Why post-medieval archaeology matters (to some of us)

As archaeologists, our job is to study the past through the analysis of material culture. But how far into the past does something have to be to warrant the attention of archaeology? Occasionally in the course of our work it is possible to encounter the view that whilst the significance of remains of the distant past is appreciated, the more recent the period being dealt with, the more people become baffled the remains are considered to merit study. This attitude is of course understandable – prehistoric, Roman and medieval sites have little or no documentary evidence relating to them, they do not appear on maps or photographs and very often their very existence is unknown until they are revealed by archaeologists. It is easy to assume that, for more recent sites, the historical record “tells us all we need to know”.

However, it must be remembered that in the future even the present will be really, really old. With our unprecedented appreciation of the value of heritage, I think that we must seize the opportunity to make sure that we have as full a record as possible of significant archaeological remains of more recent times, especially given that in some areas such sites are disappearing at an alarming rate.

In this post, then, I’ll (Al) give a couple of examples where I think that the archaeological study of more recent sites has proven its worth. I know not everyone will be convinced….

Figure 1: Women working in engineering, Manchester, 1916

Many years ago I carried out an evaluation on the site of an engineering works in Gateshead, Tyne and Wear, which had originated as part of the Gateshead Iron Works, founded by William Hawks in the 18th century. One of the trenches was targeted on an outbuilding identified on OS mapping as a fairly late addition to the site – a building which turned out to be a toilet block. So far, so very unglamorous. During post excavation, a search of building control documentation revealed that the toilets had been added to the works in 1917. At first this puzzled me. Why, with the most destructive war in human history in full flow in Europe, would an engineering works undoubtedly running at full capacity on Ministry of Defence contracts build a new toilet block, of all things? It occurred to me at that point that there was no evidence in the ground for a urinal, just individual cubicles, and a possible interpretation emerged.

It seems possible that the new toilets became a necessity at that time due to the replacement of the traditionally male workforce with women, as more and more men were conscripted into the armed forces. The work done by women during the First World War is often presented as a factor in the softening of the attitude of the powers that be to the idea of granting women suffrage, although the long struggle that it took to achieve this should not be dismissed. Although the interpretation is not certain, to me it provides an example of how archaeological and documentary evidence can be combined to add to understanding of the social history of not only the specific site, but the region and nation as a whole.

From another metalworking site on Tyneside, that of Spencer’s Steelworks in Newburn, there is further example of how archaeology can add to our understanding of the development of the site. Documentary records tell us that the works, which was founded in the early 19th century, expanded in the 1870s as new plant for bulk steel production was installed. Records have not survived, however, detailing the construction methods and materials used in this fairly late expansion. Archaeology revealed remains of some of the first commercially viable Siemen’s regenerative steel furnaces in England. Interestingly, it also revealed that the construction of the furnaces had necessitated the import of refractory bricks from Glenboig, near Glasgow.

Figure 2: Example of a Glenboig firebrick, because there had to be a brick…………

At this time the north east coalfield had many firebrick works, producing products which were nationally renowned, along with those from around Stourbridge. Indeed, many firebricks from West Durham brickworks were used at Spencer’s – unsurprisingly, as the freight charges would have been minimal. So, what the archaeology suggested was that, despite their excellent reputation, local refractory bricks were still not suitable for lining Siemens furnaces. The Glenboig brickworks, close to Coatbridge where Siemens plant had been built in the late 1860s, seem to have developed bricks especially for this task, and historical evidence shows that they made it a selling point. So the investigation of a site in Newburn informs us not only about industry there, but also about related industry in Scotland.

Although there’s only space to provide a couple of examples, I hope that I have manage to express why I believe that it is important to treat archaeology of more recent times as a significant and diminishing resource. The work AAL does continues to build our understanding of the post-medieval and modern eras, with recent work on the Crown Brewery and maltings in Lincoln, communal air-raid shelters from the Second World War in Sunderland, and this…

Figure 3: A lovely example of a Royal Observer Corps monitoring post dating from the Cold War period.

Image sources:

Figure 1: American Machinist, vol 44, issue 25, page 1060 via https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:WW1_Churchills_Pendleton_women_at_work_1916.png
Figure 2: Image reproduced with Creative Commons License from https://www.flickr.com/photos/nottsexminer/6824143320
Figure 3: AAL’s archive

Pottery training

Learning to recognise fabrics and forms

I’ve always had a ‘thing’ for pottery, stemming from my first experience of archaeological fieldwalking and finding a pile of greyware (I won’t mention the arrowhead I also found that day). Through volunteering on excavations and at the local museum I discovered there was an awful lot more to pottery than I expected. This year I have been undertaking some intensive training learning how to accurately identify, date, record and quantify pottery.

This process has involved numerous hours using a microscope and identifying minerals within the pottery fabric and comparing them to known local, national and even international fabrics. Each kiln has its own recipe of ingredients that gets mixed into the clay so if the kiln has been excavated a specific production site can be listed. The style/form of the pottery also gives indications of date. By cross referencing this information with previously identified examples a date range and hopefully a production site is revealed. As I don’t have the experience of the fabrics I have to check every sherd against a written description or an example piece and research every form with named examples from other sites. My progress is slow and occasionally frustrating but there are multiple ways to aid this process aside from 10 years of experience.

Archaeological text books can be challenging, they have huge amounts of text with pages of finds illustrated in the back. They are very difficult to read unless you are looking for something specific. To make the information more accessible I find writing the details and similar examples from other sites next to the illustration saves a lot of time flipping back and forth looking for dates and form names. I also have pages and pages of notes with sketches of rim types as a cheat sheet. Eventually I’ll be able to do this without having to look in a book every time.

It isn’t an easy thing to learn all this information and apply it with confidence to an assemblage but it has been enjoyable. The next step is going to be creating my own reference collection and building on my notes to help ease the process of remembering hundreds of fabrics and forms.

Islamic Palaces 1 – The Alhambra Royal Workshops Project

Over the past 6 months I have been working with universities in the south of Spain to investigate workshops and production areas within medieval Islamic palaces. This, the first of two blogs, will focus on trips taken earlier this summer to the Alhambra in Granada.

Arabesque and tiles

For those of you unfamiliar with the site, the Alhambra is a large palace and fortress complex situated on a promontory at the foothills of the Sierra Nevada, overlooking Granada. It was constructed in the 13^th century AD during the Nasrid dynasty, a late Muslim dynasty in the south of Spain, and the palace is best known for its highly ornate arabesque reliefs, glazed tiles, pottery, glass and of course the beautiful gardens; and it was these gardens that had attracted the attention of academics from the Universities of Bournemouth, Newcastle and Granada. The question they were all asking – where exactly were the tiles, pottery and glass produced when the site was initially constructed?

The current gardens are a relatively modern addition and much reconstruction work of existing structures had been done to tidy its appearance; however, upon closer inspection some of these structures formed ‘keyhole’ shapes in plan, typical of kilns or furnaces.

Keyhole kiln

Prof Kate Welham and Dr Derek Pitman from Bournemouth University took the lead in May, undertaking a non-invasive survey of an area of garden using a whole suite of geophysical techniques (fluxgate gradiometer, electromagnetic survey, magnetic susceptibility and ground penetrating radar (GPR)), plus portable X-ray fluorescence (p-XRF). This approach was taken because of the likely nature of deposits beneath the surface – the site had been occupied by Napoleon’s forces during the Peninsular War, but upon his retreat significant parts of the fortress were destroyed including, most probably, the area of garden under survey. As little or no archaeological work had been carried out before, no one knew quite what to expect.

Surveying

Now, my first piece of archaeological fieldwork took place in 2000, and I’ve been in and out of the field ever since, but until this moment I’d never performed a geophysical survey. I’d always been that guy who can dig and, in more recent years, the GIS geek, often working with geophysical data but never collecting it. So just to prove to everyone that it did actually happen I got someone to capture the moment…

Using GPR at the Alhambra

I’m afraid I’m not able to reproduce the results in this blog, but I can say that several areas indicated the presence of high temperature activities. These results informed the implementation of an excavation strategy, and a couple of months later, two trenches were opened to investigate various magnetic enhancements recorded during the geophysical survey. These were directed by Dr Chloe Duckworth from Newcastle University and Dr Alberto Garcia Porras from University of Granada, and I was invited along to survey their findings and introduced them to the use of SfM to reconstruct a 3-dimensional image of each trench.

A trench being excavated

It was their first digging field season and the main priority was to take the topsoil off and map the uppermost deposits and any structural remains. Once this had been achieved it became increasingly apparent that the site was more complex than first thought. It had been occupied on and off for the past 800 years and many of the remains date to later activity, including the modern reconstructions which now mask the true nature of the kilns.

I hope to return in 2017 when these remains can be investigated fully and the full extent of production within the Alhambra is likely to reveal itself.

The Archaeological Toolbox

An Archaeologists toolbox

We all know that archaeologists own at least one trowel.

But there’s more to it than that, a menagerie of tools and pieces of equipment that are integral additions to the ‘tools of the trade’. But what makes up the elusive archeologist’s kit?

To start with the obvious; trowels, they are the universal (yet unofficial) symbol of Archaeology. A necessary part of the toolkit, and almost every archaeologist will own whether it gets used on a daily or yearly basis. I’ve spoken to people about their first trowel and they can always remember what happened if it is no longer with them. Fee fondly reminiscing about hers, which is likely now buried underneath concrete and tarmac from her first University Dig, and I can say that my first is still with me – gifted by my very proud grandparents.

Cat’s clearly identified, if rarely used, trowel

Gloves of both the waterproof and thermal kind are two things that are underestimated fairly frequently. General waterproof gloves that are necessary for health and safety, but thermal gloves are pieces of equipment that I admit that I have forgotten many times and consequently suffered…

Finds bags are a staple. While they’re provided by the company, they disappear fairly quickly and it’s a good idea to have a stash of them by your side when you carefully excavate that fantastic piece of Roman jewelry no one else noticed, or when the site’s storage is at a distance from where you are working.

Two that tie together (haha) are lines of string and nails. These two are important for creating section lines, creating plans, marking GPS points for small find locations, and bartering. For future reference, a nail is worth 5 biscuits or an extra cup of tea…

A notebook isn’t absolutely essential, but it’s highly recommended… Not just to track how many nails you’ve traded for other supplies, but to mark down important numbers and information that you’ll need while on site. If you’re digging a pit you’ll need to remember two numbers just for the cut and fill, and photo numbers & GPS points are also necessary for future reference. If one of your colleagues asks who dug a certain pit number, if you can’t remember if it was you or not… you’re able to go back and look. Unluckily, if it was excavated wrong, there’s proof that it was you. On the contrary, if it was you who’d dug it and found something amazing, like the Roman jewelry mentioned before, you can prove that it was yourself that first cast eyes upon the artefact.

A well organised pencil case is essential

A pencil case is also recommended. From drawing plans to writing on finds bags, a sharpie and sharpened pencil are important. Aside from the obvious, things like scale rulers and erasers and pencil sharpeners, pencils are somewhat different. They shouldn’t be HB. These pencils will smudge and blur on the permatrace, a bit like waterproof tracing paper, that is used for plans and section drawings, and as a result of this, 6H pencils are recommended to reduce this smudging.

Tape measures are, in essence, similar to the string and nails. They’re used to measure for planning, to map out the location and size of the feature, and for your unsuspecting colleagues to trip over. Surveyor tape, I should add, is also good for measuring as tape measures may not be the right length or maneuverable enough for general archaeological use. Clips of varying types are recommended to attach it to objects, to create a reliable measuring line for your plans and/or sections.

All sorts of strategy’s are employed to clearly identify kit

Line levels are important for when you start to plan the section of your feature. When drawing plans a straight line is needed as a base line for whatever you are drawing, and the line level would be used to make sure your string line is straight for finally drawing it out. Note that these are small and easily lost, and as a result your colleagues will ask to borrow them from you… and maybe give them back.

Finally I’ll be blunt – duplicates of everything. Archeologists enjoy ‘borrowing’ from each other for indeterminate amounts of time, and I think I can safely say that we’re all guilty of this…
In all seriousness, I started my traineeship with an entire tin of nails.

In conclusion, an archaeologist’s kit is varied and an amalgamation of tools that are the core essentials of any excavation and sometimes, they might even be the part of the original set that you bought.

Lest we forget

Best site hut biscuit with Yvonne

Archives Supervisor Yvonne Rose

What is your job role?
Project Supervisor (Archives)

How long have you worked for Allen Archaeology?
Nearly 5 months

How would describe your excavation technique?
A distant memory!

How long have you been working in archaeology?
24 years

How did you get into archaeology?
Quite by accident! I’d been working as a wood machinist for a few years, and when I lost that job my partner (fellow archaeologist)’s boss took pity on me and took me on as a site assistant for a month. I obviously impressed them so much they kept me on for over 20 years!

What is the best thing about your job?
Getting to deal with all the artefacts, the variety of tasks, and working with a great bunch of people.

Specialist skills?
Archiving (of course!), getting lost, knitting.

Best site hut biscuit?
The dear departed McVities Jaspers (R.I.P.)

Heritage Research: engaging with landscape architects

At the beginning of the week the heritage team (Chris, Catriona and myself) met with the landscape architects at Influence®. We were interested in discussing the similarities and differences between their landscape and visual impact assessments and our own approaches to studying the impact on the setting and significance of heritage assets (discussed in this blog).

Landscape and visual impact assessment is often required as part of a planning application and helps to assess the effects of future development on the landscape. A report will help to inform design, in order to reduce and offset some of the adverse effects of development on the surrounding area. It will consider the existing character of the place, and potential changes to the available views. A study of the landscape can be applied to all urban and peri-urban landscapes, towns, villages and rural areas, coast and islands area; and the views can encompass a wide range of features including National Parks, Areas of Outstanding Natural Beauty, Nature Reserves, Listed Buildings, Scheduled Monuments, etc. Of course there is large overlap in the subject matter, although the principle difference between the approaches in that landscape and visual impact assessments attempt to establish and protect the landscape and views as experienced by current individuals. Our research seeks principally to outline the impact of development on understanding the past context of heritage assets and negate factors that might detract from how we comprehend the past, in essence to assess the likelihood for encountering subsurface archaeology and how developments will affect standing heritage assets.

Getting a chance to discuss the similarities and differences between our approaches helped us to appreciate the complexities of each other’s disciplines. We ended up being able to reflect on our own practices and in the future will be incorporating features from their approach to landscape and visual impact assessment into our own study of the impact future development of the setting and significance of heritage assets. It was a great opportunity and are very grateful to the staff at Influence in Newark for hosting us.

The Virtual St. Stephen’s Project

In Spring 2016 we were subcontracted by University of York to convert a visual model of the pre-1834 House of Commons, St. Stephen’s Chapel Westminster to an acoustic model. The work was commissioned as part of the Virtual St Stephen’s Project, an AHRC-funded research project and was a collaboration between the departments of History (Dr John Cooper), and Electronics (Dr Damian Murphy).

One of the major elements of the project was the creation of a three dimensional computer model detailing St. Stephen’s chapel at various points in its lifetime. The three dimensional model was then used on a touch screen device to allow visitors to interact with the reconstruction. Creating these models not only provides a great opportunity for public engagement it also allows evidence from a range of sources to be brought together and used to create an interpretation of a lost space.

The Virtual St Stephen’s Interactive model

However, as beautiful and engaging as these models are they do not consider the soundscape of the space. In recent years archaeologists have started to explore the opportunities for applying acoustic technology. Catriona came to AAL following the completion of her PhD looking at this technique.

For the Virtual St Stephen’s project we started with the three dimensional mode produced by Dr. Anthony Masinton and simplified it to use as an acoustic model. Acoustic technology is not as sophisticated as the technology to produce visualisations; the models have to be less complex. They also use the same information in slightly different ways. Both models require the size and shape of a space to be accurate, however; where a visualisation needs information about how surfaces are coloured and textured, an acoustic model needs to understand how sound will reflect, or be absorbed by different materials.

The acoustic model of St. Stephen’s Chapel, Westminster

The resulting model can provide a series of numerical values which tell us about the space; how sound decays from various positions in the room, how clearly sounds can be heard. We can also create auralizations; acoustic reconstructions. Under the right conditions they allow a listener to experience sound from the modelled space. We hope to use these models to explore the experience of listening to speeches in the pre-1834 House of Commons.

The project featured on The Lost Chapel of Westminster on BBC Parliament on Sunday and is still available on iPlayer.

Heritage Research: What is the Desk-based Assessment

The initial stages of archaeological work can often be complex and differs greatly between sites depending on the individual peculiarities of the project. Often the first stage of work falls to the Heritage Research Department at AAL, consisting of Josh, Catriona and Jesse, and the writing of Desk-Based Assessments (DBAs).

Aerial photograph showing cropmakrs comprising circular enclosures

A DBA attempts to assess whether there is likely to be any archaeological remains on or near a planned development, and whether the development will affect the setting or significance of known (and usually designated) heritage assets, such as listed buildings. The DBA is in essence a short research project exploring all the aspects of the history and archaeology of a particular piece of land. These can be buildings due for renovation or demolition, planned housing schemes, solar farms, cable lines and a whole variety of other reasons.

The starting point for a report is usually the local Historic Environment Record (HER); previously known as Sites and Monuments Records (SMRs). They are databases of information relating to the historic environment and contain information about archaeological works, buildings, landscapes, finds and a whole range of other things associated with the human past. You can access a lot of the information from Heritage Gateway if you are undertaking personal research.

The results of a HER search will tell us what known archaeological and heritage assets are located within defined area. However, this record is not everything. A report can also include sifting through the local archives for historical documents; indicating land use of the site over time, or investigating cropmarks shown on aerial photographs, and analysing maps of the past for evidence of shrunken villages. Some sites require a closer understanding of the underlying geology to predict whether prehistoric activity is likely, and others need to check whether 20th century buildings are likely to have truncated the archaeological resource.

Ridge and Furrow spotted on a site visit

Yet, part of the job also involves getting out the office and into the field (as we are still archaeologists!). Our site visits might include visiting ancient monuments, exploring parks and gardens, inspecting and recording old buildings, and visually assessing seemingly innocuous land, searching for potential clues of archaeological remains that might lie beneath. Without visiting the site it can be impossible to know how it relates to the landscape surrounding it.

A DBA is often undertaken at the pre-planning stage in order to highlight the potential for archaeological remains in advance of construction taking place. This allows the developer to prevent damage to the archaeological resource and the associated costs of excavation by changing the specifics of the development. For instance, the developer might choose to leave open spaces for recreation on houses estates over areas of known archaeological interest in order to avoid disturbing underlying remains. You never know, your local park might be on the ground of a Roman villa or a medieval castle! In addition, DBAs allow the local planning authorities to make decisions about whether or not excavation is required for planning permission, in cases where it is not practical to change the nature of the development. That’s when archaeologists get their hands dirty!

Preparing DBAs can be really rewarding projects for people who want to expand their knowledge of British Archaeology. You have to know a little bit about everything, and know where to start looking for more information and when to spend more time exploring something.