Total posts:
187
03/21/2008
Saturday, 5th April from 10am-4pm at Cogenhoe Village Hall.
Entrance, and car parking, free to all. Donations to help towards costs will be welcome. Meet local archaeologists and historical re-enactors.
Northamptonshire Archaeological Society is hosting a public open day to help spread the word that Northamptonshire has a rich and diverse history, and to make people aware of the many local societies that they could become involved with. Members of local archaeological and historical groups will provide displays of their work and finds, and will be on hand to talk to the public about the archaeology and history of Northamptonshire. There will be handouts available and publications for sale. Groups involved will include: Northamptonshire Archaeological Society, Upper Nene Archaeological Society, Community Landscape and Survey Project (CLASP), and Northamptonshire Archaeology. Heritage Marketing and Publications will be running a bookstall offering second-hand and new archaeology and history books.
To help bring the past to life even more vividly, we also have two historical reenactors. Sir Thomas Tresham, a 15th Century knight who rose to high office at court in the reign of King Henry VI, will tell of his duties and his everyday worries about mortgages and writs, as well as the necessities for everyday life, clothes, food and hunting. He will be attended by one of his Northampton tenants, Agnes, who pays the rent on time twice a year through earning a modest living making and repairing shoes and manufacturing bone and leather items. [Steve, the Northants FLO, won’t actually be at this event, but you will still be able to find out about the PAS, and pick up some reading materials]
03/13/2008
I know it’s been a long time. I have not been hibernating or spending my AHRC grant on riotous living.
I’m still wading through the PAS Roman coin data and have now looked at more than 20 counties and created Reece profiles for them all*. I’m also now more than just experimenting with Google Maps. At the moment, I’m using it to plot all parishes with more than 20 and fewer than 20 coins and uploading my plots into Google Earth. Just comparing these with Richard Reece’s 140 sites shows how much potential the PAS data has to fill in the gaps. When the Barrington Atlas layers come out things will get even more exciting!
By the end of April I hope I’ll have created a summary national picture and then it’ll be time to start looking for patterns….just a small task!
*Avon, Bedfordshire, Berkshire, Buckinghamshire, Cambridgeshire, Cornwall, Devon, Dorset, Gloucestershire, Hampshire, Herefordshire, Hertfordshire, The Isle of Wight, Northamptonshire, Oxfordshire, Shropshire, Somerset, Staffordshire, Warwickshire and Wiltshire
03/08/2008
In my spare moments (of which I of course have many), I’m trying to put together a review of the PAS data we’ve gathered in Northamptonshire over the years. The aim is to find out how our knowledge of the county in the various periods we cover has progressed since the inception of the PAS. My hope is that it will result in an in-house report, with perhaps some published spinoffs.
I’m only in the early stages at present, but I’m going through the database, and noting statistics and interesting case studies and objects from each period. As I go through, I thought it might be useful to report some of these examples on this blog. So, in the next few months, I hope to be putting up images and descriptions of some of the most important finds from the prehistoric period, Roman period, medieval period etc. However, I won’t be covering the Viking Age (Of course I will).
02/28/2008
Lincolnshire is certainly on the map after Wednesdays earthquake, which measured 5.2 on the Richter scale. Afterwards the quake got me thinking about just how many hoards or ritual deposits we see in the county were made after such natural events as an earthquake, a tornado or a lightning storm. I live just 10 miles from the epicentre and even though I know what causes earthquakes, the experience was still pretty frightning. Just how much more terrifying would they have been to our prehistoric ancestors who probably perceived the quake as an angry god shuffling his feet?
After a quake of Wednesdays’ magnitude you could quite imaging Bronze Age or Iron Age communities getting together to make sacrificial offerings to appease the gods. I wonder how many finds we have recorded are silent witnesses to natural events such as these?
02/05/2008
These two objects were recently discovered near Charlton Mackrell in South Somerset. They are both pretty unusual for Somerset and it has been difficult to find a close parallel for the second.
The first find is a copper alloy knobbed terret harness fitting (SOM-9455E3) which probably dates from the second century AD. Terret rings were metal loops which served as rein guides on horse-drawn vehicles. Terrets would have been positioned on the yoke, like on this reconstruction (see below) of the Newbridge chariot which has recently been built by a Somerset craftsman, Robert Hurford, and is on display at the Somerset County Museum in Taunton until is taken to its new home at the National Museum of Scotland in Edinburgh.
PAS record number: SOM-9455E3
Object type: Harness fitting
Broadperiod: Roman
County of discovery: Somerset
Stable url: https://finds.org.uk/database/artefacts/record/id/203963
The knobbed terret is a Roman type (rather than Iron Age, when terrets first appeared)Â and although they are occasionally found in 1st century contexts most seem to be of 2nd century AD date. The terret consists of a oval loop which has a lozenge-shaped cross-section around most of its circumference, with the exception of a short section which has a narrowed rectangular cross-section in between a pair of wider collars. This part of the terret would have been secured onto the yoke (see reconstruction below). The loop becomes slightly thicker before it joins the collars, which have oval cross-sections and decoration in the form of a circumferential grooved line. Originally there would have been three knops projecting from the outside of the loop, but one of these (that opposite the narrowed section) has broken off. The two surviving knops are sub-spherical and each is decorated with a single circumferential grooved line. They are purely decorative.
Click here to view the Chariot Maker’s website.
The second find is a copper alloy toggle (SOM-946D43) of late Iron Age or early Roman date. The toggle is cylindrical with a loop on one side, which would have been used to attach the toggle to clothing or horse harness. The loop has a broader curving central section which narrows slightly on each side before flaring out again at the point where it meets the main body of the toggle. At each end of the cylinder is a slightly expanded terminal which contains a deep and wide groove on the side opposite the loop. There is a further similar feature in the centre of the bar. Lipped decoration such as this is more commonly seen on late Iron Age terret harness fittings.
PAS record number: SOM-946D43
Object type: Toggle
Broadperiod: Iron Age
County of discovery: Somerset
Stable url: https://finds.org.uk/database/artefacts/record/id/203968
01/24/2008
A rare Roman coin of the emperor Trajan that celebrates Rome’s conquest of Mesopotamia (modern Iraq) in AD 115, has just been recorded with the Portable Antiquities Scheme. It was found by Frank Kurzeja at Shoreham-by-Sea and reported to Liz Andrews-Wilson, Finds Liaison Officer for Sussex.
Sam Moorhead at the British Museum writes that this coin shows Trajan standing triumphant in military attire above three figures representing Armenia and the rivers Euphrates and Tigris.
The inscriptions are worn away, but one states that Armenia and Mesopotamia have been brought back under Roman domination. Not content with his conquest of Dacia (modern Romania), Trajan determined to defeat his Middle Eastern enemies and this coin is his ‘mission accomplished’ statement that circulated throughout the Roman Empire. Ironically, the Roman occupation of Iraq was short-lived; Trajan’s successor, Hadrian, pulled out of Mesopotamia only a couple of years later.
To see this coin and to learn more about Roman coins found in Britain, go to the Portable Antiquities Scheme website: www.finds.org.uk This coin’s record number is SUSS-977223.
PAS record number: SUSS-977223
Object type: Coin
Broadperiod: Roman
County of discovery: West Sussex
Stable url:
https://finds.org.uk/database/artefacts/record/id/191919
