Issue 110

Jan / Feb 2010

Contents

news

Burnt mound theory tested to perfection

Dig find proves flowers placed in bronze age graves

UK's first complete Roman lantern found in Suffolk

Research continues as Saxon hoard is valued at £3.3m

in the press

in brief & phase 2

features

Newhenge: Latest discoveries and interpretations from the Stonehenge Riverside Project team

Dig the beat: Exploring pop music from an archaeological perspective, including additional online content

THE BIG DIG Mellor: A hillfort in the garden: This long-running research excavation near Stockport, Greater Manchester, is now ready for publication

The Peat Men from Clonycavan and Oldcroghan: Findings of the Bog Bodies Research Project at the National Museum of Ireland, with Bibliography

letters

your views and responses

on the web

Caroline Wickham-Jones looks at archaeological gifts

Dan Pett summarises the website set-up and technologies for the Staffordshire Hoard

spoilheap

on the web

For the hunter who has everything

With Christmas and the new year nearly upon us at the time of publication, Caroline Wickham-Jones wondered what the web has to offer for last-minute gifts for archaeologists.

When thinking of presents for friends and family, what better to buy the archaeologically-inclined than something that relates to their interests? English Heritage and Historic Scotland both provide online shopping with plenty of books, models (a build your own Stonehenge – in miniature, no car parking facilities) and some scary-looking weapons. Cadw encourages you to visit your local shop (you can buy over the phone but there is no online catalogue) and the Northern Ireland Environment Agency is not concerned with shopping at all.

The National Trust suggests that a game of "stately pile" Monopoly might satisfy your inner aristocrat, while in Scotland there are plenty of heritage cards and baubles as well as a selection of fine (no doubt vintage) whiskies.

For those who want to get out and about all of these organisations offer membership packages. The Council for British Archaeology's own website provides both membership and magazine options, while straightforward journals, magazines, and memberships are available from various specialised societies from Ancient Buildings to ancient Egypt.

There are academic and popular books aplenty. Perhaps our best known online retailer is Oxbow, where the website offers so much more than just a list of titles, but plenty of others exist, see the CBA's Archaeology Online service.

The serious archaeologist would be lost without the right equipment, and nothing can be more important than getting the right trowel. How many of us have seen cheap imitations come to a sad and premature end? The Past Horizons Toolstore (WHS trowel £14) sells tools selected by "real archaeologists that you can trust". Archtools (WHS trowel £9.99) also offers clothing and even camping equipment. If you want to go the whole hog then get inspiration for some archaeological T-shirts and other ephemera from Zazzle.

If you prefer your clothing to be a little more old fashioned there is plenty of option, from fancy dress (why do cave people always wear big cat skins?) to less frivolous (Viking Clothing and Battle Re-enactment).

Perhaps you are more concerned with survival, or practicing some of those ancient skills. Ray Mears offers a comprehensive selection from fire sticks to skills training while Fergus Drennan's courses will make sure you do not accidentally poison yourself. John Lord provides a fancy range of stone tools plus the skills to make your own, and if you are in the US there is the Primitive Ways Clan.

Replicas provide another source of inspiration. Many museums have their own shops (eg British Museum and National Museums Scotland; curiously the National Museum of Wales operates its shop through eBay), but there are several virtual emporia (Museum Selection; Museum Gift Shp; Museum Store Company; Past Times).

Finally, how does all of this relate to our own lives, as 21st century consumers? I am not sure that our mesolithic forebears would recognise many of the goods >Hunter Gatherer offers, but check out the sandstone kitchen tool.

So whether you are seeking tools for serious research or more relaxing entertainment, there is no shortage of ideas for the archaeological gift this Christmas.

Caroline Wickham-Jones teaches archaeology at the University of Aberdeen

My gift wish-list

• WHS 4inch soft-handled trowel – www.archtools.co.uk
  • They didn't have these in my day – we just got calluses!
• The Archaeologist's Book of Quotations, by K Kris Hirst – www.amazon.co.uk/books
  • I would never be stuck for a relevant quote again (ISBN 13: 978-1598744347)
• Archaeologist's water bottle – www.archaeologystore.com
  • "Help save the planet while you rehydrate in style"
• Crossbow from English Heritage – www.english-heritageshop.org.uk/mall/
  • Scary, but effective-looking
• Bumper stickers from Zazzle – www.zazzle.co.uk
  • A new motif?

Meeting public interest in the hoard

Many things distinguish the Anglo-Saxon Staffordshire hoard. One is the Portable Antiquities Scheme's website, created at astonishing speed. Daniel Pett explains how it was done.

Building websites is normally something that is well planned, with a reasonable timescale. This was not the case for the showcase site for the Staffordshire Hoard. The consortium of partner organisations asked us to create a site just seven days before the launch on September 24 2009. The brief was basic: it was to replicate a draft brochure (predominantly black, with white text and some fantastic photographs), but without any budget.

I developed the site with the assistance of my wife, Katharine Kelland (British Museum education manager) in around 12 hours over four days. The Portable Antiquities Scheme has always embraced open source technology (essentially free software) and building ICT solutions on a shoestring budget with sharing at the heart of the project, and this was the methodology employed for this site. From discussions held internally, we felt that whatever was produced would have to be robust, easy to maintain and hopefully withstand a prolonged period of heavy traffic.

To achieve this, a range of open source content management systems (CMS) were investigated (Drupal, Wordpress, modx) before we chose Textpattern. The Scheme has previously used this platform for the publication of the PAStexplorers website, and it has been used for other archaeological projects (Palestine Exploration Fund, British Institute of Persian Studies and two notable sites from L-P Archaeology – Thames Discovery Project [feature, Sep/Oct 2009] and Prescot Street [On the web, Nov/Dec 2008]).

Textpattern is a flexible CMS that allows people to update, maintain and develop web content from any computer terminal, something that this project needed. It is also community-driven software, with a variety of extra add-ons or plug-ins built by contributors. The Staffordshire site makes extensive use of these, most prominently for the redisplay of the images that Birmingham Museum and Art Gallery, Staffordshire County Council and the PAS staff produced.

The PAS made a bold decision to release all the site content under a relaxed licence – a Creative Commons non-commercial share-alike – so that the public could glean the benefits of this wonderful discovery. The site was also to disseminate a rapidly-assembled list of the hoard's contents (compiled by Kevin and Diane Leahy), press statements, a reused educational game, video of the excavation, twitter updates, aggregated news and any other information that became available. However, the site's heart and most popular aspect was the imagery.

During early planning, we had decided that we needed to ensure that the images were always likely to be available, even if the server was forced offline by traffic. The solution to this was to host all the images on Flickr, which was very unlikely to suffer under the strain of user attention! This allowed users to comment upon, bookmark, embed in their own sites, share and enjoy the images all over the world – as this selection of comments shows.

"This MUST be as exciting as archaeology gets?! Truly exceptional and stunning craftsmanship. It's been great to see the hoard online so quickly. Can't wait to view it for real in Birmingham." Nigel Jones

"Fantastic to see all these photos together. Thank you for making them available to us. I saw the hoard at Birmingham Museum and was entranced." Mrs Jevs

"Totally staggering. Beautiful photos of beautiful finds. Really looking forward to learning more about each artefact." Bridget McKenzie

The images redisplayed on Flickr attracted half a million views over the first five days of the website going live – earlier than expected, as the BBC broke the news at 10:55pm on September 23 – and in the same period the hoard website attracted 175,000 visitors. The scheme servers suffered but never went offline, which bodes well for the forthcoming release of the revamped PAS database. This will hold details for all the hoard's contents, which in turn will be pulled back into the hoard website to provide a digital archive of what is a truly wonderful discovery.

Daniel Pett is ICT adviser for the Portable Antiquities Scheme at the British Museum.

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