Britain in archaeology
Marking the 75th anniversary of D- Day on 6 June, the Department for Digital, Culture, Media & Sport, advised by Historic England, gave statutory protection to Second World War remains. They include concrete structures, tanks, bulldozers and elements of Mulberry floating harbours, all of which took part in preparations for the allied assault on Nazi-occupied France.
Concrete replica landing craft, such as that at Braunton Burrows, Devon, now listed grade 2 (photo left), were used to train troops in embarking and disembarking vehicles and personnel. An annual memorial service is now held at the site, but many such structures were demolished late in the last century. Tanks and bulldozers off Selsey Bill, West Sussex (now a scheduled monument, photo above right) were lost when a landing craft broke down en route to Normandy; the vessel capsized under tow, spilling its cargo into the sea, and was later deliberately sunk by gunfire. Further vehicles were lost during an exercise off Studland Beach, Dorset, when amphibious Valentine tanks sank (now scheduled, right) with the loss of six crew.
This silver silv twopenny coin, dated 1652, w was found by a detectorist in th the South Hams of Devon. It was not issued in 1652, however, nor minted in England.
It w was originally from the Mas Massachusetts Bay Colony, an English settlement on the east coast ofNorth of North America. It pr probably dates from the 1660s or 70s, when the colony understood it had no rights to mint coinage and backdated its issues. It is the sixth such coin to be recorded by the Portable Antiquities Scheme, and the first from south-west of England, all presumed to have been brought home by sailors and merchants.
A scrap of medieval leather decorated with a dragon-like e mythical beast has s been found in York, , where the York Archaeological Trust has been monitoring work by yNorthern Northern Powergrid to replace high voltage cables. Toby Kendall, project officer at yat, said that the leather fragment (13.5cm across) had probably originally been disturbed from deeper waterlogged deposits when sewers were installed over a century ago. “The recovery of the artefact shows the value of observing the works underway,” he added, praising the contractors for their co-operation, “even though they have not directly disturbed the waterlogged archaeology lower down.”
In 1919 Admiral Ludwig von Reuter ordered the scuttling of Germany’s surface fleet, interned in Scapa Flow, Shetland after the end of the First World War. Most of the 52 vessels that sunk have since been raised to the surface or stripped of their more valuable parts. In 2001 the seven surviving wrecks were scheduled as ancient monuments. Fittings said to have been removed before scheduling still change hands, but in July Ju four entire ships were listed on eBay (“pre-owned”) for fo £810,000. They were said to have been bought, for a te tenth of the price, by a Middle Eastern company and a “g “gentleman from the south of England”. The law allows the ne new owners to dive and look.
A Roman wooden arm has been found at Warth Park, Raunds, R Northamptonshire, where Oxford Archaeology East E excavated ahead of the construction of an industrial estate es in 2013–14. Of small adult or adolescent size, the arm appears to have been thrown into a well, said archaeologists, as a votive offering; the absence of jointing at the shoulder suggests it was not part of a larger sculpture. It has been radiocarbon dated to ad85– 54 240.
A fragment from a fish-shaped glass bottle has been found at Chedworth Roman villa in Gloucestershire, unique in Britain and representing one of only four such bottles recognised from the entire Roman empire. It was excavated by the National Trust in 2017, and identified by the late Jenny Price. “Other objects found at the villa show it was home to somebody of wealth and status,” said Nancy Grace, a National Trust archaeologist.
Price matched the glass flake to a nearly complete fish, with less vibrant colour surviving, in the Corning Museum of Glass in New York. This and another flake in the museum have no provenance, but a fourth fish does, found in fragments in a grave at Chersonesus on the Black Sea in the Crimea in 1903. Remains at Chedworth were first discovered in 1864. New excavations have been taking place since 2012, aimed at improving the site for visitors and gaining a better understanding of the once grandiose villa’s history and setting; the photo shows a mosaic being uncovered in 2014.
Excavatio Excavation near Kirk Michael on the Isle ofMan of Man has h uncovered a stunning Early Bronze Age necklace. Its 122 decorated beadsw beads were shaped to fit a crescent arrang arrangement of multiple strings, and are thou thought to have been made with Whitby jet f from North Yorkshire. The discovery wasmade was made by theRoun the Round Mounds of the Isle of Man project, directed by Rachel h lCr Crellin of the University of Leicester and Chris Fowler of Newcastle University. Seven cremation burials had been previously excavated on the site, but the beads were in the first identified inhumation.
ARom A Roman gold coin featuring Allectus, empe emperor from ad293 to 296, sold for £552,000 £55 in June, five times the upp upper estimate. The aureus, said to be one of 24 of its kind known, was fo found by metal detectorists near Dover. S Single gold coins do not legally count asTreasure, as Treasure, but if pr proposed revisions to the Treasure Act are implemented, museums would have the chance to buy such a coin at an independently assessed market price.
Police seized a large number of coins and a silver ingot from properties in Co Durham and Lancashire in May, all believed to have come from a Viking hoard. The find, said Gareth Williams, curator of early medieval coins & Viking collections at the British Museum, is “nationally important”. The coins suggest an undocumented alliance between Alfred the Great of Wessex and Ceolwulf ii of Mercia, said Williams, adding significantly to our understanding of early
medieval England’s political history. “We are in the very early stages of what is going to be a very long and complex investigation,” said di Lee Gosling, senior investigating officer at Durham Constabulary.
A musket ball and large fragments of a coehorn mortar shell, debris from the Battle of Glenshiel (1719), have been found at the battlefield in the West Scottish Highlands where a government victory ended the Jacobite Rebellion. A team led by the National Trust for Scotland is surveying the protected site with metal detectors. Four coehorns, small lightweight mortars, are known to have fired at the Jacobite right wing on the knoll south of the River Shiel.
Archaeologists say large Iron Age and Roman settlements in Newington, near Sittingbourne, could be the site of Durolevum, a “long-lost Roman town” named in the secondcentury Antonine Itinerary. Paul Wilkinson, director of the Kent Archaeological Field School, said exceptional preservation gave the site “national importance”. Extensive excavations by Swale & Thames Archaeological Survey occurred ahead of the construction of new housing. Finds included a preRoman gold coin of Dubnovellaunus, a Romano-Celtic temple, iron furnaces and pottery kilns.