an archaeology of the east midlands: class 2. radcliffe autumn 2014

An Archaeology of the East Midlands

Class 2: Earlier Prehistory in the Midlands

Tutor: Keith Challis

east-midlands-archaeology.blogspot.co.uk

Recap: Last Week

We looked at:•What is archaeology

•Theoretical approaches•Different archaeological disciplines

•The physical character of the East Midland•Fluvial Geoarchaeology


Class Summary

• Suggested Revised Programme

• The early prehistory of the Midlands• The Neolithic and Early Bronze Age (transitions)

• Coffee Break

• Techniques of Archaeological Research 2: Finding things from the air


Revised ProgrammeThe Early Environment of the East Midlands.

Techniques of Archaeological Research 1.

Alluvial Geoarchaeology

Earlier Prehistory in the Midlands.

Techniques of Archaeological Research 2. Finding Sites from the Air

Iron Age to Dark Age, Cultural Transitions in the Archaeological Record.


Seeing Beneath the Soil

A Disputed Land: Angles, Saxon and Vikings in the East Midlands.


Fieldwork and reading the landscape

The Medieval Countryside of the East Midlands.


Hands on material identification session

The Medieval Towns of the East Midlands.


The biological record and past environment

The East Midlands, 1600-1900

Techniques of Archaeological Research 7. Understanding ancient technology

Themes in Industrial and Early Modern Archaeology.


Dating and the application of physical sciences

Heritage, History and Identity. How the past contributes to the Regional identity of the East Midlands


Learning Outcomes

• Appreciate some aspects of the very early prehistory (palaeolithic) of the East Midlands, in particular relating to landscape and environmental change in early prehistory

• Understand some of the key issues in the Neolithic and Early Bronze Age in the Midlands with a focus on the Trent Valley

• Understand how aerial reconnaissance is used by archaeologists, some of the varied techniques adopted and the kind of archaeological phenomena seen from the air


Section 1: The Early Prehistory of the Midlands

The Early Prehistory of the Midlands

• How far back can we go in the Midlands?

• The Bytham River and the colonisation of England

• The end of the last glaciation– Doggerland and the changing face of the land

• The Late Upper Palaolithic of the Midlands



How far back can we go in the Midlands?



• The Bytham River• The largest river in England until

the Anglian Glaciation• Joined the Thames and Rhine

before flowing into northern North Sea

• Bytham gravels associated with very early hand axes

• The river provided a routeway for the earliest human colonists of Britain



• Brooksby Quarry, Leicestershire.


• The Bytham deposits are covered by thick glacial Till but exposed by later rivers in some locations

• At Brooksby quarrying of the Bytham gravels has recovered hand axes and important evidence for the landscape and environment of the time

• Remains, including Beetles, point to an open very cold arctic like environment


• Brooksby Quarry, Leicestershire.


Brooksby Lower Palaeolithic find - handaxe of volcanic rock

• These very early hand axes are of quartzite or andesitic Tuff (a volcanic rock)

• After the Anglian glaciation flint using colonist reoccupied parts of the Midlands

• Britain as a whole may have been unoccupied during the Ipswichian glaciation and interglacial

• Neanderthal colonists appear around 60000BC in the Devensian


The end of the last glaciation…•From about 10k BC warming climate melted the ice sheets of the last glaciation•This lead to dramatic sea level rises, flooding the formerly dry land of the southern North Sea and English Channel•There is compelling evidence for both the landscape, fauna and presence of people in this now lost landscape



• Doggerland

• Artefacts and faunal remains trawled up from the 1930s onward

• Bryony Coles work in the 1990s speculated on the topography of the lost land based on the present sea bed.

• She coined the name “Doggerland”


• The Pre Inundation Landscape

• Recent work using oil industry seismic data has identified the detail of the lost landscape, including river valleys, lakes and marshes

• Coring programmes have recovered environmental samples for analysis




• Artefacts from the Sea

• Artefacts trawled and dredged from the sea include spear points, mammoth remains and parts of the skull of a Neanderthal


LUP Bone points


• The Midlands – Creswell Crags

• A limestone gorge on the Notts/Derbys border

• Caves seasonally occupied by late upper Palaeolithic groups

• Nomadic hunter gatherers ranged widely over the Midlands probably following animal migrations



• The Midlands – Farndon• Evidence for seasonal activity

on wetlands over a 2000 year period from 12,700 – 10,700BP

• Hearths, occupational debris and flint knapping

• Rare survival of LUP flint knapping scatter – one summer afternoon 10000BP!


Section 2: The Neolithic and Early Bronze Age

The Neolithic and Early Bronze Age

• When?• In British Isles Neolithic 4000 – 2500 BC• Some migration from Central European • Spread of agriculture and sedentary living

• Ceremonial and funerary monuments

• 2500 – 800 BC• Adoption of copper and bronze working• Increased agriculture

• Megalithic monuments



• Landscape and Environment


Earlier Neolithic – undisturbed mixed woodland

By third millennium BC evidence of forest clearance and cereal pollen

Evidence for woodland clearance by burning and burning out of stumps of felled trees

From River Trent substantial oaks with felling evidence


• Evidence for Settlement• Debate, mobile populous and short

lived settlements or permanence?

• Lismore Field, Buxton. Three Earlier Neolithic long houses, floors, pits

• Charred plant remains from the buildings included emmer grains and chaff, flax seeds, hazlenuts and crab apple fruits and seeds.

• C14 dates ranging between 3990-3105 BC



• Death and Burial• Long barrows and

chambered cairns in Peak District and Lincolnshire

• Long (mortuary) enclosures as cropmarks in Nottinghamshire

• Evidence for excarnation (Giant’s Hills, Lincs)


Cropmark Neolithic Enclosures, Nottinghamshire




• Ceremonial Monuments (Group Feedback)



• The Cursus


• Double ditch linear features

• Function uncertain – ritual path, linking or transitional zone, etc.

• Feature of classic Neolithic landscapes in Wessex

• Examples in Derbyshire (Aston and Potlock) and Nottinghamshire (Normanton)

• Linear post/pit alignments serve similar purpose elsewhere in Midlands


• Potlock and Aston Cursus, Derbyshire



• The Henge


• Circular earthworks with bank enclosing a ditch

• Date from Late Neolithic

• Often continue in use in Bronze Age, sometimes with addition of megaliths

• Ritual, perhaps astronomical functions

• Henges (Peak District Arbor Low, Bull Ring

• Bingham and Gunthorpe, Nottinghamshire, Gunthorpe, West Ashby, Lincolnshire, Twyford, South Derbyshire


• Lockington

• Group of BA round barrows

• One excavated in 1950s

• Further excavations in 1994 during construction of A50

• A spectacular hoard associated with the barrow



• Lockington• Parts of two pots and a dagger were also found

alongside two gold armlets.

• The dagger is an early form characteristic of Brittany and is the first example to be found in Britain.

• The pottery is interesting as it appears that the two pots were already fragmentary and weathered when they were placed on top of the hoard.

• The hoard was buried in a pit without any skeletal remains and situated on the northern edge of a funerary enclosure.

• Its position suggests that it was placed very precisely, possibly to observe some funerary rite, but at the same time allowing the option of later retrieval



• Lockington• The embossed armlets illustrate the

great skill that was being achieved in gold-working

• On the right-hand armlet, the encircling ribs swell at intervals to form lozenge bosses, which are thought to mimic contemporary strings of beads in jet and amber.

• The surviving gold bands were

probably originally attached to an organic backing, such as leather, that has since decayed


The Rillaton Cup

Coffee Break !

Section 4. Finding things from the air

Finding things from the air

• Air Photography and Archaeology


Lt Henry Sharp, RE. Stonehenge 1906


• Derrick Riley• Derrick Riley (1915-1993) was a one of the

outstanding pioneers of aerial archaeology.

• He began his flying career during the second world war as a bomber pilot and applied his skills in aerial reconnaissance to archaeology in Britain and overseas.

• His campaigns of flying in the 1970s and 80s resulted in the discovery of a vast number of new sites and transformed the understanding of some previously undervalued landscapes, notably the lowlands of the East Midlands and South Yorkshire.

• His books included Early Landscapes from the Air (University of Sheffield, 1980), Aerial Archaeology in Britain (Shire, 1982), and Air Photography and Archaeology (Duckworth, 1987).



• What can we see?


Roman Fort, Newton Kyme, Yorks

Cropmarks


• What can we see?


Soilmarks Shadow Sites


• Making Sense of Landscape


Later Prehistoric Settlement Trent Valley

An English Heritage, National Mapping Programme cropmark plot, the result of analysis of numerous photographs taken over many years.


• Finding and Using Air Photos


• The English Heritage Archive (National Monument Record Air Photo Library)

• 2.6+ million photographs

• The National Mapping Programme


• Looking from Space?


Secret Images from Space

“many of the earthworks and cropmarks which we deal with are difficult to see from 2000 ft and I am not therefore clear how ….they would be visible at a distance of 100 miles” J. K. St. Jospeh (1967)

CORONA 860,000 imagescollected between 1960 and the last CORONA mission, in May 1972




Worldview 2

• Worldview 2

• Typical of modern civilian systems

• 4 spectral bands

• Panchromatic 0.6m resolution

• Multispectral 1.4m resolution


• Lidar – What is it?


• Lidar (Light Detection and Ranging

• Uses a very high frequency pulsing laser to scan ground below a moving aircraft

• Calculations using GPS and INS allow generation of 3D map of ground surface


• Lidar – Seeing Beneath the Trees


Welshbury Hill, Gloucestershire (Deveraux et al, 2005)


• Lidar – Understanding What You See


Elevation (Height)

Hill Shade (Shadows)


• Lidar in the Midlands


Lidar used as a tool to update HER Challis et al 2008


• Lidar in the Midlands


M1 motorway widening scheme



• Lidar in the MidlandsEast Fen, Lincolnshire

•Lidar reveals the slight traces of the complex creeks and inlets of the Bronze Age valley

•Roddons, sandy ridges exposed by desiccating peat

•The drainage network dramatically altered by Roman and later hydraulic engineering

• Assignment for next week


an archaeology of the east midlands: class 2. radcliffe autumn 2014

Education

early prehistorypalaeolithic

midlands brooksby quarry

early modern archaeology

bytham river

varied techniques adoptedand

withvery early hand

dark age

largest river