Tag Archives: roman

“Marion”: The Bourne Head Pot

By Feenagh Johnson, Project Supervisor

At the end of last year, Allen Archaeology (Marine division) undertook a small excavation in the Market Town of Bourne, Lincolnshire.

The site at Bourne

Now I maybe biased, having grown up a mere stone’s throw away, but I already thought the site was pretty exciting… and then this little lady turned up in the first excavated feature. She was covered in mud and in many fragments but enough of her features were visible to identify a face, and it was the unusual form of her hair that gave her the nickname “Marion” (as the frills looked like a medieval headdress).

Finding Marion

A muddy Marion

Although similar to their better known cousins, the face pot, head pots are usually made of a fine fabric with the body of the vessel moulded into the form of human head. Their exact nature is uncertain but it has been postulated that they are ritual vessels, with another notable Lincolnshire example, the “DON MERCVRIO” head pot, being dedicated to the cult of Mercury.

The fully cleaned headpot

However, the Bourne Head pot is unique; she is beautifully hand painted with a distinct hair style and facial features. It’s very possible that the vessel was “made to order” sometime in the 4th century AD, and it would be nice to think that she was modelled after an actual person before being ritually deposited… unfortunately we can only hypothesize!

illustration by C Bentley

Find of the month October – a Roman buckle

Roman buckle

By Yvonne Rose, Archives Supervisor with Mike Wood, Project Manager and Finds Specialist

Our find of the month for October is a rather nice example of a Roman buckle. This type of triangular-shaped buckle dates to the second half of the 4^th century and is found at predominantly military sites in Britain. Indeed, ours was found in Lincoln, just outside the east wall of the Roman city. In this period of history, buckles are still a relatively rare find, much less common than brooches.

The buckle was discovered together with other artefacts in the grave of an adult male. The other associated objects include a crossbow brooch, a small silver mount, a fragment of decorated copper strip which could be part of another brooch, the broken plate of a further buckle, as well as 10 iron nails which may indicate the presence of a coffin. All of these objects are typical of the burials of males from positions of authority in the late Roman Empire.

Buckles with triangular plates are known from both the late Roman and early Anglo-Saxon periods. Roman ones usually have openwork plates with D-shaped or, as with ours, kidney-shaped frames; whereas the Saxon ones tend more towards oval frames and solid plates.

The buckle is made from cast copper alloy and measures 50mm in length. The pin is present, as are three copper alloy rivets, one in each corner of the plate. From the junction with the frame, the arms of the plate extend to meet at a cleft terminal lobe with a pointed projection either side. The heart-shaped aperture of this buckle is particularly attractive.

German archaeologist H. W. Böhme studied buckles with integral triangular plates as part of his survey of late Roman artefacts in Britain, and the settlement of England by the earliest Anglo-Saxons (Böhme 1986, Liste 1, Abb. 5, Abb. 14). He dated them to the middle or second half of the 4th century and his map shows that they are found in small numbers not only in the British Isles but also along the European frontier of the Roman Empire, along the Rhine and Danube rivers.

Böhme, H W, 1986, Das Ende der Römerherrschaft in Britannien und die Angelsächische Besiedlung Englands im 5. Jahrhundert, Jahrbuch des Römisch-Germanischen Zentralmuseums Mainz 33 pt. 2

Find of the month: September – a Roman bangle

Roman glass bangle

Yvonne Rose, Archives Supervisor and Mike Wood, Project Manager and Finds Specialist

Our find of the month for September is this spectacular fragment of glass bangle, found in the rather unremarkable setting of a ditch fill in North Lincolnshire.

This is a Kilbride Type 2, named after H. E. Kilbride-Jones who, in 1938, created a detailed typology of early Roman glass bangles. The Type 2 bangles are characterised by having from one to three narrow, twisted cables, generally blue and white, fused lengthwise onto a translucent core, most commonly ice-green or blue, but occasionally colourless. They are usually D-shaped or triangular in section. If it had been complete, our bangle would have had an internal diameter of approximately 60mm.

Bangles of all materials are most common in Britain during the 4th century. The major exception to this are the coloured glass bangles which, by contrast, appear to have been at the height of fashion in the earlier centuries of Roman occupation in Britain. Despite their relatively short lifespan, there are many examples of this type of bangle in the north of England, and even Scotland. Recent work has indicated that this type has been found on several sites north of the Humber in the former Parisi territory. It has been suggested that they may have been manufactured in Roman forts, using raw materials brought over from the continent, and this would explain the spread northwards.

There has been some debate about what precisely these glass rings were used for, and whether all of them were worn as arm or leg ornaments. It has been suggested that some of the broken fragments appear to have had a value as amulets of some sort, with an example found deposited with a cache of stones, fossils and other coloured glass objects in an empty burial cist in a prehistoric cairn at Cairnhill, Aberdeenshire. However, the most commonly accepted theory is that they were used as anklets, armlets, bracelets or possibly even for tying up hair.

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

Running a large scale excavation

Dan Connor, Project Supervisor

In this blog I have been asked to try and describe what my experience running a large scale excavation was like. I have been a supervisor at Allen Archaeology since November 2014 and have worked here since October 2013. Prior to working at Market Harborough I ran several evaluation trenching sites, some open area excavations and helped supervise the large-scale North Killingholme site under the direction of Chris Casswell in the summer of 2015; this would be the largest site I have coordinated.

General shot of site on top of the spoil heap looking southeast

So, a quick description of the site, Market Harborough was an agricultural field, about 5.5 hectares in size that underwent a strip map and record, during the summer of 2016. This was done as a condition of planning consent to allow the building of over 100 houses on the site. Prior to us starting work the site a geophysical survey and evaluation trenching had been undertaken. This meant that there were known archaeological remains on the site consisting of field boundaries and enclosures, that were shown clearly on the geophysics. The nature of these results suggested that this site would have a mix of Romano-British field systems and some earlier Iron Age features.

The geophysics results for the site

Machines started opening the site up in early March, and after a few teething issues we were largely ready to go.

Pre-excavation survey of the site, showing the archaeology and other features.

One of the excavated ditches

It was daunting at first, a large tangle of intercutting ditches and discrete features over an area the size of four football fields; but breaking it down made it much easier to grasp. In the end I decided to have the team work through the site in a large group, breaking the site down into distinct parts and moving from one area to the next. It often feels like Roman archaeology leads itself to this approach as Romans loved squares and enclosures and like to keep things surrounded by big ditches. Difficulties arose however with the Romans love of maintaining said big ditches, then leaving them, before digging new ditches in exactly the same place. This results in features having multiple re-cuts and phases, and the key was to try and link these phases together. This is what makes Roman sites fascinating; distinct phases of activity and occupation can be observed, and in this case it emerged that there were five clear phases of activity, despite the complexity in the features.

The earliest period of occupation recorded on the site dated from the early Neolithic, with several pits that contained worked flint including a fragment of a leaf shaped arrowhead, and a piece of a Langdale stone axe in the northwest corner of the site. A prehistoric pit alignment was found oriented north to south and is similar to others found in Leicestershire. Also recorded were the remains of at least two Iron age drip gullies associated with round houses.

The majority of the site was, as expected, Romano-British field systems and enclosures. We had a number of stand out finds from this period including a partial sliver ring, a copper alloy make up tool, a brooch and multiple quern stones including a rotary and saddle quern.

The whole site with complete stratigraphic phasing, red being earlier and blue being later.

The whole site with complete stratigraphic phasing, red being earlier features and blue, more recent

However there was not just the archaeology to consider, a large-scale project like this meant public interest, I had had a little experience with this working at North Killingholme, but this was my first experience of being directly involved. An open day was organised and volunteer groups from local historical societies were invited to work a few days.

On the open day, just over 70 people turned up for a site tour and to look at some of the material we had found. I found that while people enjoyed their time most were expecting more of a traditional/research archaeological site and less of a “construction” image. I imagine not looking like a university professor did not match many people’s expectations, neither did the hard hats and high visibility vests everyone was wearing. Regardless many local people had real enthusiasm about the work we were doing and a genuine interest in the artefacts. Many were eager to add their own interpretations to what we had found and what could have been there.

Volunteers from local historical societies were invited to come onto site and excavate some of the features, specifically some of the pits in the pit alignment. A big difference that the volunteers noted themselves was the amount of work and the speed it was expected to be done at. It is a long time since my university field schools and I have only worked on commercial archaeological sites since, so having volunteers was a bit of an unknown quantity. I enjoyed having them on site though and I believe they learnt a bit about what digging for a company was like and the benefits of doing volunteer work.

Bees played a bigger part of my time then I thought they would, with a hive descending on to the site during July

Bees played a bigger part of my time than I thought they would, with a swarm descending on to the site during July!

Most people were working away from home on this job and that can be stressful. We seemed to avoid this, and I think it was because people got along socially as well as at work. Cooking together in the evening, playing board games and *a couple* of beers in the evening helped pass the time and brought people together. It created a good atmosphere and I felt everyone was enjoying working on the site.

Over 580 holes were excavated, over 3100 context numbers assigned and just under 1200 drawings were completed to investigate this part of a Romano-British settlement. It was a great site to work on; archaeologically it was interesting fitting the development of the site together alongside some nice finds, with evidence of extended occupation from the Neolithic to the 4th century AD. The group of people working on site really pulled it together. It made running what could have been a very stressful and complex site straight forward for me and resulted in a site I have found fascinating to record.

The team working hard

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!

Find of the month: July

This post is the first of a new series of blogs detailing an exciting find that the Archives department have uncovered over the course of each month.

A Roman hygiene implement found during excavations in Navenby

The first artefact to feature is a copper alloy Roman nail-cleaner found on a community archaeological excavation in 2013. The archive team chose this artefact as it will be leaving Allen Archaeology to be archived at The Collection Museum in Lincoln. This is the final part of the community excavation undertaken in Navenby (which is 13km south of central Lincoln). The excavation was set up and excavated with the help of Volunteers from The Navenby Archaeological Group to investigate an area of the Roman town of Navenby. The artefact was found during these investigations.

The artefact (which can be seen in the picture below) is a Roman hygiene implement, specifically a nail cleaner. This is a toiletry set, in this case sitting on a metal ring; similar to a modern day key ring, with a square sectioned, well preserved decorated shaft and bifurcated terminal. This is a significant find due to the preservation of the decorations on the rectangular shaft and the bifurcated end. Similar nail-cleaners have been found in Colchester (Crummy 1983) but not including decorations extending down the length of the object, the decorations are usually limited to the upper portion of the object.

This nail cleaner would have been in use in Roman Navenby in the 3rd Century occupation of the town. For another example click here. Finds like these give us a personal insight into the everyday lives of the people of Roman Britain and are wonderful to find in such good condition.

Crummy, N, 1983, Colchester Archaeological Report 2: The Roman small finds from excavations in Colchester 1971-9 Colchester Archaeological Trust Ltd

Lubenham Hill Guided Tours

Over the last couple of months we have had staff working on an excavation at Lubenham Hill, Market Harborough, in advance of a residential development by Linden Homes. On Thursday 28th July 2016 we are opening the site to three guided tours at 10am, 12 noon and 2pm. More information about the project can be found here.

There is no parking on site and therefore access is strictly from the footpath that runs through the site from ‘The Pastures’ on Brookfield Road.

Site access for visitors