Category Archives: Archive

Find of the Month: An Iron Age loom weight

Our find of the month for May enables us to have a look at textile production during the Iron Age. It is a large, triangular loom weight which was found during an evaluation in the village of Kirkby on Bain, Lincolnshire. Archaeological evidence for the actual process of textile production is scarce as the wooden looms and associated threads and wool don’t survive. What do survive better are the spindle whorls from the spinning process and loom weights from weaving.

Loomweight

These triangular shaped loom weights are thought to have been used during the Iron Age and are usually made from fired clay, though stone is common on earlier sites. The clay is normally of low firing and as such the weights are prone to break. Later Anglo Saxon loom weights are circular and many Roman ones are pyramidal in shape. The reason for choosing a particular shape is not known and is likely a personal or cultural preference. Loom weights are a fairly common find on sites in Northern Europe and in the Near East where a certain type of loom was used.

The loom which would have been in use during the British Iron Age was the warp-weighted loom which became obsolete in the Roman period but had been in use since the Neolithic. This was a fairly simple loom which consisted of two wooden uprights and a horizontal bar, which would rest against the wall. The warp (vertical) threads would hang freely from the bar and would be tied individually or in bundles to the loom weights. The clay loom weights hanging from the bottom of the threads would keep them taut enough to enable the weft (horizontal) threads to be more easily passed over and under in the weaving process.

This particular loom weight is quite large, weighing in at 2.27kg which would create quite a bit of tension in the yarns. As mentioned earlier, due to the low firing of the clay, they can break fairly easily and several of these heavy items hitting into each other as you weave would cause frequent damage. This loom weight has lost the tips of two of the corners but is still a remarkably complete example of the type.

Find of the month: April

This month’s find is a sherd of Anglo-Saxon pottery from an evaluation in Wellingborough, Northamptonshire. It was found in a small posthole alongside a narrow gully terminal, which may have been associated with a structure.

The fabric of the pottery sherd is known as Stamford Ware owing, unsurprisingly, to its manufacture in a number of small potteries concentrated around the Lincolnshire town of Stamford. It was produced between the ninth and thirteenth centuries; by the tenth century, Stamford was one of the major pottery centres of England, exporting its wares throughout the country. By this time, pottery would have been produced on a wheel as opposed to the earlier method of building up a vessel in a series of rings or coils. Stamford produced a variety of fine wheel-thrown vessels, mainly cooking pots, small bowls, spouted pitchers, jugs and dishes. Many of the fine table wares were decorated with a transparent lead glaze and, after circa 1150, with a bright copper green glaze, a useful piece of dating evidence for the archaeologist.

The pottery sherd from Wellingborough is unglazed and an unusually dark colour. This colour is the result of a lack of oxygen during the firing process, a process known as reduction, and is associated with the earlier fabric types. The sherd is decorated with a band of diamond-notched rouletting typical of the 10^th-century examples. At just 25mm in length, it is unfortunately too small to determine the form of the original vessel.

Stamford pot

So why choose a sherd of pottery barely bigger than a postage stamp as Find of the Month? Well, evidence of Anglo-Saxon activity in this area of Wellingborough is scarce, with reported finds being restricted to a single small find of a silver penny of Edward the Confessor (Pastscape Monument 345426). So, despite its diminutive size, this piece of pottery is actually a find of significant local importance.

References:

Kilmurry, K, 1980 The Pottery Industry of Stamford, Lincs. C. AD850-1250 British Archaeology Report British Ser 84

Blinkhorn, P, 2017 Pottery and CBM from 30 High Street, Wellingborough, Northamptonshire (Site WEHS17) In AAL Report AAL2017019

Regia Anglorum – Anglo-Saxon and Viking Crafts – Pottery

University of Leicester website

A cold week for archaeologists

It’s been a busy week and we’ve been up to all sorts of exciting things.

Aaron has been monitoring work at The Lawn in Lincoln.

On site at The Lawn

Damian has taken a team down to London

Monitoring works in London

Rob has been hunting the Loch Ness Monster in his magnetometry data

Finding monsters

Jesse has been undertaking and processing his first building survey

Setting up his first building survey

Alice has been working hard in the sleet

Team in the south of Lincolnshire

Reports are getting produced in the very tidy projects room

Working hard in the projects office

Finally we’ve had a team hard at it washing finds

Finds washers are going strong

Hope everyone else has had a busy week!

Find of the month: December

December’s Find of the month has been written by Alice and was selected from some finds which have just returned from the pottery specialist (Ian Rowlandson).

Newport is a suburb of Lincoln known for a 3rd century gateway to the colonia but lesser known is a 2nd century pottery production site our team excavated in 2013 and 2015. Whilst the kilns were not within the excavation area we found large quantities of pottery and Fragments of kiln furniture. This specific production site was unknown before the excavation so it is quite a significant find.

I’ve decided to focus on a specific type of pottery produced at Newport known as mortaria. It was initially imported from the continent and copied in Britain from around the time of the Roman conquest. It’s a type of cookware that had multiple functions, they acted as a large mixing bowl and a mortar and pestle, sometimes they were used so frequently the abrasive grits were worn away and a hole appeared in the base of the pot.

Potters stamps on ceramics from Newport

It is a complicated task to identify the source of this pottery but it can be made slightly easier when the potter stamped his name into the rim. The picture below shows four examples from this site all produced in Lincolnshire

1. IILIVS – this is possibly a product of Dragonby, North Lincolnshire. Products from these kilns are quite unusual as the clay fires orange/red instead of the usual cream.
2. ATO or OTA retrograde (backwards) – there is a possibility this was made at our site as other examples of this stamp have been found in Newport. They are dated 140-165AD
3. CRICO – A more widespread potter whose wares have been found in Brough-upon-Humber and across Lincolnshire and Yorkshire. They are also dated 140-165AD
4. SENICO – This potter was based at the kilns in Newport but also produced wares in South Carlton. Some examples have a worn die which leaves slightly blurred impressions and some have the C and O missing possibly because the stamp was trimmed after it wore down too far.

It must have taken a huge amount of skill to produce these pots and stamps. They show that the potters were capable of carving in reverse and relief. I have attempted to do this using modelling clay and had to write my name in marker on paper and turn it over to ensure the letters were correct when the stamp was used. Maybe future development within Newport will allow us to find the kiln structures and we can always hope that a whole stamped mortaria will be preserved within.

Hearlty K, 2016, Roman pottery in appendix 1.In Archaeological scheme of works: Land off Newport, Lincoln. (Report Number AAL 2015098). P23-56

Merry Christmas!

We hope everyone has a wonderful break and keep an eye out for our 12 days of finds from the archive published everyday of the festive period!

Keep your eyes peeled for our 12 Days of Chirstmas

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.

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.)

Find of the month: September

October’s find of the month was found just this week; during works around the forthcoming Chadwick Centre, at the International Bomber Command Memorial Site. Several large pieces of waster pots were found in a pit near to where three kilns had already been excavated back in 2014. Hopefully we could find another one!

Find of the month: large pieces of waster pots

We started work at the site in 2014. During an excavation in 2014, the three kilns were uncovered and have all been dated to the Romano-British period: probably towards mid to late 3rd Century. They are all fairly small, indicating that they were more likely to have been small subsistence kiln’s filling the needs of the local area, rather than a business. Earlier work has shown that the area has generally been in agricultural use; with multiple corn dryers, which would link into the local use of the kilns in a rural area.

One of the kilns excavated this week

A pottery kiln normally consists of a dome shaped superstructure which keeps the heat in, and around, the pottery being fired. A long triangular or oval shaped stokehole pit lies in front of the circular oven , which was where the fire was originally started and also where the ashes would be pulled out of the kiln into. Stokeholes are often very distinguishable due to their black, charcoaly appearance.

Base of a pot which didn’t make the grade because of the small depression that weakens the pot

Throughout the kiln structure you can find wasters. Wasters are piece of pottery that have not made the grade for whatever reason; be it a deformity such as a crack, a poor firing reducing the integrity of the structure, or an air bubble within the clay. You are less likely to find a complete rim of a vessel, which is why the one seen here is particularly exciting You can see on the picture of the little base, a small depression which would have been an air bubble that was trapped in the clay but burst during the firing. This not only creates a poor finish but it weakens the pottery.

One kiln found during the excavation had very little pottery wasters near, or in it, which suggests that it might have been used for something other than pottery. It could have been a bread oven, or as the more imaginative of us like to think; a pizza oven!

Find of the month: August

It’s been a busy month at AAL with people off working all over the place. However, find of the month comes from a site worked on in 2015 and came to Cat and Yvonne’s attention while they were packing it up for sending to the museum.

I was working on a site in the center of Lincoln; near the river. It was a bright but cold day in February and half of our trench was partially filled with water. To avoid missing anything significant I was metal detecting the base of a partially excavated trench; as we knew we wouldn’t be able to excavate any further under these conditions.

The metal detector went BEEEEEEEEEEEEP; this was a full signal, implying that it was a strong signal; usually associated with a metal alloy. I used a little ruff neck spade to excavate the hole, and because of the water had to scoop out handfuls of sand; running them under the detector. The metal detector went off and I realised I was holding something round and metallic; a lead token.

One side of the token

The other side of the token

I gave it a further rinse, and recognised immediately what it was. I’ve found quite a few of these in the past, but this one was a bit more special; it is very good condition with markings on both sides. Tokens like this were used between the 16th and early 19th century. This one has likely been cast in a mold, rather than clipped. The specialist (Mike) believes it
might be a Powell Type 3 which would be of 18th century date (Powell 2012).

It was probably either a gaming piece, or it was token used instead of currency when money was scarce.

It’s a nice find because it indicates the use of the area during that period, further it was recovered from a medieval context suggesting that it was intrusive. The preservation of the piece and having markings both side makes it particularly special; and one of my favorites!

Powell, D. 2012 ‘The 18th century Sophistication of the Stock Design‘ Lead Token Telegraph Issue 86.