Britain in archaeology
Excavations at Tresness tomb on the island of Sanday, Orkney, resumed this summer with two spectacular discoveries, both made by co-director Vicki Cummings: carved stone balls. Such balls, found almost exclusively in Orkney and northeast Scotland, are believed to be Neolithic and are sometimes highly decorated (feature Mar/Apr 2019/165). But few have been found in secure archaeological contexts. These lay in the corners of two different burial chambers.
The tomb is an exceptionally well preserved example of a stalled cairn, built around 3500bc with five cells and a side passage under a long stone mound. This was significantly altered in the Bronze Age (a burial has been dated to around 1800bc), when stones were removed to create a round cairn, and more brought in for an impressive outer wall.
In the Neolithic the tomb would have been on a wooded headland looking out to sea, but today one end hangs over a low cliff as it falls prey to higher sea levels. Cummings, at the University of Central Lancashire, and Hugo Anderson-Whymark, from National Museums Scotland, are recording the site before it disappears.
A statue of King Alfred in Trinity Church Square, Southwark, was traditionally said to be medieval, or made for the Prince of Wales in the 18th century. In the summer London Stone Conservation repaired the statue and found that Alfred’s upper right leg is Roman. In 1822 a fragment of Bath Stone, well-carved and of a type used in most native stone sculpture in Roman London, had been incorporated by James Bubb into a figure made otherwise from artificial Coade Stone, designed originally for the new Manchester Town Hall. Martin Henig thinks the Roman statue was of a twice life-size goddess, probably Minerva, from a temple complex excavated at nearby Tabard Square in 2002.
A pair of tram cable-winding wheels dating from 1888 have been found below street level on the border of Edinburgh and Leith, during works to extend the modern tram line to Newhaven. They were installed when the city’s original horse-drawn tram system was replaced by one powered by cables running under the rails, and decommissioned when the trams were electrified in 1922. The massive steel wheels were still on their axles in a large brick-lined pit. City archaeologist John Lawson told The Scotsman that the find was a “very important and interesting discovery”.
As excavation continued this summer at the Ness of Brodgar in Orkney, slowly working its way down through a large Neolithic settlement mound (feature Sep/Oct 2018/162), two dark rectangular marks were uncovered which turned out to be degraded wood, a first for the Ness and an unusual occurrence on any dry-land prehistoric site. One had the appearance of a stake, resting on a flat stone, the other of a plank, both standing vertically near an entrance into a large stone-walled structure.
An Anglo-Saxon monastery has been found in Berkshire. Archaeologists excavating this August in Cookham uncovered remains of timber buildings and artefacts including a copper-alloy bracelet and a dress pin. An eighth-century monastery is known from contemporary records to have been somewhere in the area, but exactly where had been a mystery. Gabor Thomas, at the University of Reading, said the evidence “confirms beyond doubt” that the monastery stood beside the River Thames on a gravel island occupied by the present Holy Trinity church. Queen Cynethryth became royal abbess after her husband, King Offa, died in AD796. The site was “very likely to be her final resting place”, said Thomas.
Two men, aged 44 and 73, have been charged with conspiracy to convert criminal property and possession of criminal property between September 2018 and May 2019, as investigations continue into the undeclared discovery of a nationally significant Viking Age hoard ( Britain in archaeology, Sep/Oct 2019/168). They were due to appear at
A Aunique unique Early Bronze
Age handled stone axe ormaceormace has been found during duringworks works to a golf-course pond. The item itemhad had been placed with a body lying on yew yewor or juniper leaves in an oak log-coffin, preserved when coastal flooding covered a burial mound in a deep layer of silt.
Tetney Golf Club, south of Grimsby, Lincolnshire, uncovered timbers when attending to the pond during hot weather in 2018, and contacted the Portable Antiquities Scheme and Historic England. Hugh Willmott, excavating an Anglo-Saxon burial site nearby, brought University of Sheffield students to the site. Wessex Archaeology helped reinstate the ground, gro and the coffin was moved to the Mary Rose Trust in Portsmouth. Po It is now at the York Archaeological Trust, after a ay year in cold storage.
The weathered stone head is made from fossil coral, rec recalling a famous example from Bush Barrow, near Stonehenge Sto (feature Jan/Feb 2009/194), one of Europe’s richest ric graves of this era (1950–1700bc). The delicate handle wa was finely carved and polished from tree heartwood.
Durham Crown Court on October 5. Meanwhile a bronzegilt square-headed Anglo-Saxon brooch, taken from Rutland County Museum overnight in 1995 (with eight other brooches and a Roman gold ring) was posted anonymously to the Metropolitan Police last year, and h has been returned to the museum. Tim Clough, curator at th the time, said he was “delighted”.
An A extraordinary Roman key has been found in Leicester, in a fourth-century make-up layer under the floor of a h high-status town house. The iron shank had been broken o off but an elaborate copper-alloy handle is well preserved. A At the top a lion devours a long-haired, bearded man w wearing trousers – features ascribed by Romans to native “B “Barbarians”. Below them four naked youths stare out in terror, their arms around each other. The scene represents re damnatio ad bestias, says Gavin Speed, who le led the excavations in 2016 for University of Leicester A Archaeological Services – the killing of captives and cr criminals as spectacle. “Nothing quite like this has been d discovered anywhere in the Roman Empire before”, he ad added. The handle is described in Britannia (2021).
A Among more than 9,500 individuals excavated from the T Trinity burial ground, Hull, in what has been described as th the largest archaeological excavation of a post-medieval ce cemetery in northern England, are the probable remains of a victim of a steamship explosion. The Union steam packet was about to leave the Humber Dock in June 1837 when its boiler burst, causing the deaths of 23 people. Archaeologists have been on site since October 2020. The project is part of major works to the A63 road.
A local detectorist found da a fine early medieval silverer and copper-alloy discc brooch on cultivated farmland at Cheddar, Somerset, in October 2020. It was declared Treasure in August. Ian Sansome stopped work immediately on making the find, and contacted the Portable bleAntiquities Antiquities Scheme. Scheme A Asmall small excavation made no further significant discoveries; the brooch’s pin is missing. The openwork brooch (91mm across) is of Trewhiddle style ( AD800– 900), more commonly found in Norfolk. Interlace decoration in panels is extremely detailed, and includes a possible peacock with elaborate feathered wings and tail paired with a beast with a more reptilian face, and two further winged creatures.
The SHIPS Project, a volunteer non-profit group researching maritime sites and history in south-west England, has found so much “tyres and other junk” in Plymouth Sound, it has launched a crowdfunded scheme to clean the place up. Over the years tyres that have been dumped or fallen from ships’ fenders break down and release microplastics and harmful chemicals, says SHIPS. The 1000 Tyres Project aims to map, remove and recycle the debris.