Pete’s off to A Land Down Under!

Yes, I’m going to be a Man at Work! That’s why there haven’t been many posts recently as I’ve been planning a trip to Australia. Well it isn’t a trip, I’ve been invited to work on a town bypass scheme digging Aboriginal sites, this is all I really know at present,

“Town bypasses will be constructed around the towns of Tarcutta and Woomargama in regional NSW. Each bypass will travel through greenfield areas, crossing prominent hills, creeks and significant stretches of land. Over 50 Aboriginal archaeological sites have been identified within the proposed route of the various bypasses. Some of these sites are very significant ceremonial places, gender specific locations (e.g. women’s sites, initiation sites) or representative examples of the region’s archaeological past yielding thousands of artefacts.”

Sounds interesting, it’s a bypass near the towns of Wagga Wagga and Albury Wodonga and I’ll be working with Aboriginal archaeologists as well. So I might give a digger’s eye view of digging in Oz as well as the usual fascinating news that normally populate the pages of A Place Odyssey, you lucky people!

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Ashmolean Redeveloped

Yesterday I visited the newly expanded Ashmolean Museum of Art and Archaeology in Oxford. It has had over £61 million pounds spent on it using a new design strategy referred to as ‘Crossing Cultures Crossing Time’ which

‘is an approach based on the idea that civilisations that have shaped our modern societies developed as part of an interrelated world culture, rather than in isolation. It assumes, too, that every object has a story to tell, but these stories can best be uncovered by making appropriate comparisons and connections, tracing the journey of ideas and influences through the centuries and across continents.’

This seems like a reasonable premise for the design of museum showing many cultural objects from across space and through time, obviously Rick Mather has been reading his Deleuze and Guattari and rather liked their rhizome. However, in practice rather than showing the interconnectedness of the material culture of the world it creates a rambling  journey of disjointed assemblages, one can easily become disorientated. Some parts of the Museum themselves, whilst having great collections of ‘stuff’, are more like alleyways than exhibition spaces and act to channel people along rather than letting you stop and look at the artefacts, we decided it was an experience not unlike visiting an Ikea store. But at least Ikea looks like a finished product, almost every room in the Ashmolean had a display which either was empty, had an object still sitting in it’s polystyrene packing, or having no information panel, granted it hasn’t had it’s official opening yet but this makes it look scrappy and uncared for. There are also strange design features, windows that disappear round corners, small openings one could almost squeeze through and open doorways that lead to small empty rooms.

However the actual things in the Museum are great, and many and the new extension has enabled more of the permanent collection to be on show which can only be a good thing. It’s just a shame the museum isn’t easier to navigate, maybe if I’d planned the route beforehand and maybe followed it via OpenStreetMap on my phone things would have been clearer but there wasn’t a signal in there and I don’t like to have to make a plan of attack in a museum, which maybe a fault of my own but I’m probably not alone.

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November

Well, I got a merit for my MA, I may have mentioned I was writing a dissertation…less than I wanted probably what I deserved, I think the other Pete did similarly well. I am now working in Gloucestershire, Roman burials. Most of them of them are done, maybe a couple left, which would be nice.

Anyhow, I had applied for a few other jobs before starting this one, which amazingly is only 10 minutes drive from where I’m staying. I applied for TVAS, PCA and recently Wessex, all of which were not offering accomodation with the jobs, even Wessex in which I know both their offices are over an hour away. I don’t think this is a good way to go for diggers in commercial archaeology. I suppose they can get away with it due to the lack of demand for us at the moment, but it’s not a good move. Anyone got any comments about this?

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August

So the summer is upon us and we’ve all been very busy as is evident from the lack of exciting posts! I spent a week digging in north Wales at Abergwyngregyn. It’s the third season of work there and a return after a couple of years off. The weather was changeable at best but there should be some good results.  I’m now writing my dissertation on upland rural settlements of northern Wales from the late medieval period. PeteT went off to Fountains Abbey and dug part of an old manor house. He started off surveying the area and doing some geophysics with Drew then Clare and I did a bit of digging. Luis has disappeared off to Spain but is due for an eminent return. Drew and Clare have got the summer off from academic work as they’re studying again next year, the lucky pair, although Clare has been wandering around Broomhead Moor again looking for triangular stones!

As an aside, I have just found a rather nice short video of a large landscape, the World, and how it is seen from space. This is part of the Bella Gaia project, have a look at the video here with the project homepage here, http://www.bellagaia.com/

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Wales and Welsh maps

The Landscape Detectives have been very busy of late hence the lack of posts which I am sorry about. Of course part of the problem was the impressive nature of Clare’s report on Broomhead moor which none of us felt we could top!

However here I am trying to avoid real work. We did spend a lovely ten days in the Snowdonia National Park last month and had a great time. I mostly wandered around pointing at things and chatting to Welsh farmers about sheep, no jokes please, whilst the rest of us carried out a geophysical survey of a non-existent church and a jolly big standing stone, Llech Idris. An intensive survey of an abandoned farmstead was also undertaken by Clare who is currently drawing it up in ArcGIS with her, not inconsiderable, computer skills and I’m sure she’ll put up the end result to entice everyone to study post-medieval welsh farmhouses!

Whilst procrastinating I was looking a the Countryside Council for Wales website and came across their map for open access land which you can find here Countryside access map. It’s one of the best online maps I’ve found. I think it is based on OS data and moves around very easily and zooms into 1:5,504 although this is just a blown up 1:10,000 map. Nevertheless this provides alot of detail and different layers can be used or not. It just seems to be the most user friendly and intuitive online maps I’ve seen.

I’m off to get cracking on a fascinating report on my findings in north Wales, if anyone is interested please get in touch!

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Broomhead

 

Pete, Drew and Luis searching for the meaning of life in their GPS

Pete doing a jig on the moor

 

 

Hello everybody!

‘Didn’t we have a lovely time the day we went to Bangor  . . .’   I mean Broomhead.  (That was the first line of a song for those of you who didn’t know).  Yes, what a smashing time the Landscape Detectives had communing with the manipulated ‘natural landscape’ of Broomhead Moor.   Snow up to our knees soaking our socks and feet and mist closing in on us didn’t stop us from fulfilling our mission to see things in the landscape.   But what were these things we saw?  Here follows a very exciting description of the ‘close encounters of the landscape kind’ we experienced on this eerie and mysterious moor.  Well done if you read to the end!

To begin with we stopped off to look at the Bar Dyke bank and ditch – obscured from a distance by a pea soup mist.  Very boring description:  the bank is c. 8m wide, the top of the ditch c. 7m wide and the bottom of the ditch c. 1m wide.  It is orientated north-east to south-west with the aligned ditch on the north-west side of the embankment.   It is 400m in length and divided into three sections by two roads.  The NMR describes this as a linear embankment that could date from the Iron Age to the 5^th-7^th A.D.  No radio carbon dates have been taken.       

We drove on and parked up again.  Heading due north on foot (except Drew who kept wandering off on his own little landscape missions) we happened upon Broomhead Dyke.   Very boring description again:  this linear earthwork is c. 1200m in length and is orientated in an east-north-east to west-south-westerly direction.  The bank is aligned on the southern side of the ditch.  The ditch is c. 3m wide and up to 2m deep.  It is described in the NMR as a Bronze Age cross-dyke but it has never been dated.

 We visited these two features really to compare them to each other and to a much smaller bank and ditch that is situated between the two and running almost parallel to them.  And again:  this earthwork is c. 50 – 75m in length, with the bank being almost 2m high and the ditch c. 1m wide. 

To find this we traced our steps back to a line of grouse butts further south on the moor.  Just after the last in line we veered west and headed towards a stream which we then followed south until reaching the bank and ditch.   It was difficult to see the structure of the bank because of the snow but it was definitely there.  We discussed whether it was manmade or natural.  Drew thought it may have just been part of the stream or been built as a drainage ditch.  However, it was blocked off where it meets the stream making these two explanations unlikely.   The small tributaries seen on google earth running into it from the south-west may have developed after it had been built.   The short length and its position on the moor pose significant questions relating to its date and function.  Anyway, it made an excellent place to have a picnic.  Luis brought some interesting continental meat called Jamon Serrano (mountain ham – quite apt as we felt like mountaineers traipsing through the snow) which everyone in the world has heard of except for me.  Two of us die hard vegetarians were tempted by its fibrous texture.  Pete C actually swallowed some.  I chewed it but my stomach had a protest march when it realised what was about to land – so I had to spit it out.  Very unfortunate for the meat to be catapulted out into a nest of snow only to be detected by my undistinguished and ill-discerning dog, Sheba, who consumed it with no hesitation or thought – Yum, Yum, Yum!  She had some fresh pieces too thanks to Luis’ generosity – this comforted her a little bit while she sat there shivering in the snow – poor little dog.  Pete and I made excuses about survival instincts to justify our brief diversion from vegetarian principles (and Pete is quite lenient anyway and I have turkey at Christmas sometimes.  Pete doesn’t celebrate Christmas because he is a Buddhist – or does he)?     

Anyway, back to landscape archaeology.  Where were we?  Oh yes – on our way to the next incredibly fascinating feature which took the form of a rectangular enclosure situated on the top of a small elongated hillock.   The bank of the enclosure was detected by Pete C initially and then spotted shrewdly by Drew and Luis after it had been pointed out.  Sadly, it has been argued by Colin Merrony that this is not a Medieval (or earlier) stock enclosure due to the sharp angular nature of the corners.  There is no reason to dispute this as he is nearly always right and so probably is about this too (does anyone know if his hair is streaked or natural)?

Leaving the enclosure and heading north down the hill we came across a very interesting ‘stone triangle’.  I am completely convinced – unlike everyone else (!) – that this is a prehistoric feature of great significance – as yet unrecognised by the wider archaeological community.  These triangles (as indeed there are others scattered about on Broomhead and other South Yorkshire moorlands) are constructed from quite large stones set as to appear triangular and placed at three points c. 15m apart making – yes you guessed it – a triangle.  So what are they?  Are there any sensible ideas floating about in the landscape internet – osphere?  We also found a hobbit sized cist thing – but what it really is who can tell? 

After this the landscape lads were cold and wanted to get their wet feet off the moor whilst I could have wandered about endlessly with my tough Landscape Detective Dog.  But enough was enough so we descended peacefully and reflexively down the slope and back to the car.     

So what did we learn?  Well, it seems the only thing we really learnt, which we probably knew already, is that it is much easier to find things in the landscape than it is to interpret them.  

 We just about coped without Pete T’s eagle eyes and sharp wit to see us through the day so he shouldn’t feel too guilty for not coming with us even though we missed him.  And I had better give Bob a mention too even though this has got nothing to do with him except that he runs the course.  Also his new nick name is Big Brother Bob (BBB for short) as he knows everything about everybody, but in a good way. . .

Luis, do you have any comments?  And thank you for my near meat experience! 

Bye for now, Clare.

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Happy New Year!

Happy New Year everybody!  I’m sure you’ve all been looking forward to what the Landscape Detectives have been upto over the festive period. Especially as, depending on your source, at some point around now is the bona fide ‘most depressing day of the year’ ! So you’ll want to be hearing what we’ve been upto… Unfortunately I’ve been ill for most of the holidays and am still not upto my best. I haven’t seen my colleagues yet so am unable to comment on their physical or indeed mental (which I’ve never been too sure about anyway!) well being. Alas I imagine none of us are doing anything that exciting as I think we all have rather alot of work to do.

Which leads me onto an idea I had about our work. I thought maybe we should write up a more detailed itinerary of our academic work. I thought this might help anyone thinking of carrying their studies further into a Masters specifically Landscape Archaeology. Let me know if you think this is a good idea.

Good luck struggling through this chilly but pretty period.

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12th Dec, Fieldwalking and minibuses

Here we all are, quite an attractive bunch! We were out fieldwalking yesterday, we found 2 bits of flint and a beer can, very exciting. Lovely day too, a hint of mist and a long trip in the minibus home in the dark.

It got me started thinking about minibuses…most people use the trowel, specifically the 4″ pointing trowel made by WHS as the ubiquitous visual referent of archaeological practice and often as archaelogy itself.  However one can go about archaeology in many ways without a trowel;  fieldwalking, off-set planning, larger field survey, geophysics and so on. Now the minibus is nearly always nearby when doing most archaeology, from student training excavations, to commercial fieldwork, field trips to sites, visiting the SMR again a long list. So maybe this should be our symbol of group identity? Ok so other groups use minibuses too, but bricklayers and stonemasons will also use trowels.

Minibuses fill a range of roles too; transportation vehicle for work, for out of hours fun, tea room, tool shed, site office, drawing room, drying room, nap room(!), resting post during lunch, a shade from the summer sun, hideaway for a secret romantic encounter and so on, but these are all quite concrete uses. The poor old minibus is also used in more social ways; a barrier between groups as they eat outside or who eats inside or out. Then, whilst driving, who sits where, the site director as driver maybe, supervisors in the passenger seats then the rest of the group filtered to the back in sets of friends or length on a project.

They can create happiness, “yes! we got the good minbus on the way home today” perhaps a bus with more foot space (ancient Leyland DAF over new Transit) or without a hole in the roof. Creating holes in the roof can also recreate social roles, seeing a lecturer drunk jumping up and down on a roof is a surefire way to encourage interaction with students and teachers! Then knowing who knows who created the hole adding to the sense of group identity and disrupting power structures as the supplies manager struggles to get to the bottom!

Minibuses are used in a range of roles and as various places in quite a small physical space, and all are created and recreated during archaeological practice.  So maybe I’ll change the header picture here to a minibus sitting in a muddy field and apply for a D1 rather than looking up WHS next time I lose my trowel?

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2nd December – Trip to the Bull Ring and Mam Tor

On Tuesday the 2nd of December the four of us visited first the Bull Ring at Dove Holes and then Mam Tor just outside Castleton, in Derbyshire.

The Bull Ring (found at SK085775) is a scheduled Neolithic Henge with a single earthen bank surrounding an area of around 90x93m comprising two entrances orientated north and south. Around 15m to the south west are the remains of a Oval Barrow with a Bowl Barrow built on top of it.

Mam Tor (found at SK125835) is a scheduled late Bronze Age to early Iron Age hillfort situated at the head of the Hope valley. There are two barrows located within the fort and what are thought to be house platforms are also visible. On the south side of the hillfort is a landslip removing some of the bank and ditch perimeter.

Both sites were well worth the visit, however the henge at Dove Holes is not in such an aesthetically pleasing location as others in the area, such as Arbor Low (however both are very similar in form). The visit to the Hope valley also offers the opportunity to view defensive structures from other periods, including the Navio Roman Fort and Peveril Castle above the fortified town of Castleton. The location and form of these structures reflects the changing land use in different periods as well as social change shown by the shift from the large communal forts of the Iron Age to the segregation in the middle ages between town and lord.

As picturesque as both places are in view when covered in snow it doesn’t do much when trying to view the archaeology! Or if you do be prepared to wrap up warm!

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10-14th November – Journeys round Sheffield and through time

As Pete T reports below we were out and about around Sheffield last week. We were, together with students from other archaeology MAs, taught the basics of off-set planning, taking levels and traversing and a little geophysics.

Where we were taken was for me the most interesting part. The places themselves were nice to visit, even in the rain, but it was the story that was woven with the sites I found most useful. Our guide was adept describing the changes that had occured at the places we visited. All too often a site visit will concentrate on the Iron Age nature of this hill, or the medieval character of this valley when a monastery was in use. However Colin manged to highlight the historical contingency of the places we visited and to construct a flowing narrative all so important when we’re thinking of transitions and becomings that are fashionable today. After all there wasn’t a Neolithic or a Middle Bronze Age, these are just descriptions we use to make things easier (?) for us study. In fact the transition is continuous.

Change as a constant was the most important part of our fieldtrips last week.

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