroft, which is as substantial as one at Clarendon Palace (near Salisbury, Wiltshire, first built by Henry I) supported a stone barrel-vaulted roof with a storey of rooms above. Ground penetrating radar suggests another cellar is close by.

The site has been tentatively identified as that referred to in the Pipe Rolls from the High Sheriff of Hampshire as "the new king's houses at Titegrove", and later renamed Freemantle. It is near the Portway, an old Roman road, and about half way between Windsor Castle and Reading Abbey, and the Solent on the south coast. Henry ii may have built it as a hunting lodge and staging post on his frequent journeys to and from France. It was probably demolished in the 1250s, about the time when a large deer park was created to the east.

Wat's Dyke dated: was it Coenwulf's dyke?

Offa's Dyke, whose eponymous king came to the throne 1,250 years ago (see feature this issue), is well known as a remarkable earthwork that runs, intermittently, close to the modern border between Wales and England. Less famous is Wat's Dyke, 65km of bank and ditch parallel to Offa's Dyke in the northern Marches. The age of Wat's Dyke has been much debated, with suggestions ranging from immediately after the Roman withdrawal, to having been constructed by Offa's predecessor king Aethelbald in the 8th century. New work indicates that the dyke was in fact built after Offa's death, perhaps around the time of the death of king Coenwulf.

As part of a new housing development at Gobowen, north of Oswestry, Fletcher Homes paid for excavation of a length of Wat's Dyke in 2006. Directed by Tim Malim and Laurence Hayes of SLR Consulting, the work has provided a series of optically stimulated luminescence dates. This offers, says Malim, the "first substantive sequence of scientific dates, which at last give a solid chronological foundation for theories over [the dyke's] construction and use".

Samples were analysed by Jean Luc Schwenninger of the Research Laboratory for Archaeology and Art History, Oxford University, six from the ditch infill and one from the soil buried beneath the bank. The latter dated to the late 8th to 11th centuries, while four samples from the lower ditch fill dated more precisely to AD792–852. Deliberate infill followed by cultivation, associated with a few medieval pot sherds, was dated by two samples to the 14th century.

Wat's Dyke was first clearly traced by Cyril Fox in the 1930s, and more recently by David Hill and Margaret Worthington, as a continuous construction from the coast at Basingwerk near Holywell, Flintshire to the rivers Morda and Vrnwy south of Oswestry. It runs in a series of straight stretches surveyed between prominent landmarks which often involve hillforts, with an earthwork up to 16m wide and running 4m from the ditch bottom to the top of the bank.

Previous theories that associated the dyke's construction with king Aethelbald were questioned when a radiocarbon date of AD270–630 was obtained from excavations at Maes-y-Clawdd, also near Oswestry (News, Nov 1999). Some commentators argued that Wat's Dyke might even have been associated with king Arthur.

However this earlier date related to a hearth beneath the dyke, with Roman pottery nearby. Malim says the new dates suggest that the most likely historical context for its construction would be in the 820s: when the Mercian king Coenwulf (who died at Basingwerk, the northern termination for Wat's Dyke) and his successor, Ceolwulf, were campaigning against a resurgent Welsh threat under Cyngen in Powys and Rhodri Mawr "the Great" in Gwynedd.

The full results will be published in Anglo-Saxon Studies in Archaeology and History.

• A rare gold coin minted by Coenwulf was recently bought by the British Museum for £357,832 (see Spoilheap May/Jun 2006).

Little dig goes to big festival

For two weeks around the 4th of July, the Canterbury Archaeological Trust took part in what is described as "America's largest cultural event", the annual Smithsonian Folklife Festival in Washington DC, this year attended by 1.6m visitors. Marion Green, CAT education officer, and environmental archaeologist Enid Allison were among 40 Kent people in a programme supported by Kent County Council, commemorating the 400th anniversary of the establishment of Jamestown, Virginia. The town is widely regarded as the first permanent English settlement in the Americas (see feature Jul/Aug).

In the Little Dig, a teaching experience adapted for the festival theme and originally brought to Kent by the Museum of London Archaeology Service (MoLAS), two trenches were created in which children could excavate and find parts of reconstructed buildings and real historic artefacts. The top layer contained 17th century pottery fragments excavated in Kent, representing the same kinds of domestic jugs and jars used by the early English settlers. Beneath this were a medieval and a Roman layer. Unearthed sherds could be identified by comparing them with complete objects, again all from Kent excavations. The reference collection, photos, reconstruction images and a PowerPoint presentation about the trust's work also informed adult visitors.

This was the first English county to participate in the festival. The 400th anniversary programme was celebrated by cooks, farmers, performers, artists and crafts people from Kent, Washington, Virginia's eight Native American tribes and from West Africa.

Orkney finds confirm early Scottish colonisation

When was Scotland first colonised? The oldest hunting camp is dated to 8500BC, but a few scattered artefacts controversially suggest late ice age reindeer hunters were there before that. Two new finds of their distinctive flint "tanged points" support the case. Excavation at the site on the island of Stronsay, Orkney could finally settle the question.

Two of the late upper palaeolithic points (13–10,000BC) had previously been found in Orkney, at Ness of Brodgar on Mainland, and on Stronsay – but both were lost in the 1920s. Naomi Woodward and a team of MA students from Orkney College UHI found the new points during a two week field survey in April.

Woodward had selected Stronsay for research as it has a history of mesolithic discoveries (10–4000BC). Tanged points, so shaped to facilitate hafting on arrow shafts, are found in Britain and northern continental Europe, where they are known as Ahrensburgian after some early finds in Germany. Archaeologists have doubted whether the few Scottish examples truly indicate late glacial settlement, at a time when parts of the country were still under deep, permanent ice.

However a recent review supported the significance of two tanged points on the west coast, from Tiree and Wester Ross. The new discoveries, 2.5km from the site of the earlier find on Stronsay, are important because they appear to belong to a larger group of artefacts that may be contemporary.

Woodward says that so far all the finds are from the ploughsoil, so she hopes to obtain funding to conduct test excavations within the 20m × 30m area. Jane Downes, head of archaeology at Orkney College, looks forward to a new research project at there.

In brief

Unique schooner for sale

The Kathleen & May, the last wooden triple-masted sailing schooner, is for sale at $7m (c £3.5m). Built in 1900, she worked as a trading ship between the British mainland, Ireland and the Channel Islands, often carrying coal. In 1970 she was bought by a Maritime Trust created by the Duke of Edinburgh, who restored her to her original specifications, on one occasion taking her through the Bay of Biscay to the Guggenheim Museum. She is now cared for at Bideford by volunteers, but the owner can no longer afford to keep her. An e-petition on the Downing Street website, appealing to keep the ship "as part of our national maritime heritage", had attracted nearly 900 signatories at the time of going to press (petitions.pm.gov.uk/Kathleen-May).

Tunnel stalled

Skanska Civil Engineering, re-excavating the BBC-sponsored 1968 tunnel into Silbury Hill, Wiltshire (News Jul/Aug 2007), were forced to delay tours into the hill made available to invited archaeologists and local school children. After heavy rain in July, workers heard noises indicating chalk moving above the tunnel roof. The amount of voids and collapse near the centre was greater than expected, and English Heritage announced that tunnelling would halt while buckled iron "rings" or arches left by the BBC were replaced.

The grey face of Roman civilisation

Commercial excavations create much "grey literature", reports held by local authorities and read by few. Cotswold Archaeology and the Department of Archaeology at Reading University, sponsored by English Heritage, are assessing the potential of these records for understanding Roman England. They note that of 9,500 investigations of Roman sites between 1990 and 2004, less than 10% are formally published. The next stage in the project will be to examine the records in more detail in a few pilot counties.

Heritage Awards

There were two winners at the 2007 awards for the presentation of heritage research, held in York in September: Vincent Gaffney (describing the mapping of ancient North Sea landscapes) and Dominic Powlesland (on 25 years of archaeology in the Vale of Pickering).

Mick's book

Mick Aston is known to millions through his appearances in Time Team – the initial idea was his – but as readers of British Archaeology will know from his regular feature, "Mick's travels", he is also an accomplished field archaeologist. In June colleagues and former students at the Department of Archaeology, University of Bristol presented him with a book of essays on landscape archaeology. In "People & Places" (Oxbow, edited by Michael Costen), contributors pay credit to his skills as a fieldworker and draughtsman, Somerset's first county archaeologist, a gifted teacher and an outstanding broadcaster with his own archaeology series on Radio Oxford long before starting on Time Team in 1994.

Phase 2

A year ago we reported the discovery of a copper alloy artefact on Moor Sand, off the coast of Salcombe, Devon (Nov/Dec 2006). Known by its Italian description of "strumento con immanicatura a cannone", like other nearby metal items that appear to indicate the site of a wrecked sea craft, it dates from 1300–1150BC. But unlike them it was made in Sicily, and was described as "the first secure object of Mediterranean origin and bronze age date to be found in northwest Europe". Brendan O'Connor writes in Past (July 2007) that the find is not quite unprecedented. A bronze age (but less old) shaft-hole axe found at Southbourne, Dorset, also from Sicily, was just below the water mark, "a context [no]... less secure than Salcombe". And "undoubtedly secure", and contemporary with Salcombe, is a Sicilian razor in a hoard from Ommerschans, Netherlands. That a craft might have sailed from the eastern Mediterranean becomes a strengthened possibility. (In the feature by Parham, Needham and Palmer, you will find an errant phrase, "Photo Caption", in the useful date chart on p47: ignore.)

The magnetometer survey that confirmed the existence of a Roman fort at Restormel, Cornwall (News, Sep/Oct) was conducted by Saltash Heritage (Tamarside Archaeology Survey), not, as we said, the Tamarside Archaeology Group. Apologies.

The jade axehead from Newton Peverill, Dorset faced with export (News May/Jun), has been bought for £24,000 by the county museum with the help of grants from the National Heritage Memorial Fund and others. Lucy, the fragmentary Australopithecus skeleton that left Ethiopia for display in Houston Museum of Natural Science while anthropologists feared for its safety (Opinion Sep/Oct), has been doing her bit for creationist debate. The museum tells BA that a record 10,000 visitors came on the opening weekend, and the Houston Chronicle reported an Albuquerque humanities professor saying "the whole evolutionary process... brought her closer to God".

Humankind is losing its history for the pleasure of private collectors living safely in their luxurious houses.
Lebanese archaeologist Joanne Farchakh on the looting of Iraq's antiquities, Independent.

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