Total posts:
187
11/21/2007
Those of you who are up early and listen to BBC Radio Lincolnshire may have heard the report of a 1st/2nd century cremation urn. The urn was found about a year ago in someones front garden in the St Katherines area near South Park, Lincolnshire.
It was a jaw-dropping moment when I saw the object being brought in at a recent finds day – by far the most unusual and rare object i’ve had in during a finds day!
The urn was nearly complete and contained the ashes and partially-burnt bone of an individual. One bone showed curious knife marks, and until the bone is analysed we can’t be sure whether this particular bone belongs to the deceased or an animal sacrifice associated with the cremation.
The find spot was not too suprising, given that it is on a main road in to the city, and outside the city walls. Roman law stated that you couldn’t bury within the city walls.
11/20/2007
Before I forget – last week I went back to the lovely children (Year 5) of Carleton St Hilda’s Primary School in Poulton-le-Fylde, Lancashire, near Blackpool. This was my second visit as I didn’t get everything done when I went there back in October! The first time I had brought in my time line, finds and some work sheets which they children seem to enjoy… and remember, as I was to find out last week! The children still knew what archaeology is and that finds, especially pottery and flints, need to be handled with uttermost care and always over a table, close to the floor or held with two hands. They also remembered that you have to wash your hands after handling finds – surely that shows how much they enjoyed the session? While we just went through the time line quickly the first time, we did it with a bit more depth this time: every child was a allowed to pick an artefact and they learned that usually, artefacts are made from metal, glass, pottery, stone, bone or possibly plastic (the more modern ones!). We didn’t have any wooden or leather artefacts because wood and leather ‘rots’ in the ground, as they children knew. They looked at Stone Age chert debitage, a Bronze Age axehead, Roman coins, brooches and pottery, Medieval pottery and floor tiles, horse harness pendants, a coin and Victorian and Modern toys, a tooth brush, gun flints and a thimble – I hope that they learned that today we use stuff made from many more different materials than we did in the Bronze and Iron Age!!
I’d also brought sheets of a Roman tombstone activity which is not strictly speaking a ‘Portable Antiquity’, but one of the most important archaeological discoveries from Lancashire in the past 50 or 60 years. I thought that the kids would enjoy looking at the gruesome scene on the tombstone (a Roman rider who just beheaded a barbarian, still holding his head in his right hand!), colouring it in and talking about it and why it’s so important for the county. They all loved this activity as well as the ‘Design your own tombstone’ one, which does not mean THEIR tombstone, but another one for the Roman soldier!
This school, too, asked me to come back in January to do an archaeology session with their Year 1, 3 and 4. Hurray!!!
11/06/2007
Treasure Trounces 2006 Record
In 2006 there were a record number of 647 Treasure cases recorded in England but as of 6th November 2007 this number has been exceeded. A record breaking number of 650 Treasure cases have been reported in 2007 so far, with just under two months still to go the number of Treasure cases reported since 1st January 2007 has exceeded any previous year and is set to carry on rising.
This unprecedented volume of Treasure being reported under Treasure Act 1996 is in no small way attributable to the great work of the Portable Antiquities Scheme and its network of Finds Liaison Officers, without which the reporting and processing of Treasure cases would be greatly hindered and this continuing increase in reported Treasure would not be seen.
11/01/2007
Colchester’s very own Terracotta Army has been created by the towns Young Archaeologists’ Club!
Part of Colchester Castle Museum was over run in late September by a range of warriors, horses and chariots. These fantastic creations were inspired by the Terracotta Army of China’s first emperor, Qin Shihuangdi, which is currently on display in the British Museum.
The YAC’s spent part of the morning learning about burial customs from around the world, including the Chinese Terracotta Army, and Colchester’s very own warrior burial from Lexden Mount (of display in Colchester Castle Museum).
 The day combined the wonderful artistic skills of young people from north Essex with their love of archaeology and history to create this impressive miniature army!
10/02/2007
I have now being at UCL for a week and despite all their attempts to stop me from doing any work, I am just about managing to fit some in around enrolling, fresher’s week and finding my way around London.
On my first day as a PhD student, Sam Moorhead and I spent hours with the Surrey FLO, David Williams sorting a large assemblage of coins found by several detectorists in Hampshire. They come from a watery spring site and as I am interested in all things votive, I was very keen to analyse them. Although we only managed to do some basic sorting, it highlighted the possibilities of regional variation in 4th century reverses. There were several FEL TEMP REPARATIO types (particularly the phoenix on globe and man being dragged from hut) which were reasonably common amongst the Hampshire assemblage but which I had never seen as FLO for the North East or Cambridgeshire. Regional variation is obviously something I am going to be looking into in a great deal more detail.
Anyway, having started with a Hampshire site, it seemed sensible to have a go at making sense of all the Hampshire PAS data. And so I am now trawling through all 3502 records and playing around with them. Watch this space for some results…hopefully quite soon!
09/18/2007
Hello again,
Well, i’m back from a busy three days recording finds at the Panton rally, Lincs. Thanks to all who offered up finds for recording. We had just under 200 finds from the weekend, including the usual array of Roman grots, hammered pennies and strap ends. Interestingly, thanks to your reporting it now looks like we’ve now got a new Early-Middle Saxon site.
It will take a few weeks to get the finds on to the database, so please bear with me and keep checking back on the blog for updates. Sam, our roman coin expert has some interesting ideas on the late Roman period in this area, and hopefully the coins from the rally confirmed his crackpot theories.
We only had one negative comment from the rally – apparently there was better FLO totty at Water Newton. Pfff.