British Archaeology, no 23, April 1997: News

A large Neolithic enclosure, perhaps used for the exchange of flint and other goods, has been found on Gardom's Edge in the Peak District. The D-shaped site appears to be a form of causewayed enclosure, a type of monument fairly common in southern England but with few certain examples in the North.

The enclosure is overlain by (and therefore predates) a Bronze and Iron Age landscape of cairns, field systems and other boundaries. It has been surveyed jointly by the Peak National Park and the English Royal Commission, and consists of a low, wide, rubble-and-stone bank some 600m long, with at least seven entrances and a boulder-strewn interior. It seems neither to have been an occupation site nor a defensive structure.

According to Stewart Ainsworth of the Royal Commission, the evidence that it may have been a trading centre comes from the discovery over recent years of large numbers of Neolithic flint artefacts nearby, including barbed-and-tanged arrowheads and polished axes, and from the enclosure's location in the landscape.

Gardom's Edge lies on the boundary between the eastern, less hospitable part of the Peak District, where no other Neolithic sites are known, and the more fertile limestone areas to the west, which contain several Neolithic sites such as the settlement of Lismore Fields near Buxton. Gardom's Edge straddles two valleys which would have formed natural routeways from east to west, and it is one of the first places travellers would reach as they moved from the Neolithic occupation zone towards the flint-rich Yorkshire and Lincolnshire Wolds. Some of the flint found at Gardom's Edge is thought to have come from Lincolnshire.

`I believe the enclosure was built here because this was a neutral zone between two settlement regions, where people could come to exchange, say, cattle and crops for flint, ' Mr Ainsworth said.

According to John Barnatt of the Peak National Park, the site may also have been used for ritual feasting and for exposure of the dead. 'It was perhaps visited as part of the seasonal round by communities moving around the surrounding landscape, ' he said.

The Royal Commission's survey work on Gardom's Edge formed one part of a five-year project, surveying the largely Bronze Age landscapes of the eastern Peak. The area was hitherto thought to contain almost no surviving Bronze Age settlement sites, but the survey has found numerous house-platforms amongst the fields. One has been excavated by the Peak Park and Sheffield University and produced postholes, pottery and other domestic material of the Late Bronze and Early Iron Age.

`This suggests timber houses were the norm here in the Bronze Age, as in the Cheviots and other northern areas, but unlike on Dartmoor and elsewhere in the South where stone-footed roundhouses are more normal,' Mr Ainsworth said.

Evidence for what seems to have been an enlightened level of healthcare and respect for the indigent poor of 18th-19th century Newcastle has been found in the town's Infirmary cemetery. The site is one of the few graveyards of this period yet excavated, as most are still in use.

Newcastle Infirmary, founded in 1751, catered for the poor who had either fallen ill with non-infectious diseases or had suffered accidents. Records from the early 19th century show that inmates included foreign sailors passing through the port and Irish labourers; some had burns, one had been crushed by a coal-wagon, and others had lung complaints and TB. The cemetery went out of use in 1845.

The excavations, which were funded by Tyne and Wear Development Corporation and ended last month, found numerous skeletons with amputated legs and arms, and some with trepanation holes in the skull. According to the excavation director, John Nolan of Newcastle City Council, up to half displayed signs of major medical intervention intended to save life. All had been buried in coffins, not shrouds.

The Infirmary was a teaching hospital and some skeletons had the tops of their skulls removed, either for autopsy or medical demonstration. One complete leg attached to part of a pelvis suggested a dissection had been performed. Evidence was also found for the seemingly bizarre custom of burying amputated limbs with bodies to which they did not originally belong.

British archaeology is becoming `increasingly fragmented and underfunded', it is experiencing a `lowering of standards in fieldwork and research', and an `overall lack of co-ordination and common purpose'. These were among the sentiments expressed at an extraordinary gathering of more than 100 archaeologists last month who met to discuss the deteriorating state of the discipline in Britain.

The archaeologists, who met at a Council meeting of the CBA in York, included senior representatives of English Heritage, Historic Scotland, Cadw, the three national Royal Commissions and several local authorities, with directors of contracting units, academics, independent archaeologists and amateurs. Their discussion was held against a background of funding cuts to national agencies and museums, the dissipation of archaeological provision in local authorities, and the effects of competitive tendering in developer-funded archaeology - all issues that have been discussed in British Archaeology over recent months.

Roger Mercer, Secretary of the Scottish Royal Commission, whose budget has been cut by a third over the past six years, pointed out that the current crisis in British archaeology was not of the discipline's own making. `Politicians must understand that archaeology's problems have come about because of external factors bearing down on us. They are not our fault, ' he said.

The advent of National Lottery money for archaeological projects was seen as a mixed blessing, as it had encouraged a stream of `whimsical proposals' developed without any overall strategic direction. It was also, more alarmingly, beginning to replace central government funding, according to Tom Hassall, Secretary of the English Royal Commission. 'It is very, very worrying that one-off project funding from the Lottery is replacing long-term core funding, ' he said.

The increasing inability of museums to accept material from excavations - and to keep their present archives open for research - was noted as a particularly damaging consequence of central budget cuts to museums. Philip Dixon, CBA President, said the problem was the lack of a national policy on who was responsible for the long-term maintenance of archives. `It's a case of divide and rule - or divide and be ruled in our case, ' he said.

Several archaeologists at the meeting claimed that fieldwork standards had fallen since the advent of competitive tendering for rescue archaeology in 1990, partly because of the tendency of many developers `to accept the lowest bid' regardless of the quality of the tender. Sebastian Payne, of English Heritage, pointed out that while contracting and sub-contracting units had proliferated, there was no system of professional accreditation in archaeology. `We also have no effective monitoring of the quality of the work done, ' he said.

Local authority archaeologists - in effect the `quality control' officers of the contract-archaeology system - were claimed to be increasingly hard-pressed and overworked, as a result of cuts in most councils' budgets, especially those affected by local government reorganisation. The disbanding, this year, of the highly-acclaimed conservation service in Bedfordshire was seen as a particularly deplorable consequence of the changes.

Following the discussion, the CBA resolved to increase the visibility of the subject in the public eye; to draw public attention to the threats faced by archaeological sites and records; to continue to argue archaeology's case to central and local government; and to attempt to re-establish a sense of common purpose in the discipline.

Three shipwrecks

The second, off the North Carolina coast, is believed to be the wreck of the notorious pirate Blackbeard's ship, the Queen Anne's Revenge, which was sunk in an engagement with the Royal Navy in 1718. The ship was the largest pirate ship of its day, with 40 guns, and American archaeologists hope its discovery will shed important new light on piracy in the period.

The third is the Spanish galleon La Capitana Jesus Maria, which sank off Ecuador in 1654 laden with treasure. This wreck, however, is unlikely to add much to the historical record, as it was located by a Norwegian treasure-hunter, and it remains unclear whether archaeologists will be present during its recovery.

Bones found last century in a casket in the walls of St David's Cathedral, Pembrokeshire, have been radiocarbon-dated to the 11th or 12th century and may have belonged to St Caradog, who was buried in the cathedral in 1124. Analysis of the bones - which some had hoped to belong to the 6th century St David himself - suggest their owner ate mainly fish, as St Caradog, who lived as a hermit on nearby Newgale beach, may have done.

Breton Stonehenge

The final phase of Stonehenge may have been the work of `intrusive and powerful leaders from Brittany', according to Aubrey Burl, a leading expert on stone circles. The shape and alignment of parts of the monument - including the horseshoe of trilithons - and the carvings on some of the stones, have no parallels in Britain but echo numerous sites in Brittany. `The entire design of the final Stonehenge was foreign, revolutionary, and inimical to indigenous styles,' he writes in the latest issue of the Wiltshire Archaeological and Natural History Magazine.

NEWS is compiled by Simon Denison