Category Archives: Archive

Lincolnshire Heritage Open Days

Heritage Open Days is a festival in England over four days in September. During these four days thousands of events across the country allow you to explore the history and culture sitting at your feet. Heritage Lincolnshire has co-ordinated Heritage Open Days in Lincolnshire since 1994 they provide free access to lots of interesting properties, tours, events and activities across the county. This weeks blog is a pick of the ones our staff plan to take advantage of!

Chris (Clay) and Al both plan to visit the Old Tile Works at Barton upon Humber. Chris because he led a community project to survey the site in 2010 before it was restored, and Al because he loves all things industrial!

Jesse is going to see Earth as a Natural Building Material, as it would be intriguing to see how buildings made of materials that rarely survive in the archaeological record are constructed, and to give you a bit of ‘real-life’ experience within that historical setting!

Josh would like to visit the Museum of Lincolnshire Life, as it has numerous objects, artefacts, and trinkets, from people’s everyday life in Lincolnshire from 1750 to the present day. It will be interesting to see how life has changed over the last few centuries and how different things would have been for all of us not that long ago.

Rachel hoping to go on the guided walk along the Ice Age route of the River Trent, between Lincoln and Newark. We would like to experience this lost river route as she’s really interested in how the landscape has changed over time; as an archaeologist she tends to concentrate on how people have affected the landscape, but this walk will help her to understand the natural phenomenon that has shaped the area she now call home.

Cat is keen to get to Gainsborough Old Hall as she loves a medieval interior.

Fee is a glutton for punishment and is going to visit All Saints’ Church in Winterton and St Peter’s Church in Barton Upon Humber following a watching brief at Winterton. (Cat might sneak along as well as she loves a medieval church!)

Nasha also has her eyes on a church; St Peter at Gowts Church in Lincoln, as the stories surrounding the building sound fascinating.

Rob is also following up on a job and is planning on visiting Belton House. He ran a geophysics project their recently and is hoping to return to have a look inside the building!

Jedlee and Duncan are interested in visiting Lincoln’s Oldest Church of St Mary le Wigford to see the Saxon Tower.

Ryan is planning on going to Gibraltar Point as the walk is nice and there is lots to see and do.

Dominika plans to visit the RAF Binbrook Heritage Centre.

Alice is going to try and get to the talk on the Submerged Forest at Cleethorpes’ as she was part of the team tracing the track erosion.

Debbie has an interest in stained glass and has always wanted to have a go so she’s going to check out the Heritage Craft Demonstrations at Strawberry Glass.

Find of the month: July

This post is the first of a new series of blogs detailing an exciting find that the Archives department have uncovered over the course of each month.

A Roman hygiene implement found during excavations in Navenby

The first artefact to feature is a copper alloy Roman nail-cleaner found on a community archaeological excavation in 2013. The archive team chose this artefact as it will be leaving Allen Archaeology to be archived at The Collection Museum in Lincoln. This is the final part of the community excavation undertaken in Navenby (which is 13km south of central Lincoln). The excavation was set up and excavated with the help of Volunteers from The Navenby Archaeological Group to investigate an area of the Roman town of Navenby. The artefact was found during these investigations.

The artefact (which can be seen in the picture below) is a Roman hygiene implement, specifically a nail cleaner. This is a toiletry set, in this case sitting on a metal ring; similar to a modern day key ring, with a square sectioned, well preserved decorated shaft and bifurcated terminal. This is a significant find due to the preservation of the decorations on the rectangular shaft and the bifurcated end. Similar nail-cleaners have been found in Colchester (Crummy 1983) but not including decorations extending down the length of the object, the decorations are usually limited to the upper portion of the object.

This nail cleaner would have been in use in Roman Navenby in the 3rd Century occupation of the town. For another example click here. Finds like these give us a personal insight into the everyday lives of the people of Roman Britain and are wonderful to find in such good condition.

Crummy, N, 1983, Colchester Archaeological Report 2: The Roman small finds from excavations in Colchester 1971-9 Colchester Archaeological Trust Ltd

Excavating cremations

Warning: Images of human remains feature in this post

Several of Allen Archaeology’s recent site excavations have revealed a particularly interesting aspect of ancient mortuary practice: human cremation burial urns.

Some of the pots we have retrieved date from the Bronze Age, Romano-British and Anglo-Saxon periods, and are known to have been used as early as the Mesolithic in Britain (c.5500 BC), although this method began to fall out of favour following the widespread adoption of Christianity in Western Europe.

Early Anglo-Saxon (5th–6th Century AD) stamped cremation urn found near Fakenham, Norfolk

Unlike modern cremations practices that produce ‘ash’, archaeological cremation burials consist of pieces of bone of varying size, often being quite large and identifiable. The reason for this difference is down to the processing method. Whilst modern crematoriums use industrial furnaces (that burn at temperatures of 870-980 °C) and a machine to pulverize the dry bone fragments into a fine powder, cremations in the past would have been performed much differently. The deceased would have been placed on a wooden pyre and required constant attention to keep the fire burning, particularly when the weather would not cooperate (surely not?!). The result is a lot of small chunks of cracked and discoloured bone which are then placed (in part or altogether) into a pre-made urn, and buried.

Due to the fragility of the urns and their importance as a burial, they are carefully removed on site and sent back to the office to be excavated – this happens exactly the same way as on site, but at a much smaller scale! The contents of the urn are removed in levels or ‘spits’, and records including photographs and drawings are taken before and after the removal of each cross-section and full layer. Due to having to work in a pot with a diameter of roughly 13cm compared to a pit or ditch of 1 to 2m, a completely different set of tools is needed. Lay down the shovel and trowel, and pick up your clay art tools and tweezers! Once the bone is removed it is passed through several sieves (10mm, 5mm & 2mm), with the remains of varying sizes weighed rather than counted. These are then bagged according to their size, with any recognisable elements bagged separately.

Excavating a cremation burial

So now the bones have been excavated, what can we tell from them? More than you think. The colouring of the remains, the amount the bones have warped from their original shape and their completeness can reveal information about the temperature of the fire, if there were any problems during burning (such as weather or incomplete incineration), how the body might have been placed on the pyre and whether the body was clothed or burned as dry bone. Duplicate elements of bone will also alert you as to whether more than one individual is present within the urn, as can the cumulative weight of the fragments.

Also, other remains such as macrobotanical or charcoal fragments can aid in the interpretation of the pyre construction, whilst ‘grave goods’ given to the cremated individual might also survive.

Fragments from a Romano-British cremation urn burial found at North Killingholme, Lincolnshire

Jousting

There’s nothing better than a cool drink in a pub on a sunny day off followed by a spot of jousting. Yes, jousting and not watching it but actually doing it! I recently returned to The Knights of Middle England at Warwick to feed my rapidly growing addiction.

Horse riding in its less violent forms has been a huge part of my life since I was a child. My love of horses is part of the reason why I am interested in history with its Mongolian hordes, the Charge of the Light Brigade and medieval Knights with their chivalry and tournaments.

As most people probably know, jousting was a medieval sport where two knights cantered towards each other, aiming to break their lance on certain parts of the body to score points. It was initially a training for warfare, alongside other war games, but towards the mid to late medieval period, it began to become more of a spectacle, a bit like football nowadays but a lot more aggressive!

During the two hour lesson I attempted to master three skills; the rings, tent pegging and the quintain. The aim of the lessons are to get you up to a standard to be able to compete in the bi-annual amateur competitions which feature these skills; as well as jousting at an experienced knight, and of course to have a lot of fun.

The Rings!

We began with the rings; the lance looked like it would barely fit through! I succeeded with the largest rings they had, but they can get a lot smaller. The rings are placed on props above the tilt line rather than on the gallows; like in A Knight’s Tale. It was fairly easy to get one ring, but then I often ended up trying too hard to aim at the second ring rather than keep it level and straight to secure the first ring before getting to the second.

The hardest event: tent pegging

We then moved on to tent pegging, where we are told that the ‘sport’ began during the crusades with target practice on the heads of buried enemies. It has been used as a training exercise since the 4th Century BC in Asia, it was also very popular in India against elephant-mounted troops. This was the event in which I had the least skill, my timing was awful. I would get in position to spear the peg then wait too long, hitting the ground behind the peg! I did manage to get it a few times, which is some consolation.

Hitting the quintain

Then we moved on the final skill and the one that was the most fun – hitting the quintain, a revolving shield with a ball on a string which follows it round on the opposite side. This packs a hell of a punch. On your first run you are mostly concerned with the ball hitting you in the back, but this changes to worrying about the force that travels down the lance as you hit a solid metal object!

The whole event left me on such an adrenaline high, it was fantastic! Although it also left with a nasty three week long bruise on my chest!

I thoroughly enjoyed my brief time as a woman warrior in training (check out this Guardian article about the inclusion of women in English Heritage events) and it has me completely hooked, I’m planning my next lesson as we speak!

A roundup of the week

It’s been a busy week at AAL so this weeks blog is a little round-up of what we’ve been up to.

Warning: Images of human remains feature in this post

You might have already seen the excitement on our site at University of Lincoln. During monitoring works we uncovered human remains dating from the Roman period close to the River Witham.

Tobin has been visiting a site in Cumbria where we have been undertaking a Watching Brief

Rachel working on Damian's site near Peterborough

Damian has had a team out working on an evaluation near Peterborough.

The geophysics team enjoying a break in coastal Lincolnshire

Rob has been out with a team to start a large geophysics project on the Lincolnshire coast where they’ve been contending with a lot of weather but enjoying the location!

Fee’s been working hard in London

Al is dealing with challenging conditions in Brentford

Work is continuing on our “big” project in Market Harborough where the team are undertaking an open area excavation

Bryn has been working hard processing environmental samples

Yvonne has joined the archives team and is getting up to speed as Cova heads off on maternity leave

Nasha has been busy editing reports and dealing with publicity.

Josh has been analysing lithics for a specialist report

A secondment to the Archives

I joined the company as a project archaeologist in June 2015. For the majority of my time here so far I have been out onsite digging, firstly working on the large Roman site at North Killingholme and since then a variety of other sites across the country. Every now and again, I’m posted in the office where I participate in post excavation tasks such as washing and marking finds, which I quite enjoy.

At the end of February there was an advert on the front desk advertising a temporary secondment as an archives assistant; I jumped at the opportunity to apply. I saw it as a good opportunity to learn valuable skills; develop my interest in post-excavation processes further and increase my knowledge of artefacts.

My application was successful and for the best part of March and April I undertook the secondment; temporarily becoming an archives assistant. During this time I had the opportunity to learn a variety of new skills and experience more of the processes that happen in post-ex, alongside getting to handle all the exciting artefacts that come back from site. I helped to package artefacts to be sent to the specialists, sort and catalogue skeletons, write inventories and help organise finds from incoming projects.

My primary role was to assist and prepare a number of site archives to be deposited to their corresponding museums across the country. In this I prepared both the written site archive, so all the registers, drawings, context sheets etc. and boxed the associated site artefacts. The whole process for each site had to adhere to their associated museum guidelines, each of which was different. I assisted with site collections from Leicestershire, Lincolnshire and Winchester. Some of the tasks within this were quite repetitive, such as numbering and labelling digital photographs to correspond to the photograph registers or writing accession numbers on all the documents. Nevertheless these repetitive aspects are quite necessary as without it the allotted archive wouldn’t adhere to the correct format and so would be at risk of being rejected by the museums.

I really enjoyed my time in archive department, it was great working with the Archive team and getting to know the ins and outs of what goes on downstairs. It was an enlightening experience, as I have now seen first-hand the full process to which each site and it’s artefacts and documents, takes before it finally it ends up in a museum. From being excavated in the field, then in post ex getting washed, dried, marked, sorted, catalogued, sent to a specialist, reports written, stored then finally boxed up with the related documents and deposited to a museum.

Best site hut biscuit with Catriona

Cat working in the archives at AAL

What is your job role?
Project Archaeology (Archives)

How long have you worked for Allen Archaeology?
1 year and 7 months

How would describe your excavation technique?
Pick and Mix

How long have you been working in archaeology?
1 year and 7 months

How did you get into archaeology?
Came for a week’s volunteering at Allen, became a trainee and have never looked back.

What is the best thing about your job?
Seeing all the nice shiny finds come back from the conservator.

Excavating a skeleton in October 2014

Specialist skills?
Organising baking competitions at North Killingholme- we’ve had mince pies, biscuits and tarts!

Best site hut biscuit?
I like to jazz it up with a pink wafer 

Hello World

Welcome to the first Allen Archaeology blog! We are going to be posting every Friday afternoon little bits and pieces for people to enjoy in their tea breaks. These blogs are going to include exciting things that are going on at the company, profiles of our staff, stories from some of our sites and the things that we do as a commercial unit.

The blogs will give you the chance to hear from staff across the company, from our Trainees to the Directors, and to find out about what it is like to be an archaeologist from the people who are, quite literally, on the ground. We hope to start a conversation about what’s going on in the commercial world, at Allen Archaeology and further afield, so please engage with us!

If you’ve not visited us before why not have a click around our fancy new website and check out who we are and what we do! If you have found your way here then here are some pictures of what we’ve been getting up to this week.

Our directors checking out the video of our excavations at University of Lincoln, made by the Lincoln School of Journalism click here to see it for yourself

Josh is getting started on the Lithics from the Mesolithic site in the centre of Lincoln

Josh Hogue is getting started on the Lithics from the Mesolithic site in the center of Lincoln

Charlotte and Gavin have been out and about undertaking an earthwork survey in Worcestershire

Look at this beautiful (modern) stratigraphy from Lidl's development site in Dartford

Look at this beautiful stratigraphy from Lidl’s development site in Dartford

Chris has been mapping pottery distributions from one of the North Killingholme sites