Issue 78

September 2004

Contents

news

Third Neolithic longhouse found in Scotland

Rare Medieval track excavated

Decorated shears trimmed Celtic hair

Iron Age 'bender' in Margate

Barrow saved from walkers

In Brief

features

Pagans
Robert J Wallis and Jenny Blain report from the other side

Boscombe grave
The truth behind the latest Stonehenge Beaker finds

Digging up art
Clive Waddington reveals first dates for British rock art

Bronze bog hoard
Surprising objects in prehistoric hoard in Armagh

Seahenge story
Mark Brennand excavates on the beach

Forest fire
Peter Fowler describes new discoveries in the Languedoc

letters

Ethnicity, mysticism, Roman disputes and hedges

opinion

Peter Drewett bemoans the lack of field skills

Spoilheap

Neil Mortimer fights stone circle power on Ebay

books

Past Poetic: Archaeology in the Poetry of WB Yeats & Seamus Heaney by Christine Finn

Antiquaries: the Discovery of the Past in Eighteenth-Century Britain by Rosemary Sweet

Trethurgy: Excavations at Trethurgy Round, St Austell: Community & Status in Roman & Post-Roman Cornwall by Henrietta Quinnell

Urban Growth & the Medieval Church: Gloucester & Worcester by Nigel Baker & Richard Holt

Behaviour Behind Bones: the Zooarchaeology of Ritual, Religion, Status & Identity by Sharon Jones O’Day, Wim Van Neer & Anton Ervynck

Public Archaeology by Nick Merriman

The Victoria History of the Counties of England. Stafford vol IX: Burton-Upon-Trent by Institute of Historical Research

Archaeology, Ritual, Religion by Timothy Insoll

Charter Quay: the Archaeology of Kingston’s Riverside by Wessex Archaeology

Melrose Abbey by Richard Fawcett & Richard Oram

Places of Special Virtue: Megaliths in the Neolithic Landscape of Wales by Vicki Cummings & Alasdair Whittle

Human Evolution Cookbook by Harold L Dibble, Dan Williamson & Brad M Evans

CBA update

tv in ba

Looking back on a season of wars and battles

science

Chief archaeological scientist Sebastian Payne's new column

my archaeology

Philip Beale left his job for an archaeological experiment

ISSN 1357-4442

Editor Mike Pitts

news

A trial excavation at Crathes, south-west of Aberdeen, has shown that a cropmark first recognised in 1976 represents a large Neolithic timber building. Any houses are extremely rare in southern Britain, but this is the third of this type to be found in Scotland, all destroyed by fire. The find will encourage further debate about the function of a range of Scottish Neolithic wooden structures thought to be dwellings, stores or ritual sites.

The 10 day dig took place on the National Trust for Scotland’s Crathes Castle Estate, to ascertain the nature of the building and an adjacent pit alignment in a field where damage could occur from such as event marquees and vehicles. Hilary Murray, co-director for Murray Archaeological Services, said the site was in exceptional condition, despite ploughing and being ‘awash with rabbits’.

The 9 m by 22 m structure could have been a substantial roofed building. Intense fire had burnt the outsides of massive posts resulting in their precise sizes and positions being indicated by rings of charcoal. Two pits in the centre were lined with burnt branches, and remains of a carbonised wooden bowl were found. Pits in the alignment also contained charcoal, but no artefacts.

Pottery and stone tools show Crathes to be approximately contemporary with two similar structures dated to 4,000-3,500 bc. At Balbridie, just across the River Dee to the south from Crathes, was a building 12 m by 24 m, also spotted from the air in 1976 and until excavation thought to be a Medieval hall (feature, July 2002). A very similar structure was recently excavated near Callander, Perthshire (News, December 2001). At Balbridie fire had preserved quantities of wheat and barley grains, as well as flax seeds and crab apple pips, and burnt hazelnut shells were found at Balbridie, Callander and Crathes.

Prehistoric timber trackways are well known, but in June archaeologists excavated an unusual Early Medieval track at Llancynfelyn near Talybont, Ceredigion. Radiocarbon suggested construction between AD 900-1020, and dendrochronology dates the felling of three trees to AD 1080-1120. Substantial evidence for industrial activity and a possible major lead processing and smelting complex were found at one end of the track, which may have been built to transport ore from the nearby mines at Llangynfelyn. Cambria Archaeology (supported by Cadw and Birmingham University) says much interest was shown in the excavation by local people and media. The trackway was revealed by agricultural draining on the edge of Cors Fochno (Borth Bog).

Unique engraved copper alloy shears have been found at an Iron Age site in Essex. Well preserved but missing the tips of both blades, they were excavated at a small settlement dating to c 20 bc-ad 70, around the time of the Roman conquest. They are likely to have been hair scissors: classical writers noted Celts took considerable care of their hair, and men of their moustaches and beards.

The find was made at Hamperden End, Henham during the laying of a Transco gas pipeline between Cambridge and Matching Green in 2002. Derek Cater, project officer for Network Archaeology, told British Archaeology that the shears were near the bottom of a ditch separating two circular gullies thought to have enclosed roundhouses.

The shears lay horizontally, aligned with the length of the ditch, suggesting they may have been placed as a sacrifice, perhaps having been deliberately broken. Valuable metal items such as swords are not uncommonly found broken and deposited in wet places. At Flag Fen, near Peterborough, a complete pair of bronze shears were found inside a carved wooden case, the only previously confirmed non-iron shears of this date from the UK. Twice the size of the Essex pair and undecorated, they were said to resemble sheep shears but to be fine enough for human use.

JD Hill, curator of the British Museum’s Iron Age collections, says polishing and nicks on the blades show the Essex shears had been well-used. He compares the engraved designs to the ‘Mirror Style’ of La Tène art, found on copper alloy mirrors, sword scabbards and a spearhead made between the 2nd century bc and the 1st century ad.

Mirrors, which are occasionally found in rich graves, and shears would both have been needed by a small elite increasingly concerned with their appearance. Describing the Gauls in France, Greek historian Diodorus Siculus (c 90-21 bc) wrote that noblemen ‘shave their cheeks but let their moustaches grow free enough to cover their mouths’. Boudica had long red hair, and hair colouring was said to be popular.

A large oval pit dug into chalk at Trinity Square, Margate, is thought to be a sunken-floored Iron Age hut, unique in Britain. Around the edge, stakes were placed in holes that lean towards the centre, suggesting a structure like a modern ‘bender’.

Part of the hut’s chalk floor sank into a large backfilled cylindrical pit, and had to be re-laid. Three posts stood on the floor. To the south-east was a stepped entrance leading down into the hut, which had niches cut into its edge. A similar example is known in Cordoba, southern Spain.

Two articulated adult skeletons (sex and exact age to be determined) were found lying above the floor and beneath a thick layer of charcoal and burnt wattle-impressed daub. Paul Wilkinson of SWAT Archaeology speculates that when the hut’s inhabitants died they were ‘laid out’ in their home, which was then fired and allowed to collapse over their bodies. What remained of the structure was then deliberately filled in.

Nearby were a further five cylindrical storage pits, in which were found a few human bones and pieces of fine pottery bowls dating from c 550-400 bc. Adjacent post hole groups suggest a timber palisade enclosed a round house on the hilltop, a good vantage point overlooking a valley to the west and the sea to the north and east. Finds from other pits indicate settlement continued until 300 bc.

The excavation was conducted in April in advance of development.

Archaeologists in Wales have conserved a Bronze Age barrow on top of the Black Mountain, at Fan Foel, the highest point in Carmarthenshire. They had to climb 45 minutes there and back every day. ‘It was a spectacular place to work’, said Gwilym Hughes, director of Cambria Archaeology, ‘with views to Devon, Pembrokeshire and mid Wales. But it was very, very windy – the weather was dreadful’.

Monitoring erosion of the barrow for two years, archaeologists had noticed that the surrounding stone kerb was disappearing. The greatest threat came from a walkers’ cairn in the centre, which recently acquired a Tupperware ‘geocache’ box. Visitors to the box were eroding the turf, and picking up stones from the barrow to add to the cairn.

Believing that associated cremation burials might be lost, archaeologists cleared the barrow to the top of the original earth mound, which was only 50 cm high. A half intact burial, consisting of fragments of an urn and burnt bone, was found in the kerb. Within the mound but to one side was what is believed to be the primary burial, a stone-walled cist that contained a ‘Food Vessel’ type pot with cremated bone, two flint scrapers and a possible flint knife blade.

After excavation of vulnerable features, the site was covered with geotextile and prepared for grass regrowth. The project was funded by Cadw and the Brecon Beacons National Park.

Villa saved

Liverpool win and loss

Minister's support

Heritage protection reviewed

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