Tag Archives: archives

Weekly Round-up

Following on from yesterday’s ‘Ask and Archaeologist’ day we thought we’d do a little office round up to give you an insight into what our staff have been working on this week!

Our Finds and Archive Department have been busy this week preparing finds for archive deposition and preparing material to go off to the relevant specialists. We have also had a number of volunteers come to work with us from the University of Lincoln over the past month and this week we welcomed Roksana and Louise who have been washing various finds from some of our recent sites and marking the pottery ready for archive deposition.

Roksana and Louise marking some pottery from a recent site

The head of our geophysics team, Rob, has been doing some digitisation for a large linear infrastructure site in Lincolnshire as well as doing a watching brief in a small village just outside Lincoln. Mia, one of our Project Supervisors, has been busy working on some building recording reports for a range of sites in Lancashire and Cambridgeshire.

Rob of our Geophysics team looking very studious!

The Heritage Research Team (affectionately known as Heritage HQ) have been working on a variety of desk-based assessments for sites in Nottinghamshire, Cambridgeshire, and Lancashire. Heritage team member Harvey has been out visiting sites in Cambridgeshire and Nottinghamshire and has discovered some interesting cropmarks just outside of the Cambridgeshire Archives at Shire Hall which relate to the site of the old county prison. He thought it might have been a Roman building associated with a known Roman settlement to the north. Better luck with your interpretation next time Harvey, it happens to the best of us! Thanks to the effect of the hot weather on the ground, a lot of cropmarks have now become clearly visible across the UK.

Possible cropmarks visible outside of the Cambridgeshire Archives

And of course, our field teams have been busy across the country! With sites in Lincolnshire, Leicestershire, Suffolk, and Cambridgeshire (amongst others!) our field archaeologists have been working hard to excavate and record an array of archaeological features. We’ve also had some great finds from our sites this week, including some complete Roman vessels from a site in Lincolnshire!

Our field team having fun on site in Leicestershire

So it has been a busy week for us all here at Allen Archaeology and with the food festival coming to Lincoln this weekend I’m sure a few of our staff will be visiting!

Find of the Month, June – Roman graffiti and stamped pottery

Written by Cova Escandon (Project Supervisor, Archives)

This month has brought us some very lovely finds including some stamped pottery and roman graffiti from a site in Staffordshire!

Graffiti was common in Roman times and was probably considered a type of self-expression. In Pompeii, more than eleven thousand examples have been unearthed. The graffiti covered all sorts of subjects, from mockery, poems, love declarations, puns, political propaganda, advertising for rent, and prostitutes… even announcements like a reward for returning a copper pot stolen from a shop! There are also numerous examples of what seems to be people practising alphabet letters or sentences in order to learn to write or improve their skills, a sensible idea considering paper was very expensive, and walls were free!

As well as graffiti, pottery was sometimes marked with a stamp. This was sometimes done as the pottery was loaded into the kiln, often as they were of communal use. Since the work was standardized and stylistically homogeneous, a record was kept of the number of ceramics loaded into the kiln. This could also be recorded on a plate baked with the rest of pottery. It is also possible that the ceramicist wanted to sign their work. Here are a few examples of stamped mortaria and stamped samian ware, recently excavated from a site in Staffordshire. The stamp on the mortarium sherd is an example of the work of the potter Brucius or Bruccius who is believed to have been based at Brockley Hill during the period AD 80-100 (Fiske 2018). It can be closely paralleled with an example from Gorse Stacks in Chester (Cuttler et al 2012, Fig. 2.22.61; M2).

The samian ware stamp is believed to read ‘AVSTRIM’.

Stamped mortaria from a site in Staffordshire

Stamped samain ware an excavation in Staffordshire

Stamped samian ware from a site in Staffordshire

In graffiti, the inscription was made by scratching into the wet clay with a pointed tool. It is written in Roman Cursive Script, the everyday form of handwriting. It would be used by merchants keeping business records, children learning to write, and quick informal text. It was most commonly used between the 1^st Century BC and the 3^rd Century AD and was often used to provide a description of the contents of the pot!

We think it possibly reads as ‘ulvia’ – what are you interpretations?

Roman amphora with grafito inscription from a site in Staffordshire

Many thanks to H. G. Fiske for providing a written interpretation of the stamped mortarium sherd (Fiske 2018).

Cuttler, R., Hepburn, S., Hewitson, C. and Krawiec, K., 2012, Gorse Stacks – 2000 Years of Quarrying and Waste Disposal in Chester, BAR British Series 563, Birmingham Archaeology Series No. 13

An introduction to finds processing and conservation

By Lucie (Volunteer from the University of Lincoln)

I’m currently studying for a degree in Conservation of Cultural Heritage at the University of Lincoln and have just finished my second year. As part of the course I have to do a six week work placement to gain some experience of working in the world of conservation, and as I hope to specialise in archaeological conservation when I graduate, I chose to come to Allen Archaeology. This seemed like a perfect opportunity to not only see how a commercial archaeology company works but also to get some hands-on experience.

I’ve been working in the finds department, processing the finds which involves cleaning bags and bags of objects that have come from the various sites that the company are excavating. So far this has mostly comprised sherds of pottery and animal bones along with a few iron nails and pieces of ceramic building material (CBM). Once the finds are clean and dry they are marked and repackaged in labelled bags ready to be archived.

However, it’s not all been bits of broken pottery. I was lucky enough to be given a large Iron Age bowl to work on that had been excavated from one of the sites and was still encased in the clay soil from which it had come from. I carefully removed the soil layer by layer using various tools from my conservation tool kit to ensure there was nothing else within the soil and also to ensure that I didn’t cause any damage.

Conservation of the Iron Age pot in progress

Details of the ‘slash-ware’ start to emerge!

Once as much of the soil as possible had been removed and the pot had had a chance to dry out a little I washed the remaining soil off it using a toothbrush and left it to dry thoroughly. After it had been cleaned there was a pattern visible on the outer surface which is apparently called slash-ware because it looks like it has been slashed. To be one of the first people to see it since it went into the ground is a real thrill and for me, part of the excitement of working with archaeological finds.

Pottery sherds after conservation

I’m really enjoying my time here, getting to be hands on with the finds is great and to be given objects that are thousands of years old to clean is a dream come true for me as this is a job I have wanted to do since I was young.

Our digital era

By Isobel Curwen (Heritage Research Team)

For centuries we have been leaving a written record of our daily lives and when we find evidence of this it is very exciting. Recent excavations in London uncovered a significant collection of Roman waxed writing tablets, some of the earliest hand-written documents found in Britain (for more information visit the MOLA website), and we have even earlier records such as prehistoric cave art and runic writing systems.

Our Finds team are currently analysing some stamped Roman pottery found in Lincolnshire. Mortaria and Samian ware are the most common pottery types to be stamped, although other types of Roman pottery were occasionally stamped too. The stamp could be a name or a word, or sometimes a symbol, possibly suggesting that the potter was illiterate (Read our blog post by Alice for some examples of stamped pottery found in Lincoln). In order to create the impression on the pot, the stamp had to be created in relief and in reverse which requires considerable skill (see how quickly you can spell your own name backwards!).

Stamped mortaria found from Lincoln - see the range of potters marks from symbols to words

Stamped Mortaria found from Lincoln – see the range of potters markings including both symbols and words

Roman grey ware pot base with a pot firing ‘X’ graffito that has been trimmed to form a disc or counter (Photo Credit Hugh Fiske/Ian Rowlandson)

These lovely sherds of stamped pottery have survived for thousands of years and this got us thinking. In today’s digital world what record will we leave of our own lives? Handwritten letters have been replaced by emails and text messages. Digital mapping and GPS render paper maps obsolete, used only when technology fails us or when there is a lack of signal. In our on-site recording of archaeological sites we use a combination of physical and digital recording techniques. With recent advances in archaeological practice suggesting and implementing systems for entirely paperless recording systems (Roosevelt et al. 2015) we are heading in the direction of an almost entirely digital historic record.

It looks like the record we leave about our lives will be less tangible and physical than that of our predecessors. Read the following article for more information on our digital footprints.

Christopher H. Roosevelt, Peter Cobb, Emanuel Moss, Brandon R. Olson &
Sinan Ünlüsoy (2015) Excavation is Destruction Digitization: Advances in Archaeological Practice,
Journal of Field Archaeology, 40:3, 325-346

Digital Past Conference Workshop

By Shoned Jones (Project Supervisor)

During this year’s Digital Past Conference in Aberystwyth, we were invited to attend and take part in a workshop discussing the management and archiving of digital datasets. A number of organisations were asked to attend the workshop and give short presentations on how they use digital data.

Along with Allen Archaeology the speakers were from; Archaeology Data Service, The Discovery Programme, DigVentures, Historic England, Wessex Archaeology and the University of Bradford.

Chris Casswell, the head of fieldwork at DigVentures and Li Sou, a PhD student from Bradford hosted the workshop.

While a number of topics, including storage space and metadata were covered, the one most affecting our sector was archiving. In commercial and field archaeology we are required by law to archive the data that we collect for clients as part of the planning process. If you are unfamiliar with this archiving method please follow the link here to our blog explaining archiving.

The main observation was of a blinkered understanding by research groups of the differing archiving requirements commercial units deal with on a daily basis. There is a lack of cohesion with regard to the physical archives and the proposed use of digital archiving with ADS.

Archiving requirements and field methodologies differ from county to county. Field methodologies are usually very similar with differences usually in the kind of cameras used and the specificity of the sampling method (how much we excavate and environmentally sample). However, archive requirements can differ greatly and with technology changing at such a rapid pace and companies working in all different parts of the country it is an issue that is becoming more and more important.

While in the past a small to medium archaeology companies may only work in one county and only deposit in one archive, the nature of commercial archaeology now enables companies to work all over the country. This is a wonderful opportunity for a company and for archaeologists to encounter all sorts of archaeology in their career without having to work the ‘archaeological circuit’ (working on temporary contracts from company to company). However, it does make the work of our post-excavation archiving teams difficult.

These differences are down to a number of reasons. Funding is foremost in this and it is not an easy fix. The issues that other groups brought in also include differences in storage requirements and having appropriate systems to store and process the metadata. These are also not easy fixes and require much collaboration between many different groups, including commercial archaeology units. This conference was one of the first to begin the conversation and in bringing together people from all sectors of archaeology I am optimistic that we will develop something that is more suited to both research groups and commercial companies.

3D image created by Shoned of a medieval ankle-boot found in Lincoln

P.S Some of the terms used in this blog are quite industry heavy, here for your perusal is a Glossary to give you a hand.

Archiving:

All of the information that we acquire on an archaeological site, context sheets, photographs, the final report and finds are all deposited within the local archive for the area of that site. In order for that data to be compatible with other data that other companies and research groups deposit, it must be submitted to conform with specific requirements which can be unique to each archive, .i.e. photograph formats (TIFF or JPEG), report formatted as pdf.

Digital vs Physical Archiving:

Physical archives are the finds themselves (pottery, animal bone etc) and the paper documents that were created on site, such as the context sheets, printed photographs (in the case of film photographs, slides and negatives), printed copies of the report and such.

Digital archiving are the photographs as digital media (JPEG, TIFF) archived using ADS (Archaeological Data Service), by uploading the files to a digital archive. This can include digital versions of the report, 3D models, GIS projects, CAD drawings, Geophysical data etc. I could go on and on.

Metadata: data that describes and gives information about other data e.g. a photograph that contains information regarding the date and time it was taken.

Digital Past Conference

By Shoned Jones, Project Supervisor

In February a colleague and I braved the trek into my homeland to deepest darkest Aberystwyth in Wales for a conference unlike any other in Europe, completely centred on digital archaeology and specifically 3D imaging and its use in Heritage.

The conference was held in the University, by the Royal Commission of Wales, presenting their flagship project, CHERISH. It was the 10^th anniversary of the conference and the keynote speakers were all heritage and field archaeology giants. We were invited by DigVentures, Head of Fieldwork and ex-Allen Project Officer Chris Casswell, and Bradford University PhD student Li Sou to participate in a workshop dedicated to the archiving of 3D and other digital data.

The conference itself was fascinating, especially to an innovative company like ourselves to see what’s happening on the other side of the archaeology spectrum (a.k.a research archaeology) and how developing technology is being used to further the study of groups such as English Heritage, Historical Scotland, National Trust and CADW.

From my perspective, having been entrenched in the commercial sector for the last few years and out of the research loop, seeing the development of this technology and how we aim to implement it further into our methodology was wonderful. While 3D imaging has been a mainstay when listing archaeological recording, its use and study for fieldwork has mainly been an addition (a pretty picture) for years. Its actual use as a replacement recording method was limited. However, times have certainly changed and now it appears to be a standard recording method, used either in conjunction with 3D laser imaging or as a stand alone recording method.

This is great news to companies like Allen Archaeology. Knowing that the research sector is using this method even more comprehensively than we previously thought indicated that we are on the right track. Conferring with other conference attendees about the more complete recording methods and the different outputs that can be created from this 3D model now presents us with new interpretation and recording possibilities.

In general, the conference was fascinating and informative, and we will be writing a secondary blog regarding the outcome of the workshop and a summary of the points raised.

If you would like to know more about our use of Structure from Motion or any 3D modelling please check out our youtube channel and the previous blog about Weston Park, Staffordshire, a Building Survey conducted with a mix of recording techniques.

Shoned Jones discussing her recent work using 3D imaging

https://www.allenarchaeology.co.uk/portfolio/weston-park-staffordshire/

http://www.youtube.com/channel/UCTqrx7nCdLBGM3U0oo6Q9sQ

Find of the Month, March – Soda Water Torpedo Bottle

By Cova Escandon (Project Supervisor Archives)

The find of the month for March is a Lee and Green Ltd. torpedo bottle. It is made of plain glass and you can read on its body ‘Sleaford’ and ‘Spalding’.

Lee and Green Ltd. Torpedo Bottle

Arthur Green and Ranyard Lee opened an aerated water bottling factory in Spalding in 1885. The factory was located on Albion St. and built by John Richard Carter in 1824. It was sold in 1846 to Henry Bugg the Younger and William Henry Bugg. A few years later, the premises were used temporarily as a guano store, before being sold to Lee and Green. They also had factories in Sleaford, Bourne, Boston and Skegness.

The first ‘torpedo bottles’ appeared at the end of the 18^th Century as a solution to the problem of containing gas in glass bottles. At this time, glass bottles were not strong enough to contain the gas so they would often explode. Glass capable to contain the gas was very expensive, so it was reserved for luxurious liquids such as champagne. Cheaper drinks like ginger beer were contained in stoneware bottles. The torpedo shape would stop any air leaking as it prevented the bottle from being stood up, keeping the cork moist as a result of being in contact with the soda, so it wouldn’t shrink (something still done today with other drinks such as wine). Pouring the drink would also be easier and it would be better adapted for packing carriage. It did present advantages for the merchant and the consumer too as the consumer would have to finish the drink before putting down the bottle! The bottles were also easy to transport via boat on flat shelves with holes on them so they wouldn’t fall over when the ship moved.

1914 marks the end of the torpedo bottle era. They are no longer necessary as they are replaced by Malenstrone’s 1901 patent that allows normal shaped bottles to contain gas.

‘The Story of Lee and Green’ Exhibition is currently on display at Sleaford Museum.

The Story of Lee & Green

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