Tag Archives: Find of the month

Find of the month: July – worked bone from Cambridgeshire

Lucie Evans, Branston Academy

Our find of the month for June is a collection of carved animal bones engraved with a ring and dot decoration. They were found on farm land located in South Cambridgeshire. The bones in question were found in the fill of an oven which has been dated to the Iron Age. It appears that a pit was later dug into the centre of the oven and objects discarded into it. The pit contained layers of silty and organic deposits and the four pieces of worked bone were found along two metal objects. The appearance of ridge and furrow cropmarks and an Iron Age enclosure ditch suggest an agricultural community having occupied this area.

Worked animal bone

There has been a bit of a debate within the office as to what the worked bones would have been used for. Whilst three look as if they were just used to practice the design of dot and ring on, one of them has has been shaped with a rounded end. They are all made of animal bone, not antler (which seems to be the preferred choice of the time). Three were crafted from long bone while the rounded end piece is made of metapodial (long bones found in the hands and feet of mammals which connect the digits to the centres).

One suggestion of what they may have been turned into is a comb beater which would have been used to push down ‘weft threads’ when weaving.

The ring and dot pattern can be found on objects from pottery to bone; it is used nationwide and across the centuries. The ring and dot pattern would have been created with an Iron Age compass tool, which helped to create the perfect circles. This simple design would has been described as ‘folk art’ as it would have been simply used to make the piece more interesting.

I find these pieces really interesting as to me it shows the gradual skill learning and perfecting taking place, and although it is most probably down to my imagination I see these as the slow progression of an ‘individual’ in their craftsmanship.

Find of the month: June – Why mend a mortaria ?

Director, Mark Allen discusses why anyone would pay good money to fix a broken pot

Our find of the month for June is rather intriguing. It is a Roman mortaria, the ancestor to the modern day pestle and mortar we use today for crushing seeds and spices, and was found during monitoring of groundworks for a housing development in Suffolk.

Mortaria are not particularly rare objects, and they often turn up on Roman sites. However, what is rather special about this example that it was made in the 1st century or early 2nd century AD and has clearly been dropped and broken into a number of pieces, before being repaired. The repairs consist of twin sets of holes drilled through the sherds with lengths of lead used to ‘staple’ the pieces together: no UHU (other brands of glue are available) or sticky tape existing at the time!

Roman mortaria, used for grinding food, which has been broken and mended using lead staples

This may in itself sound pretty unimpressive, but the mystery is that with the repairs the mortaria would have become far less useful and could not have been used for crushing or mixing liquids anymore. ‘How is this interesting ?’ I hear you cry! Well, it gives us an insight into the social activities and values of the Roman who owned this nearly 2,000 years ago, a rare opportunity without inventing a time machine and popping back to observe the people themselves.

If we examine the vessel more closely we see other clues: the spout (to right of the photo) is quite worn suggesting it had seen a lot of use. This is further confirmed when we look at the inside of the bowl. Mortaria were made by pressing small, hard grits into the soft clay before firing, producing a rough, jagged surface to help crush the food inside the bowl. Modern mortaria do not do this because the grits would occasionally pop out and end up in the food, which is not very good for your teeth! In this instance, the grits have been all but lost or worn down, again showing that the mortaria had been used for a long time.

The time, effort and expense required to repair the mortaria would have been considerable considering it was now next to useless as a household item and it’s much more common to see repairs on fancy vessels like Samian ware (Willis 2005, 11.4), so why on earth would you repair such a thing? The most plausible explanation is that it held some intrinsic value to the individual who had it repaired. The object itself was important, less so its functionality. We can never be sure, but perhaps it was a present or had been inherited from a deceased relative or friend, and just the presence of the vessel was a reminder of them.

Archaeology is not just about preparing a record of the physical remains of former activities, it is also the study of past behaviour. Through the physical objects we gain insights into past lives. At a time that A Level archaeology has been scrapped and fewer universities are offering degree courses in the subject than once did, we should remember that the study of the past is important, in that it gives us the opportunity to learn from the mistakes of our ancestors. Perhaps now, more than ever, this needs to be highlighted.

References:

Willis, S, 2005, Samian Pottery, a Resource for the Study of Roman Britain and Beyond: the results of the English Heritage funded Samian Project. An e-monograph. http://intarch.ac.uk/journal/issue17/1/11.4_5.html

Find of the Month: An Iron Age loom weight

Our find of the month for May enables us to have a look at textile production during the Iron Age. It is a large, triangular loom weight which was found during an evaluation in the village of Kirkby on Bain, Lincolnshire. Archaeological evidence for the actual process of textile production is scarce as the wooden looms and associated threads and wool don’t survive. What do survive better are the spindle whorls from the spinning process and loom weights from weaving.

Loomweight

These triangular shaped loom weights are thought to have been used during the Iron Age and are usually made from fired clay, though stone is common on earlier sites. The clay is normally of low firing and as such the weights are prone to break. Later Anglo Saxon loom weights are circular and many Roman ones are pyramidal in shape. The reason for choosing a particular shape is not known and is likely a personal or cultural preference. Loom weights are a fairly common find on sites in Northern Europe and in the Near East where a certain type of loom was used.

The loom which would have been in use during the British Iron Age was the warp-weighted loom which became obsolete in the Roman period but had been in use since the Neolithic. This was a fairly simple loom which consisted of two wooden uprights and a horizontal bar, which would rest against the wall. The warp (vertical) threads would hang freely from the bar and would be tied individually or in bundles to the loom weights. The clay loom weights hanging from the bottom of the threads would keep them taut enough to enable the weft (horizontal) threads to be more easily passed over and under in the weaving process.

This particular loom weight is quite large, weighing in at 2.27kg which would create quite a bit of tension in the yarns. As mentioned earlier, due to the low firing of the clay, they can break fairly easily and several of these heavy items hitting into each other as you weave would cause frequent damage. This loom weight has lost the tips of two of the corners but is still a remarkably complete example of the type.

Find of the month: April

This month’s find is a sherd of Anglo-Saxon pottery from an evaluation in Wellingborough, Northamptonshire. It was found in a small posthole alongside a narrow gully terminal, which may have been associated with a structure.

The fabric of the pottery sherd is known as Stamford Ware owing, unsurprisingly, to its manufacture in a number of small potteries concentrated around the Lincolnshire town of Stamford. It was produced between the ninth and thirteenth centuries; by the tenth century, Stamford was one of the major pottery centres of England, exporting its wares throughout the country. By this time, pottery would have been produced on a wheel as opposed to the earlier method of building up a vessel in a series of rings or coils. Stamford produced a variety of fine wheel-thrown vessels, mainly cooking pots, small bowls, spouted pitchers, jugs and dishes. Many of the fine table wares were decorated with a transparent lead glaze and, after circa 1150, with a bright copper green glaze, a useful piece of dating evidence for the archaeologist.

The pottery sherd from Wellingborough is unglazed and an unusually dark colour. This colour is the result of a lack of oxygen during the firing process, a process known as reduction, and is associated with the earlier fabric types. The sherd is decorated with a band of diamond-notched rouletting typical of the 10^th-century examples. At just 25mm in length, it is unfortunately too small to determine the form of the original vessel.

Stamford pot

So why choose a sherd of pottery barely bigger than a postage stamp as Find of the Month? Well, evidence of Anglo-Saxon activity in this area of Wellingborough is scarce, with reported finds being restricted to a single small find of a silver penny of Edward the Confessor (Pastscape Monument 345426). So, despite its diminutive size, this piece of pottery is actually a find of significant local importance.

References:

Kilmurry, K, 1980 The Pottery Industry of Stamford, Lincs. C. AD850-1250 British Archaeology Report British Ser 84

Blinkhorn, P, 2017 Pottery and CBM from 30 High Street, Wellingborough, Northamptonshire (Site WEHS17) In AAL Report AAL2017019

Regia Anglorum – Anglo-Saxon and Viking Crafts – Pottery

University of Leicester website

A Pietá from Lincoln

We have recently seen the return to our offices of a lovely piece of sculpture that we found in uphill Lincoln. This sculpture is a Pietá, a devotional depiction of the Virgin Mary holding the body of Christ after the crucifixion. The Pietá is one of the three main depictions of the Virgin Mary in art, the other two being Mater Dolorosa (Mother of Sorrows) and Stabat Mater (Standing Mother). This form of artwork originated in 13th Century Germany before spreading to France, Italy and Central Europe. Many early wooden examples emphases the wounds Christ suffered on the Cross, whereas the later stone sculptures carved outside Germany focus more on the purity of the Virgin rather than on their suffering. Probably the most famous Pietá was carved by Michelangelo and now rests in St Peter’s Basilica, Vatican City. It is the only artwork that he ever signed, allegedly due because he had overhead people attributing it to his competitor Cristoforo Solari.

The Pieta shows signs of having been deliberately damaged during the Reformation

We found this Pietá during the construction of new buildings for Lincoln’s University Technical College (UTC) back in 2014. It is more than half a metre wide and, when complete, would have stood nearly a metre tall. Similarity to other examples from France, suggests that it may have been made in the mid-15th century. It was probably originally placed on the outside of a building, over a portal but had been reused in a retaining wall, the plain parts facing outwards, hiding its true form.

The sculpture is largely intact but the heads and feet of both Christ and Mary are missing (as are their right hands and Christ’s left shoulder and right knee). The missing heads and the reuse of the statue as building material indicate that it was probably defaced during the Reformation of the 16th Century. Icons of Christ and the saints were present in all Catholic churches but the new Protestant faith saw them as worship of false gods. Excavations on the church neighbouring Lincoln Cathedral, St Peter-in-the-Bail, found evidence of iconoclastic destruction from this period. The heads and hands of saints, both in sculpture and in paintings, were the main targets during this religious vandalism. C. Pamela Graves suggests this was done to remove any power from the saints personification and as a test of the idol and its supposed sainthood. For example when a statue of St Katherine was thrown into a fire, it not burn and by it burning it proved the idol was a sham. There is also a tale from the Old Testament about an image of the Assyrian deity Dagon who was struck down by God by having his head and hands cut off. Removing the head and heads of an idol also mirrored the punishment that was inflicted on heretics.

References:

Graves, C P, 2008, ‘From an archaeology of iconoclasm to an anthropology of the body : images, punishment and personhood in England, 1500-1660’, Current Anthropology, 49 (1), 35-57

The Rt Revd Lord Harries, 2015, ‘The Pieta in Art’, [Transcript] https://www.gresham.ac.uk/lectures-and-events/the-pieta-in-art

Archaeology is rubbish*

Natasha Powers, Senior Manager

We recently finished work on a site to the south of Lincoln. There were no Roman buildings or prehistoric flint scatters but a group (or assemblage) of objects was collected and brought back to the offices. Collections of material like this look familiar to us and they can show the processes we go through to interpret a site no matter its age, and the difficulties we face in doing so.

What was it for? A bottle is probably used for storing liquids, we know that because we have seen objects a similar shape and that’s what they were being used for (their function). Shape (or form) is one of the key ways in which we interpret objects. We have a helping hand here as many of the objects still have writing on them, so we can find out exactly what they were used for. We can use the characteristics of those objects to help us work out what the ones without labels might be. The base of no. 12 tells us that it was made to store Hartley’s jams or preserves. We can therefore work out that no. 11, which is not marked but looks very similar, was used for the same function but presumably by different a company. We work out what the objects are by comparing them with other, sometimes more complete, objects which have the same shape or characteristics.

Modern ‘rubbish’ but what can it tell us?

How old is it? Creating a typology (the classification of objects according to their characteristics) can also be key to establishing their date. Shapes and styles may change over time and if you have an object that you can give a secure date to, you can build up a pattern. Here, we can look at the ketchup bottle (no. 5) and see that it looks like those that were produced between 1914 and 1930. Research can help us work out how old other objects may be: Wiltshaw & Robinson (makers of Carlton Ware) produced over 1000 different shapes of Heraldic Souvenir China 1903–1926, including our yacht (no. 13). Bray & Co. Bus Company, changed their name to Lincolnshire Road Car in May 1930, so the ticket stub (no. 26) must be earlier than this. In fact the objects all seem to have been made before 1930, but not earlier than the start of the 20th century.

Typology of ketchup

When was it deposited? Production date doesn’t tell us when these objects were buried. Some objects stay in circulation longer than others because they have uses beyond their original purpose, because we find them aesthetically pleasing or because they become heirlooms. Stoneware jam pots were superseded by glass jam jars, but we have both here. Empty stoneware jars make excellent pencil pots or vases, so perhaps they were reused before being thrown away (I keep match boxes in one at home)?

What does it mean? Take away our knowledge of these objects from their history and how would we interpret them as a group? Why would someone have a small model house and a boat? Is there a religious significance to these items? Why do they have a coat of arms on them? Did the person who they belonged to own land in, or have family in Southport and Bedford? Perhaps they were just pretty objects picked up at a jumble sale? There is a glass pot marked ‘Spear’s Games’ – does that mean there are children involved in the creation of this rubbish? There is a pocket watch of a type that you would expect to belong to a man, but we need to be careful when we ‘engender’ objects: I own a watch much like that myself. Likewise, there is a pot of solid perfume that we might assume is a ‘female’ object. Did they smoke or need a stick to walk with? There are a lot of ink bottles, one of which even has a pen-nib still in it – is this rubbish from a school or an office? Is it from the home of a writer? All in all, there are storage containers, decorative items and practical ones (like the syrup of figs from a brand known as “the family laxative”!). Perhaps, sometime after 1930 someone had a clear-out and got rid of Aunt Agatha’s now unfashionable nick-nacks?

The truth is that we can’t ever know for certain. We can say that the objects were thrown away because they were no longer considered useful. The key to making our interpretation the best that it can be is to gather as much information together as is possible, compare our site with others and set the discovery in context…and that applies to a Roman farmstead as much as a 20th century rubbish dump.

(*with apologies to Tony Robinson and Mick Aston for borrowing the title of their book)

No.	Description
1	Glass storage jar
2	Robertson’s Scotch Marmalade jar with partial label and motif
3	Medicine or household chemical bottle, very incomplete label reads ‘methylated’. Moulded with horizontal divisions showing tablespoons
4	Glass bottle
5	Heinz ketchup bottle with partial label
6	?Champagne bottle
7	Moulded ‘Daddie’s’ sauce bottle
8	Lyons ?ink bottle with partial label
9	Glass bottle
10	Moulded California Fig Syrup Co. bottle
11	Stoneware preserves jar. No markings
12	Stoneware preserves jar. Base embossed ‘NOT genuine unless bearing Wm PH Hartley’s label’
13	Carlton Ware crested or heraldic china yacht (the Saucy Sue). Marked “Southport”
14	Bovril jar
15	Swan ink pot
16	Miniature vase
17	Lid with running dogs motif
18	Small jar
19	Willow Art crested china model of Paul Bunyan’s House with ‘The arms of ancient Bedford’
20	Bell’ Lyon’s ink tipper bottle with partial label and pen nib inside
21	Stoneware inkwell
22	Glass inkwell
23	Glass pot embossed ‘Spear’s Games’. Possibly a tiddlywinks container?
24	Clay pipe
25	Man’s pocket watched in tooled steel
26	Bray & Co. Bus Company
27	Skull of a small dog
28	Brass solid perfume pot with hinge and mirror in the lid. Perfume still present
29	?Bone/antler and brass walking stick handle in the shape of a duck’s head
30	Pocket watch winder (assoc. with 25)

Find of the month: bricks need love too

I have been asked to write a post about January’s exciting Find of the Month, which is a small collection of bricks taken from one of our recent sites. I’m guessing they have been chosen as find of the month not because they’re nicer than anything else we found in January, but in order to give me a chance to write a follow up to my previous blog post about post-medieval archaeology.

Hand moulded 18th-19th century brick

The bricks in question cover a range of dates from the late 18th to the mid 20th century and so the techniques used for making the bricks change from hand moulding to machine pressing. This alone can be a good indicator of the date of brick structures, as machine moulded brick came to predominate in the second half of the 19th century. Among hand moulded bricks, the size of the brick can sometimes be helpful in suggesting how old the brick might be. For example, a brick tax was imposed in Britain in 1784, but was charged on the number of bricks, rather than by weight. The natural response of the brickmakers was to make larger bricks, charge more for them, and pay as little tax as possible! There is a tendency for hand pressed bricks to increase in size from the introduction of the brick tax until its repeal in 1850.

Dating of machine pressed bricks is of course helped by the fact that they are often stamped with the name of the manufacturer. Historical research into the brickworks itself, and the stamps used at different periods of its existence, can be used to indicate when and where the bricks were produced.

Handmade tapered header brick

Information can also be gleaned from the forms of bricks found on site. This is a handmade tapered header brick, a type of brick used in the construction of vaulted structures. Bricks like this would be an unusual find in a domestic context, and normally indicate the presence of structures such as drainage culverts or flues associated with industrial activity.

So, whilst it’s easy for all the prehistorians here to laugh at those of us who appreciate bricks, on a complex, multi-phase industrial site the bricks used in the construction of the buildings can be an invaluable resource, at least as important as all their pots and stones!

Find of the month: December

December’s Find of the month has been written by Alice and was selected from some finds which have just returned from the pottery specialist (Ian Rowlandson).

Newport is a suburb of Lincoln known for a 3rd century gateway to the colonia but lesser known is a 2nd century pottery production site our team excavated in 2013 and 2015. Whilst the kilns were not within the excavation area we found large quantities of pottery and Fragments of kiln furniture. This specific production site was unknown before the excavation so it is quite a significant find.

I’ve decided to focus on a specific type of pottery produced at Newport known as mortaria. It was initially imported from the continent and copied in Britain from around the time of the Roman conquest. It’s a type of cookware that had multiple functions, they acted as a large mixing bowl and a mortar and pestle, sometimes they were used so frequently the abrasive grits were worn away and a hole appeared in the base of the pot.

Potters stamps on ceramics from Newport

It is a complicated task to identify the source of this pottery but it can be made slightly easier when the potter stamped his name into the rim. The picture below shows four examples from this site all produced in Lincolnshire

1. IILIVS – this is possibly a product of Dragonby, North Lincolnshire. Products from these kilns are quite unusual as the clay fires orange/red instead of the usual cream.
2. ATO or OTA retrograde (backwards) – there is a possibility this was made at our site as other examples of this stamp have been found in Newport. They are dated 140-165AD
3. CRICO – A more widespread potter whose wares have been found in Brough-upon-Humber and across Lincolnshire and Yorkshire. They are also dated 140-165AD
4. SENICO – This potter was based at the kilns in Newport but also produced wares in South Carlton. Some examples have a worn die which leaves slightly blurred impressions and some have the C and O missing possibly because the stamp was trimmed after it wore down too far.

It must have taken a huge amount of skill to produce these pots and stamps. They show that the potters were capable of carving in reverse and relief. I have attempted to do this using modelling clay and had to write my name in marker on paper and turn it over to ensure the letters were correct when the stamp was used. Maybe future development within Newport will allow us to find the kiln structures and we can always hope that a whole stamped mortaria will be preserved within.

Hearlty K, 2016, Roman pottery in appendix 1.In Archaeological scheme of works: Land off Newport, Lincoln. (Report Number AAL 2015098). P23-56

Find of the month: September

October’s find of the month was found just this week; during works around the forthcoming Chadwick Centre, at the International Bomber Command Memorial Site. Several large pieces of waster pots were found in a pit near to where three kilns had already been excavated back in 2014. Hopefully we could find another one!

Find of the month: large pieces of waster pots

We started work at the site in 2014. During an excavation in 2014, the three kilns were uncovered and have all been dated to the Romano-British period: probably towards mid to late 3rd Century. They are all fairly small, indicating that they were more likely to have been small subsistence kiln’s filling the needs of the local area, rather than a business. Earlier work has shown that the area has generally been in agricultural use; with multiple corn dryers, which would link into the local use of the kilns in a rural area.

One of the kilns excavated this week

A pottery kiln normally consists of a dome shaped superstructure which keeps the heat in, and around, the pottery being fired. A long triangular or oval shaped stokehole pit lies in front of the circular oven , which was where the fire was originally started and also where the ashes would be pulled out of the kiln into. Stokeholes are often very distinguishable due to their black, charcoaly appearance.

Base of a pot which didn’t make the grade because of the small depression that weakens the pot

Throughout the kiln structure you can find wasters. Wasters are piece of pottery that have not made the grade for whatever reason; be it a deformity such as a crack, a poor firing reducing the integrity of the structure, or an air bubble within the clay. You are less likely to find a complete rim of a vessel, which is why the one seen here is particularly exciting You can see on the picture of the little base, a small depression which would have been an air bubble that was trapped in the clay but burst during the firing. This not only creates a poor finish but it weakens the pottery.

One kiln found during the excavation had very little pottery wasters near, or in it, which suggests that it might have been used for something other than pottery. It could have been a bread oven, or as the more imaginative of us like to think; a pizza oven!