Issue 84
September/October 2005
Contents
news
We found new megalith, say dowsers
Good news for Silbury Hill - if money is found
Orkney dig first to date gold and amber jewellery
Objectors scent victory at Stonehenge
Stone plaque is first neolithic face in over a century
features
Saving the H Blocks - Long Kesh/Maze: An archaeological opportunity
The artefacts of fear...and why we should preserve them - Laura McAtackney questions Northern Island proposal
Cemetery requiem for a lost age
Roberta Gilchrist reveals extraordinary Christian practices
Lake rescue
Saving Llangors Crannog, a unique medieval Welsh royal island, from erosion
on the web
letters
CBA news
Headlines from the CBA office.
ISSN 1357-4442
Editor Mike Pitts
Issue 84 September/October 2005
on the web
Laptop excavator
Caroline Wickham-Jones goes digging.
I have great admiration for those with the energy after a day in the field to write a web diary or "blog"; even more for those who have the skills or contacts to maintain an all-singing, all-dancing excavation website whilst running their field project. It is hard enough for archaeologists to put together a speedy publication, never mind produce an instant distillation.
Excavation websites vary greatly, but essentially the information remains the same. There are home grown versions often produced for minimal cost (www.archaeologyonline.org), professional offshoots of academic or commercial sites (www.york.ac.uk/depts/arch/quoygrew), and fancy, high-tech sites produced with independent finance (www.channel4.com/history/timeteam).
Written during or immediately after fieldwork, excavation websites provide an important if colourful insight into the archaeologist's role. They allow both public and academic to access project information.
Perhaps the dig website is most important for those who wish to join in. It is one of the most common ways to get into archaeology, with websites giving information on potential digs (www.sat.org.uk). Meanwhile blogs provide a glimpse of the digger's world for those who will never make it into the trenches (www.kennet.gov.uk/planservices/AveburyW.nsf/AllCanningsdiary_2004). The increasing availability of broadband makes video footage practical (www.wessexarch.co.uk/projects/amesbury/video.html). Text and illustrations convey aims, research designs and even results as they are unearthed and studied.
Academics too have reason to access project websites. Diaries give essential background (www.ashmolean.museum/gri/4sea1no2.html) and gossip (matt.pope.users.btopenworld.com/boxgrove/bunker.htm). Interim (catal.arch.cam.ac.uk) and specialist reports (www.high-pasture-cave.org) can be valuable.
As long as authors know that their unedited reports will go online, this can only be commended for providing instant access for those studying related fields. It is of particular value when people wish to place their own studies in a wider context.
Dissemination like this is not a substitute for careful editing and publication (www.sair.org.uk), but one can think of many old excavations, still unpublished, where even the most basic of internet reports would have made a big difference to archaeology.
Another side to the excavation website is gradually changing the profession. When archaeology first began to talk seriously to the public in the 1980s, it was not uncommon to find people unable to commit themselves to interpretation. There are still some who find it hard. Those who espouse the excavation blog and website have to get used to this. Archaeologists are gradually becoming more comfortable with the idea of putting forward one view on Tuesday only to change their minds, in public, on Friday. The profession has a human face.
People are increasingly used to small packets of information that may change with time. They do not expect, or want, grand theories that fill a book, but are interested in brief snapshots. Their attention caught, they will follow into a maze of detail that gradually builds into a grander whole. Paper publication does not lend itself to this type of dissemination: the internet is ideal. Web pages provide a great way to tell people what we are doing.
Excavation websites will not (should not) replace detailed and carefully edited publication, whether on paper or electronic, but they do have a crucial role for archaeology in the 21st century.
Sites to search for information on excavations
- Whitehall Farm Roman Villa & Landscape project - www.whitehallvilla.co.uk
- Excellent example of community archaeology in the professional world
- Archaeology on About.com - archaeology.about.com
- US based site offering summaries and links to a wide variety of information from around the world on digs, archaeologists and films with archaeological themes. Worth ignoring the irritating adverts to have a look
- Boxgrove - matt.pope.users.btopenworld.com/boxgrove/boxhome.htm
- A simple site with some complex information
- Çatalhöyük - catal.arch.cam.ac.uk
- A good example of the wide variety of information possible in the well resourced website
- Saveock Water Archaeology - www.archaeologyonline.org
- Some fancy links take you around this interesting project, into the possibilities of joining in, and further afield
Entrance to the underworld
Steven Birch and a small team of archaeologists are excavating a remarkable cave on the Isle of Skye.
In May 2002, I discovered prehistoric deposits in a high-level fossil passage in Uamh an Ard Achadh (High Pasture Cave), a natural limestone cave on the island of Skye with 320m of accessible passages. The material had been disturbed by cavers five years before, the cave itself having been found in 1972 by students from the University of London Speleological Society: it is the second longest cave complex on Skye. Martin Wildgoose, George Kozikowski and I began our project as rescue survey and excavation, but in 2004, with funding from Historic Scotland and the Society of Antiquaries, and assistance from the National Museums of Scotland of Scotland, we turned to research.
Trial excavation uncovered almost a metre of in-situ deposits in the cave. Large quantities of artefacts and ecofacts were recovered. Bone is well-preserved, and wet sieving produced fish bones, charred grain, iron hammer scale and other items; animal remains include brown bear and wolf canines, a butchered cow and a small midden of periwinkles. Amongst the artefacts were antler and bone objects, coarse pebble tools, pieces of stone rotary quern and a fine iron socketed adze with a fragment of the wooden handle. Possible late bronze age pottery and a radiocarbon date of 390–160BC (from a pig mandible) confirmed a prehistoric context.
In the passage's upper fills around 90% of the animal bone was pig, unusual in Hebridean assemblages where 20–25% is the norm from broch and dun sites. Preliminary analysis by Carrie Drew and Peter Rowley-Conwy at the University of Durham has identified at least 12 individuals. Many vertebrae were cleaved, suggesting animals had been divided into left and right portions, an unusual butchery practice for this period of prehistory, perhaps for feasting.
We surveyed the landscape around the cave entrance and the cave passages below ground. Stone-built structures above the cave, including a roundhouse, cells and a U-shaped enclosure, also suggest prehistoric activity.
This unusual site may have been an important aspect of the late bronze age/early iron age Skye landscape (1200–450BC). Are we looking at a "natural" form of souterrain, for which we have many man-made parallels in the island? Or could this be a more unusual type of site, possibly with links directly to the underworld?
This year we are concentrating on trial excavations on the surface, exploring the possible original cave entrance revealed by ground penetrating radar within the U-shaped enclosure. We had always thought there should be an alternative entrance, because of the present difficulties of access, with around 60m of stream passage – a factor that became more apparent during removal of archaeological deposits from the cave for wet sieving!
We launched the High Pasture Cave website in February (www.high-pasture-cave.org), before starting fieldwork in March. First to go live was the news section, followed by the photographic virtual tour of the cave. As work progresses, we post an excavation diary with plans and photos, detailing strategy and achievements – and weather delays (heavy rain and strong wind kept us off the site for 10 days in March).
Separate entries describe finds with many photographs. We have uncovered a remarkable depth of well-stratified deposits – now over 3m, unusual for a prehistoric Scottish site. Our preliminary interpretations suggest that during the early iron age the cave was deliberately back-filled with sediments rich in ecofacts and artefacts, and granite cobbles and boulders. The "special" pig deposit may have been associated with this event. A thick layer of quite sterile clay was used to "seal" the former entrance.
Substantial essays on the website describe the earlier work in 2002/3 and 2004, with 10 specialist reports on material recovered last year. These range from Ruby Ceron-Carrasco (University of Edinburgh) describing fish bones and marine molluscs and Claire LPannell (University of Glasgow) on land snails, to reports on small finds and pottery. There are also articles about the cave, and information on how to find us.
The website was joint funded by Highland Council and Skye & Lochalsh Leader+, an European Community initiative. We hope to have a regular core of visitors (we are already up to over 12,000 hits) when we hope to break through into the cave's original entrance. Watch the web.
Steven Birch is co-director of the High Pasture Cave Project with Martin Wildgoose.
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