Programme 2013

Day

Date

Title

Speaker

Friday

18th January 2013

Annual General Meeting and members' evening

The AGM took place as planned, although the inclement weather caused a much-reduced attendance compared with previous years. Only 19 brave souls fought their way to the meeting, this figure including a number of new members. The Minutes of the meeting will be issued by the Secretary in due course. Following closure of the AGM, the audience was treated to a series of short presentations:-

• Firstly Mavis Shannon gave a history of Iceland. It was colonised by Vikings from Norway between the ninth and the eleventh century. At this time Norway was becoming a kingdom, and petty chiefs did not wish to be ruled, so they loaded their families, slaves and livestock into boats and searched for new lands to farm. They were able to do this because the incorporation of a keel into boats made them safer to sail in the open sea. Where Iceland is not covered in volcanic larva fields, it has areas of flat fertile soil which allowed hay to be grown to feed the animals that are kept indoors in winter. There was no arable farming and each farm was surrounded by its fields. Fish was plentiful and there was drift-wood on the beach: valuable in a treeless landscape. The Vikings would also go raiding to get money for luxuries, but basically they were farmers and fishermen. When Christianity arrived, it stopped their raiding and slaves were freed, so the people then exported surplus farming or fishing products by loading them onto ponies and taking the ponies on boats to sell the products abroad. Society was egalitarian and an Althingi or parliament was held every summer in which the main business was to settle blood feuds. In the fourteenth century, there was a considerable deterioration in the climate throughout Europe, making Iceland inaccessible and it remained isolated until steamships were able to reach it in the nineteenth century. This meant that society remained unchanged; typical Norse longhouses continued to be built of turf on a stone base with no windows and a large open hearth in the centre. One of the new imports that was most welcome to Icelanders was corrugated iron, which was used for most buildings: houses could have two storeys and windows. They were insulated using natural products such as moss, hay and wool. Now Iceland is part of modern Europe.
• 
• The next presentation was by Rachel Gilbert and Rebecca Damsell, students from UCLan, who are establishing an interactive website about all the buildings that were stores of the Preston Industrial Co-operative Society from its founding in 1869 until 1966 when it was absorbed into a Lancashire-wide society. They used a directory of all the stores as a starting point. The first store was started by a local community on New Hall Lane, followed shortly by one in Adelphi Street. Other local ones were started and then they amalgamated to form the Preston Society, with more shops being built. The Co-ops often had educational and community programmes and many were built close to the mills. The students have been trying to identify still-existing buildings even if they have been modified considerably. Some have been completely demolished, some have new fronts, others may have clues by which they can be identified, such as the crest above the door or even a stone with the name. As streets and their numbers have been altered it is not always possible to say which of the current buildings was a Co-operative shop, but in one case a particular shop was identified by its distinctive first floor windows. This is an on-going project.
• 
• Unfortunately the weather prevented Margaret Edwards from Manchester presenting her slides and observations on Caerwent, a Roman settlement in south Wales. However, thanks to modern technology, she had sent the slides and script to Bill Shannon who presented them. It was not known if Caerwent was a fort, but the recent evidence now indicates that it was a civilian industrial settlement, producing pottery, supporting the nearby fort of Caerleon. It was also the local civitas, or administrative centre, for the Silures tribe. It continued to be used by the local people, with considerable modification such as blocking up some gateways, until the end of the fifth century.
• 
• Derek Fox then enlivened proceedings by producing a dozen mysterious artefacts, of supposedly Roman origin, and tasked the audience to identify them. This proved to be great fun and was much enjoyed by the participants. The highest score was 8 (no names......). Everyone got the samian. The favourite was probably the "striker" (aka the steel) used for producing the spark from the flint to light the tinder. A splendid piece of early engineering.
• 
• The final presentation was by David Swindlehurst, showing a small number of slides from a recent visit to the Battlefields and Memorials of WW1, in France and Belgium, by members of the Preston Grammar School Association. He described briefly the reasons for the excursion, and explained that a repeat visit was planned for later in 2013, together with another excursion to Normandy to the WW2 equivalents. He invited members to accompany the PGSA on these excursions, which give participants the confidence of travelling in the company of friends and with people who have the necessary knowledge to make some sense of a senseless event.

(Report by Janet Edmunds)

Friday

15th February 2013

Were there really Gladiators?

In 2004, excavation in part of a Roman cemetery in York unearthed 80 skeletons. Only one was undoubtedly a woman, and 64 were certainly men aged between about 18-35 years. These are not the skeletons that would be found in a normal civilian cemetery. At first it was suggested that they were the bodies of people murdered by the emperor Caracalla. He had ruled in 211 with his younger brother Geta, after the death of their father, Septimus Severus, who died in York when they were all campaigning in Britain. Then, after a few months, Caracalla had his brother and followers murdered. However when the bones were carbon dated, they were shown to be buried over a period of about 150 years. Dr Wysocki has studied the skeletons forensically and he gave us a fascinating talk about the wounds found on the bones and what can be deduced from this study. About half the skeletons had been decapitated, with the skull often buried between the knees or elsewhere. For those where it could be determined, it seemed to be the cause of death, rather than a burial ritual. Many were buried with grave goods and food, including meat, for use in the after-life. This would indicate that they were unlikely to be corpses of criminals who would not be buried with such respect. Scientific forensic tests showed they were not local, but of very mixed origin. There were some from north Africa, others from eastern, middle and southern Europe with a few from northern Europe. Some were tall others short: too short to be soldiers; some were well developed others relatively slight. There were a few with wounds, such as broken bones, that had already healed. Some also had wounds inflicted about the time of death. So if they were neither ordinary civilians nor soldiers, were they gladiators? The most telling wound was that of one man who had teeth marks in the pelvis and on the shoulder made by a large carnivore, a lion, leopard or possibly a bear. The talk was followed by many questions and a discussion. Gladiators wore heavy padding on their arms and legs, which could explain the lack of wounds on these bones either from practice or in previous or final fights. Their torsos were bare but wounds here are unlikely to be seen on a skeleton. It was suggested that those who owned gladiators did not want them to retire wounded, but to fight to the death; the evidence from these skeletons indicates that this was sometimes by decapitation, perhaps as a coup de grace to a badly injured fighter, something suggested also by injuries to the skull apparently caused by hammer blows . The shorter, slighter fighters may have been included so that in their fights the outcome was more or less certain in advance. There was a lot of speculation, but if they were not gladiators, who else could they have been?

Dr Michael Wysocki UCLAN

Friday

15th March 2013

The Viking Dragons - how to build and sail one.

Paul Mercer

Friday

19th April 2013

Early prehistoric hunter-gatherers in the lowlands of the North-West

Ron Cowell

Friday

17th May 2013

Annual Dinner

(Please note: the proposed visit to the Dragon Harald Fairhair in Liverpool has had to be postponed following changes to the ship's programme)

Saturday

15th June 2013

Excursion (see Note B)

Visit to Tilberthwaite copper mine, Coniston.

Warren Allison

Friday

19th July 2013

Excursion (see Note B)

"The site of the Cuerdale Hoard".

Dr David Hunt

Sunday

1st September 2013

Excursion (see Note B)

Visit to the landscape of Smithills Hall estate, Bolton

Dr Alan Crosby

Friday

18th October 2013

Excavations at Angel Meadow - 19th century housing in central Manchester

Chris Wild

Friday

15th November 2013

Stones, Bones, and Clergymen: Recent Excavations at Furness Abbey

Stephen Rowland