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Issue 66August 2002ContentsnewsNative village that dabbled in Roman culture Roman mosaic found inches below ploughsoil Egyptian seal and a ‘cave of jewels’ at Scottish mansion The 7,700-year-old woman who ate like a wolf Rare Iron Age temple excavated near Cambridge featuresWhen Burial Begins Chemical Revolution Great Sites lettersThe West Midlands in prehistory and the closure of railways issuesGeorge Lambrick on the importance of museum collections Peter EllisbooksThe Welsh Border by Trevor Rowley Digging up the Past by John Collis The Extraordinary Voyage of Pytheas the Greek by Barry Cunliffe CBA updatefavourite findsVal Turner on a Pictish stone that spooked a gravedigger
ISSN 1357-4442 Editor Simon Denison |
favourite findsSuspicions of mischiefVal Turner on the stone that almost got her arrested My favourite find was a Pictish stone from Mail churchyard in Shetland. Truth to tell, I didn't actually find it. It was found in 1992 by a gravedigger, who'd been waiting for a funeral cortège to arrive when he noticed that one of the stones they were going to put the coffin on had some Egyptian-looking scratches in it. He rang me at home and left a message saying he'd found a stone that looked Egyptian. People ring me all the time to tell me about things they've found in Shetland, and this one didn't sound very promising so I didn't react immediately. The next night, he left three or four messages. The stone was clearly important to him so I decided I'd better go to his house and see it. When I got there, I was stunned. The stone, about 2ft long, had a carving of a dog-headed person standing sideways-on with an Egyptian-looking head-dress and beard. I didn't know whether it was a real Pictish stone or not - but I took it away anyway. My first reaction was, was I being set up? There were a few people who I thought had the knowledge to trick me, and one of them, the island archivist, happened to be the gravedigger's cousin. So I was a bit suspicious, and raced off round Lerwick in my car trying to find him, showing the stone to anyone I met. I never found the archivist. But the stone had nothing to do with him anyway. The next day was Saturday and I was due to spend the weekend on one of the islands, Fetlar. I still had this stone in the back of my car. As it happened, the person in charge of the island's museum service was in the queue for the ferry, so I called him over for his opinion. No question, he said. It's a fake. Anyway the Shetland Times published the story, and the next day the previous gravedigger at Mail opened the paper and had a total fit. He had found the stone originally in 1960 and been spooked by it, turned it upside down and put it in the graveyard wall. So he came to me, very worried that he'd done the wrong thing. I was just relieved, because it proved I wasn't being set up, and also that the stone probably wasn't a modern forgery because the closest parallel - a stone from Grampian called the Rhynie Stone - was not found until the 1970s. Anyway, after taking photographs of it, I decided for the time being it could go back to the current gravedigger, and he kept it for a while in his porch at home. Meanwhile, the National Museum got hold of the story. One of the officials there decided that all this laid-back Shetland behaviour was absolutely outrageous and the stone should be treasure trove. So she instantly declared it treasure trove without having seen it. That meant the National Museum had to decide what it was worth - and to do that they had to judge if it was real. So they came to Shetland, examined it, were satisfied, and paid the finder - I think - £2,000. Then the treasure trove panel awarded the stone to Shetland, so it came to our local museum, which is where it would have come anyway. I went on to publish the stone, deciding it was probably part of a cross-slab of the early 7th century. Our run-in with the National Museum had a final twist. Some time later, I was giving a lecture about the stone at a conference, and said that, in all, about nine stones of Pictish or Viking origin had been found in Mail churchyard. This same official was in the audience, and she promptly reported me to the Crown Prosecution Service - on the grounds that I'd got nine Pictish stones hidden in my house! It was hilarious, as most of these other stones are actually in the National Museum. I was so disappointed that the police never came to arrest me. I was going to have such fun with them. Val Turner is the Regional Archaeologist for Shetland |
CBA web:British ArchaeologyFebruary 2000 CBA BriefingFieldwork CBA homepage |
