Programme 2011

Day

Date

Title

Speaker

Friday

21st January 2011

AGM and members' evening

After the customarily brief AGM, the society got on with the main matter of the evening, which was hearing short talks from five of our members.

• First on was Derek Forrest, with the real story of the Eagle of the Ninth, inspired by the forthcoming film of the famous Rosemary Sutcliffe book. Derek told us he has spent years as a re-enactor telling people that the story of the missing legion is just a fable - but more recent work has led him to conclude that there may be something in it, and the Ninth Hispana may indeed have suffered some catastrophe in Britain after all.
• Janet Edmunds spoke first of an excavation of a very early mill site near Cockermouth, before going on to discuss some of the outstanding historical and archaeological monuments of Dumfriesshire, showing us some excellent slides, notably details of the castle at Caerlaverock and Sweetheart Abbey. And of course, there was a water mill too.
• Mavis Shannon who discussed recent findings from Spain that suggested Neanderthals collected both iron pyrites and iron oxides, possibly using them both for glitter body paint but also to decorate perforated scallop shells, worn as jewellery - 'Neanderthal bling' - a reconstruction of which she demonstrated.
• Peter Sheppard showed and discussed a transcription of an account of a meeting of the justices of the peace at Brindle in 1631, and their decisions about how to control and outbreak of plague in Preston, by confining those with symptoms to their homes, whilst ensuring a substantial sum of money was set aside for the relief of hardship arising from the outbreak.
• Bill Shannon showed a previously uncatalogued map of Downham from the National Archives, dating from 1595, and went on to look at the remains on the ground of some of the features shown on the map, including lime working, archery butts and rabbit warrens ('coney clappers')

Friday

18th February 2011

Californian Native American Rock Art

David Robinson gave us a detailed and well-illustrated account of Californian Native American Rock Art, starting by placing the subject in a global context, showing that wherever there is a suitable surface, from Cresswell Crags to sub-Saharan Africa, Australia or China, man has left his mark. David's own work has focussed on Southern California, and the work of the Chumash people, showing how their brightly painted sites were visible from the places where they gathered to grind the acorns which formed an important, if boring, part of their diet.

The incredible language complexity of the area was outlined, contrasted with a striking similarity of religious practices and beliefs between people who, although living in adjacent valleys, were no closer related linguistically than English and Chinese.

The pictographs which they painted on the rock faces were explored, zoomorphic, anthropomorphic or just geometrical. No firm answers were given as to their meanings, although David suggested that the landscape, occupied by the same people for perhaps 8000 years or more, was seen as being populated with 'petrified' mythological creatures (ie turned to stone), to which these paintings related

Dr David Robinson

Friday

18th March 2011

Heads and Tales of Roman coins

Prof. Shotter has had a life long interest in all things Roman, and he gave a fascinating insight into what Roman coins can tell us: often quite a bit about the Emperors and how they wanted to be seen by others. The original monetary system comprised one gold coin, one silver one and five denominations of copper coins but as a result of inflation the three lowest denominations were taken out of use, in the same way as we no longer have a half penny. Later double value coins were struck.

In the first century AD, after the hated Caligula, people defaced the coins by trying to remove his head. So there was a shortage of coins during the first years of Claudius' reign and he told the provinces to make their own. This produced a lot of very poor copies. Nero, in order to fund his extravagant building programme, debased the silver coins by including base metals, so he could make more coins.

Although the silver content was increased by succeeding emperors, by the third century it was being debased again to make enough coins to pay the soldiers during times of political unrest and internal warfare. By the fourth century the original silver coin was made of copper.

Coins were also a way for an emperor to show his victories: Augustus has a Nile crocodile on the reverse of one of his coin, commemorating his victory over Mark Anthony in Egypt and a Hadrian coin shows a dejected-looking Britannia with a broken spear. However Nero, who liked to think of himself as excelling in all the arts, has coins showing Apollo, the god of music, and he may also have been trying to show that he considered himself equal to the gods.

Dr David Shotter

Friday

15th April 2011

Round houses - old myths and new facts

Dr Pope gave a fascinating talk, dispelling some old myths and enlarging upon new facts. For instance, roundhouses have been thought to be restricted to the British Isles, but recently they have been found in Normandy, and possibly also in Brittany and N.W. Spain. The earliest examples found so far are from the late Neolithic or early Bronze Age.

Round houses are stronger and more solid than rectilinear ones. The roof tends to push the walls outwards and this was overcome by the ring beam, taking the weight of the roof. In Wessex there were large roundhouses up to 15 metres in diameter, but in the north houses were up to about 8 metres. Up to 20 people of all generations could have lived in a roundhouse. Wattle-and-daub was used in the south, but in northern Britain walls were probably built of upright split trees, and it may have taken upwards of 40 trees to build a house. Entrances were usually east to south east, giving shelter from prevailing westerly winds and rain, but allowing in light. The doors were wide but unlikely to have been the full height of the wall, and there is some evidence that they were closed with double doors.

Most activities, such as food preparation and ‘crafts’, were carried out near the door in the light. The far side was used for storage and sleeping. There might also have been a higher platform that could have been used as a ‘loft’ for storage and possibly sleeping. Animals were housed round the sides, possibly all the time in winter. A loose under-thatch of heather would have trapped the smoke, which could then have filtered out and not hung round in the house. In some cases hearths were lined with slabs on which food could have been cooked when a hot fire was raked off. Food could also be cooked in pits lined with clay or wood and heated with stones. Some houses have depressions round the edge which are probably where animals were stalled and mucked out. Houses probably lasted one to two generations i.e. 30-50 years. There was often ritual deposition in both the building and the closing stages. One house in Northumberland had a new saddle-quern stone, a cup marked rock and a piece of jet deposited in the walls on building. On abandonment an unused quern stone and one and a half stones with cup marks were buried. In another house cremation remains were buried on closure, the house was then rebuilt and another cremation was buried close to the first on its closure, probably the next generation.

Roundhouses were associated with a settled lifestyle, rather than a nomadic one or shifting cultivation, crops were grown and saddle querns have been found. The earliest roundhouses found so far are in Lanarkshire, dating from 2,400 BC (late Neolithic) earlier than in England. So contrary to earlier opinions, settled habitations may have been earlier in northern Britain than in the south. In the Bronze Age they are found in northern England, especially Northumbria. At first they were dispersed in the landscape, but during the middle Bronze Age, aggregations of houses are found. In late Bronze Age they are found in Scotland and in the South West, Eastern and North East England in the uplands, where crops were being grown. Very little evidence of habitation has been found from 850-780BC: only a few flimsy houses, in east Yorkshire. It seems as though the population crashed. Houses have been found from the middle Iron Age (about 400BC) on the heavy clay soils of eastern England, probably associated with the introduction of the ard plough and the change from emmer to spelt wheat, which is harder and better for bread. Saddle querns were replaced by rotary querns. These settlements were agglomerated and houses had no post holes, so the walls were probably built of turf. By the middle Iron Age there were more houses in dispersed open settlements, but there is a lot of regional variation.

In many places, including North West England, roundhouses continued to be built during the Roman period. Not everyone thought that rectangular stone houses were a good idea when the Romans introduced them to Britain. The change from round houses to square was probably because trees became scarce and so stone had to be used; stone roundhouses need to be smaller than wooden ones, unless they had very thick walls. Stone houses need corners to be stable, and they can be enlarged easily by building more cells on the end.

Dr Rachel Pope

Friday

20th May 2011

Annual Dinner

The Dinner took place at the Wellington Park Hotel, Burlington Gardens, Church Road, Leyland. 22 members and guests gathered for an evening of eating, drinking and social chat, which was enjoyed by all.

Saturday

11th June 2011

Historic sites around Downham

Photographs here, courtesy of Bill Shannon.

Led by John Dixon

Saturday

23rd July 2011

Visit to the offices and laboratories of Oxford Archaeology North (OAN)

Places were limited and the visit was oversubscribed, so unfortunately some members were disappointed, but the 22 who were lucky enough to take part in this visit had an excellent afternoon out.

Meeting outside the late nineteenth-century mill which houses OAN, we were first treated to an impromptu account by Rachel Newman and Gill Hey of the architecture and history of the mill complex - whose last occupant before OAN was Reebok. We then went into the bowels of the building to see how excavations start and finish. They start at the equipment store which had everything from wheelbarrows to ranging poles - but above all it had buckets (of which more subsequently). They end with storing the finds in vast arrays of labelled boxes which can include anything - Megaloceros antlers (the Giant Elk) or Samian ware but which are generally more prosaic. We were particularly impressed with a collection of seemingly thousands of bits of broken clay pipes from a recent excavation in Liverpool.

Progressing up the building, we saw work going on analysing the 30,000 pieces of flint found at the Carlisle mesolithic excavation, 3000 of which are tools, each of which is to be photographed, measured and described. We saw and discussed pollen analysis and other techniques for environmental analysis, and then proceeded up another flight of stairs to the top floor, where we looked at a display of the end product, the published papers and excavation reports lodged with the planning departments of the various local authorities.

Finally, the day was rounded off by a presentation by Frazer Brown on the Carlisle by-pass excavation, possibly the most important mesolithic site in Britain. We saw the meticulous work which had gone into digging away the surface under dreadful conditions, filling thousands of plastic buckets with it, then sieving the contents to hunt for the grains of pollen and other traces which have told us so much about this site already.

We would all like to thank Gill, Rachel and Frazer who had given up their Saturday afternoon to give us a truly inspiring visit

Gill Hey

Sunday

18th September 2011

Guided walk at Morecambe.

Peter Wade - leader

Friday

21st October 2011

The social context of death - re-considering early Anglo-Saxon cemetery organisation

Duncan gave a brief overview of the early Anglo-Saxon cemeteries in south eastern England which is where most are found. The way bodies were buried can vary both between cemeteries and within a cemetery. Some may be orientated east-west and others north-south and the types of grave goods can vary, particularly the types of brooches buried with women. Much of the variation may well be family custom and can change over time, rather than indicating different ethnic groups. Duncan spoke particularly about an excavation in Oakington near Cambridge on the edge of the fens, which was excavated by a group of UCLan staff and students this summer. It was dated to the sixth and seventh centuries. About 60% of graves had no goods buried with the body, those that did would be the graves of the elite. In addition to some utensils such as cups and pots, for use in the afterlife, men normally have weapons and women a wide range of jewellery and domestic goods. The earliest graves seem to be in household groups with the servants and slaves buried near the main family. The later burials appear to be in kinship groups and have fewer grave goods. The elite are in the centre of the group, with men, women and children buried to some extent in separate clusters within the group. About 30% of the graves were those of children and some contained little pots. It is unusual to find so many children’s graves, but it is probably because the small bones of children are easily disturbed and this cemetery had been little ploughed and so gives a true representation of child mortality at the time. The majority of teeth showed signs of malnutrition indicating chronic food shortage during this period. Several of the men had healed bone damage and fractures of the sort found as a result of intra-communal violence, rather than actual warfare. One man had spina bifida, with wear on the bones showing he had worked, so he must have led a fairly normal life. The most impressive grave was also the saddest. It contained a woman, nick-named ‘Queeny’ by the students, as she was buried with a large amount of jewellery. On her pelvis were the bones of a foetus in transverse position, so she probably died in childbirth as such a presentation would normally be fatal without medical help. Though she had a well furnished grave she had been buried on the edge of her group, as though she was considered ‘unclean’ but still given the normal luxuries that her status deserved.

Duncan has an article about Oakington cemetery in the latest edition of Current Archaeology.

Dr Duncan Sayer

Friday

18th November 2011

Early industrial archaeology of north-east Lancashire

The final presentation of 2011, by Richard (with technical backup from Brian), proved to be one of the most interesting and well-presented lectures of the year, spoiled slightly by there being a smaller than usual audience. Those who weren't there missed a real treat.

Richard's subject was their discovery of the site of the waterwheel which provided the power for the Dunkirk coal mine (opened in the late 1700s) and their subsequent work of reconstruction of the wheel pit and identification of its working processes.

The breast-shot wheel, 10 feet wide and 12 feet in diameter, was driven by water from a leat diverted from the River Calder, the water being returned to the river through a "cut-and-cover" tail race. The wheel housing was constructed from dressed stone, most of which had been robbed when the mine was closed (mid 1800s). The wheel drove a cast-iron gear system, which in turn drove an endless rope down into the base of the mine, some 200ft below the surface. The rope provided the power to draw the loaded coal trucks to the surface alongside the wheel house, where their contents were transferred to horse-drawn wagons for transport to the coal staithe lower down the river.

There was very little remaining archaeological evidence of these systems and Richard's explanations of the analytical processes required to determine them were easily understood, accompanied as they were by an excellent series of photographs and drawings. Much time and effort have been spent to uncover the remains of the wheel pit and supporting features, and subsequently to re-construct the pit for posterity (albeit using modern materials such as concrete flags, rather than dressed masonry!). The fairly sparse documentary evidence available does provide some valuable information on the history and activity of the mine, not least the problem of the flooding of other mines on neighbouring land, where faulting has caused the coal seam to lie 60 feet lower, with consequential effect on the cost of mineral recovery.

He acknowledged the financial help received from the Lancashire County Council archaeology service, which has been provided because the site is now open to the public, accessible via a concessionary path from a nearby public right of way (OS Landranger Sheet 103 at SD760336). He also appreciated the physical help from the local farmer in lifting heavy masonry etc.

Richard Matthews and Brian Jeffery