an archaeology of the east midlands: class 1

An Archaeology of the East Midlands

Class 1: Introduction

Tutor: Keith Challis

east-midlands-archaeology.blogspot.co.uk

Class Summary

• Admin and Housekeeping• Personal Introduction• Course Outline• What is archaeology?

• Coffee Break

• The Environment of the East Midlands• Techniques of Archaeological Research 1

Admin and Housekeeping

Practicalities

• Enrolment paperwork and payment

• Register

• Absence (keith.challis@york.ac.uk) or Phone/Txt 07921457007

• What to bring

• Handouts (paperless course?)

Personal Introduction

About Me• The National Trust

• Research Associate, Department of Archaeology, University of York

• Research Fellow in Remote Sensing, University of Birmingham

• Research Officer, York Archaeological Trust

• Research Associate, University of Nottingham

• 13 years project management and commercial archaeological consultancy at Trent & Peak Archaeology

My Interests

• Remote Sensing

– Lidar

– Airborne MS/HS imagery

– Satellite applications in cultural heritage

• Heritage

– Alluvial geoarchaeology

– Medieval landscapes

• GI Science

– Predictive modelling

– Visualisation of landscapes

Course Outline

Learning Outcomes• Understand in general terms the chronology and material culture of

human activity in the East Midlands.

• Appreciate some of the factors that uniquely characterise the archaeology and history of the East Midlands.

• Have a broad appreciation of archaeological research techniques and so be able to critically assess archaeological research and literature.

• Be familiar with and have an outline grasp of some of the main techniques of archaeological research.

• Be able to engage critically with archaeological evidence for the East Midlands so as to achieve a fresh appreciation of the landscape and history of our region.

Course Outline1. The Early Environment of the East Midlands.

Techniques of Archaeological Research 1.

2. Prehistory in the Trent Valley and the Peak.

3. From Roman to Saxon, Cultural Transitions

in the Archaeological Record.

4. A Disputed Land: Angles, Saxon and Vikings

in the East Midlands.

5. The Medieval Countryside of the East Midlands.

Course Outline6. The Medieval Town in the East Midlands.

7. The East Midlands, 1600-1900.

8. Themes in Industrial and Early Modern Archaeology.

9. Heritage, history and identity. How the past contributes to

the Regional identity of the East Midlands

Options

Existing group knowledge and skills…?

Periods…?

Locales…?

Themes and Skills…?

Learning Experience• Informal Lecture

• Discussion

• Applied skills

Reading and Books

Adkins, R. The Handbook of British Archaeology

Beckett, J. 1988. The East Midlands from 1000AD

Greene, K. Archaeology: An Introduction

Muir, R. 2000. The New Reading the Landscape.

Stafford, P. 1985. The East Midlands in the Early Middle Ages

Reading and Books

Course bookshop (Amazon)

http://astore.amazon.co.uk/hoskins-21

Course Web Site

• Lecture Slides

• Downloadable handouts

• Bookshop

• Resources

• Supplementary Material

• Answers

Section 1: What is Archaeology?

What is Archaeology?

Defining Archaeology?

your views…

Defining Archaeology

• The study of past peoples, cultures and societies through their material remains

Defining Archaeology

• the study of human activity in the past, primarily through the recovery and analysis of the material culture and environmental data that they have left behind, which includes artifacts, architecture, biofacts and cultural landscapes (the archaeological record).

What is Archaeology?Theoretical Approaches to

Archaeology

• Art Historical Traditions• Material culture and

distribution dominance• New

(quantitative/modernist) thinking

• Post modernism and phenomenology

• ? Pragmatic archaeology

Cultural Historical

• Culture-historical archaeology is an archaeological theory that emphasises defining historical societies into distinct ethnic and cultural groupings according to their material culture.

The New Archaeology (Processual)

• Concerned with the processes of cultural change…

• and the appropriate objective methods used to study them

• Explanation is scientific through the construction and testing of hypotheses and general observations

Post-Processual Archaeology

• Contextual archaeology sees material remains as a text to be decoded

• Reflexivity - Ability to change methods as you work

• Knowledge stems from the dialogue between subject (archaeologist) and object (remains)

• Rejection of concept of ‘objective reality’

Phenomenology(the philosophical study of the structures of

subjective experience and consciousness).

“To understand a landscape truly it must be felt, but to convey some of this feeling to others it has to be talked about, recounted, or written and depicted."

Chris Tilley

Pragmatic Archaeology

• The real work [in the study of landscape] is accomplished by the men and women with the muddy boots and aching joints who do most of the work (Muir 2000)

• [The author’s] hobby is exploring England on foot, a pursuit of inexhaustible interest in which he reckons to make at least one major “discovery” each week (Hoskins 1954)

Flavours of Archaeology

Field Archaeology

• OGS Crawford (1886 – 1957)• Pioneer aerial archaeologist• Founder of Antiquity• First archaeological officer for

Ordnance Survey• Coined the term Field

Archaeology to describe the practical map, photograph and field observation technique he developed (Archaeology in the Field, 1953)

Landscape Archaeology• the study of the ways in which

people in the past constructed and used the environment around them

• WG Hoskins: emphasised fieldwork, especially walking the landscape, the primacy of local knowledge and exploration of diverse sources (documents, maps, place-names).

• The successful landscape historian assembled a narrative that explained the observable facets of landscape, explaining what of the past could be seen in the present.

Geoarchaeology

• a multi-disciplinary approach which uses the techniques and subject matter of geography, geology and other Earth sciences to examine topics which inform archaeological knowledge and thought.

• Geoarchaeologists study the natural physical processes that affect archaeological sites such as geomorphology, the formation of sites through geological processes and the effects on buried sites and artifacts post-deposition.

Environmental Archaeology

• The study of the long-term relationship between humans and their environments.

• Environmental archaeology is commonly divided into three subfields: archaeobotany, zooarchaeology, and

archaeopedology

Coffee Break

Section 2: The East Midlands

The East Midlands

Regions, Geology and Topography

• Conventionally Nottinghamshire, Leicestershire (and Rutland), Derbyshire, Lincolnshire and Northamptonshire.

• Straddles the boundary between the Upland and Lowland zones of England.

The East Midlands

Solid Geology

East and South• Triassic clays• Jurassic Limestone• Chalk

North and West• Sandstone• Millstone Grit• Limestone

The East Midlands

Glacial History

• Fully Ice covered in the Anglian Glaciation

• Partially covered in the LGM

• Tundra like environments

• Pro-glacial lakes

The East Midlands

Drift Geology

• Highly complex• Pleistocene river gravels• Till/Boulder clay• Wind blown sand• Holocene reworking of

gravels

Section 3: Archaeological Techniques 1Geoarchaeology in the Trent Valley

Geoarchaeology in the Trent Valley

What is Geoarchaeology ?

Saxo-Norman basket-weir fish-trap from Hemington Quarry.

Image courtesy ULAS.

Anchor-stones for fish-traps from Hemington Quarry. Image

courtesy Chris Salisbury.

Late 11th century timber bridge across the Trent at Hemington Quarry. Image courtesy ULAS.

Timbers from an early 17th century kid-weir at Dovebridge, built to control increased flow in

the Dove during the Little Ice Age.

Medieval masonry bridge pier at Hemington. Image courtesy ULAS.

Late Neolithic human remains in log-jam at Langford, Notts. Image courtesy TPAU.

Later prehistoric ditch beneath peaty alluvium at Girton, Notts.

Cropmarks of the late Neolithic cursus monument at Aston on Trent. Image English Heritage.

The alluvial stratigraphy of the River Trent at Girton, Notts.

MTV at Willington.

Airborne Alternatives to Muddy Boots

Air-photo mosaic and plot of palaeochannels of the Trent. Images courtesy Steve Baker, TPAU.

Airborne Alternatives to Muddy Boots

Geoarchaeology Under the Ground

Self Assessment

Learning Outcomes

• Have a broad appreciation of what archaeology is and is not.

• Be aware of differing theoretical approaches to archaeological study.

• Understand differences between types of archaeological research.

• Grasp the physical outline of the East Midlands Landscape.

• Appreciate fluvial geoarchaeology.

an archaeology of the east midlands: class 1

departmentof archaeology

archaeological record

archaeological evidence

east midlandsfrom

early modern archaeology

course outline1

course outline6

early environment

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