Tag Archives: commercial archaeology

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

The Woolly Spires of Lincolnshire

By Isobel Curwen (Heritage Research Supervisor)

A few weekends ago, whilst wandering round the small market town of Louth, I stumbled across these rather unusual knitted churches which are currently on display at St James’ Church. Originally commissioned by The Collection, Lincoln, these knitted masterpieces form part of a countrywide project entitled the ‘Woolly Spires’ project, managed by artsNK.

During the medieval period, Lincolnshire prospered as a wool producing county using wool from the iconic breed of sheep, the Lincoln Longwool (see our previous blog post for more details about the Lincolnshire wool trade!). The profits from this trade went mainly to a few wool merchants and wealthy landowners who in turn founded many of Lincolnshire’s churches (Vince 2003).

In order to reflect both the founding of many of Lincolnshire’s churches as a result of the wool trade, and their rural nature, residents and community groups were gathered from the six rural districts of Lincolnshire to created knitted versions of their churches using wool exclusively from the Lincoln Longwool breed. The churches created include St Deny’s Church, Sleaford, St Mary and St Nicholas’ Church, Spalding, St Botolph’s Church, Boston, St James’ Church, Louth, St Wulfram’s Church, Grantham, and St Mary’s Church (Stow Minster), Stow.

The knitted churches on display at St James’ Church, Louth

St Mary and St Nicolas, Spalding

Many of Lincolnshire’s churches can be found in rural settings which can be divided into distinct geographical areas (Jenkins 1999). The churches to south of the county, in the area around the Fens and The Wash, have their origins in the monastic houses of Norman England. St Botolph’s Church, Boston is a particularly nice example with its famous ‘Boston Stump’. To the west lie the coastal marshes and the Wolds, with St James’ Church steeple providing a focal point to the open landscape. Inland Lincolnshire is represented by both the Humber and Trent valleys with St Deny’s church, Sleaford providing a fine example of stained glass windows and the tower of St Wulfram’s Church, Grantham providing a visual masterpiece of early Gothic architecture.

The churches of Lincolnshire, and their associated land and settlements, are a fundamental component of the county’s history and as result play a key part in the work undertaken here at AAL whether this be as part of research for a desk-based assessment or as part of a building recording survey.

We think these woolly churches are great and they are currently doing a tour throughout Lincolnshire so do keep a lookout for them coming to a church near you!

Jenkins. S., 1999, ‘Lincolnshire’, In: England’s Thousand Best Churches (pp 363-400), Penguin Group, London

Vince. A., 2003, ‘The new town: Lincoln in the High Medieval Era (c.850-c.1350), in: Stocker. D. (ed) The City by the Pool (pp 159-249), Oxbow Books, Oxford

International Women’s Day 2018

This year for International Women’s Day we’ve been thinking about how women are represented in the archaeological record. The archaeology of gender has become a large part of our interpretation, where previously women’s lives were overlooked by antiquarians in favour of kings and emperors, work has been done to readdress this imbalance. We’ve picked three of our most interesting examples for discussion.

Recently excavated head pot, ‘Marion’

Neither face pots nor head pots are especially common, but have been found distributed widely across Britain including around 50 examples from York, a famous example of which depicts the Empress Julia Domna (York Museums Trust n.d). Head pots appear to be almost exclusively found in Roman Britain and North Africa, and are generally made of finer fabric than face pots (Braithwaite 2011). While researching this piece it seemed like a majority appear to be depictions of women. Our example, Marion, was found in Bourne, Lincolnshire. We chose the nickname Marion as we thought the frills around her face looked like a medieval headdress.

Saxon chatelaine

Chatelaines (sometimes referred to as chatelaine chains) were a popular item of women’s dress from around the 7^th century in Anglo-Saxon England, and are sometimes found in the burials of female individuals (Owen-Crocker 2004). The chatelaine itself was attached to a belt worn at the waist, with smaller objects hung from it and thought to be worn by the female head of the household, indicating a level of status. Common items carried during the period included functional items like keys and personal hygiene (metal picks, small spoons intended for the cleaning out of one’s ears, etc) (ibid). Later, Viking women’s fashion dictated one’s personal items were often hung from brooches which are themselves commonly (but not exclusively) associated with the burial of women (ibid).

The misidentifying of an individual’s gender in archaeology based on materials remains isn’t uncommon, prominent examples include the ‘Red Lady of Paviland’, identified as Roman female in 1823 due to the presence of ivory and rings (assumed to be female items) but later revealed to actually be a man from the Upper Palaeolithic period, and the Skaill boat burial in Orkney, which was assumed to be male based on the presence of finds believed to be associated with warriors (a sword, an axe, a spear etc.), but was later identified as female (Hedenstirna-Jonson et al 2017). The example in Orkney was still presumed to be a man even after osteological analysis in the 1970s identified the individual as a woman (Laskow 2017)!

19th century ribbon from the grave of a female adult

During excavations in a 19^th century burial ground a fashionable silk gauze ribbon with self-woven stripes was found in the burial of an adult female. Several other examples of fashion ribbons were also found, personal touches allowing those interred to retain elements of their identity after burial.

You can also find our previous blog posts for International Women’s Day here:

2017: https://www.allenarchaeology.co.uk/christina-colyer-lincolns-trowel-blazer/

2016: https://www.allenarchaeology.co.uk/international-womens-day/

References:

Braithwaite, G., 1984, Romano-British Face Pots and Head Pots, Britannia, 15, 99–131, accessed online 08.03.2018: https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/britannia/article/romanobritish-face-pots-and-head-pots/0D323526CEF3BF9A4A7A500BABB1AC9D

Hedenstierna-Jonson C, Kjellström A, Zachrisson T, et al. A female Viking warrior confirmed by genomics. Am J Phys Anthropol. 2017;164:853–860, accessed online 08.03.2018: https://doi.org/10.1002/ajpa.23308

Laskow, S., 2017, Found: Evidence That a Lavish Burial Honored a Viking Warrior Woman, accessed online 08.03.2018: https://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/viking-warrior-woman-burial-birka

Owen-Crocker, G.R., 2004, Dress in Anglo-Saxon England, 2^nd ed, Woodbridge: Boydell Press

York Museums Trust, n.d., accessed online 08.03.2018: http://www.historyofyork.org.uk/themes/roman/roman-head-pot

Happy Chinese New Year!

Today marks the start of the Chinese New Year (or the Lunar New Year), this year the Year of Dog, an animal which symbolises luck! However, doing any of the following is deemed unlucky: cleaning clothes, using scissors, sweeping floors and encountering crying children. Some omens are easier to avoid than others…

With the use of scissors being forbidden, that got us here thinking. Here in Lincoln, scissors were probably used as part of the wool trade. Lincoln’s attractive location along the banks of the River Witham facilitated a prosperous, expanding wool trade during the early medieval period with finished textiles transported east along the River Witham and then exported abroad (Pawley 2001). The flat, open agricultural land provided a perfect location to rear sheep.

Some rather fierce looking sheep from Lincolnshire…

In particular, two shades of these textiles were highly prized: the coveted Lincoln green and Lincoln scarlet. Lincoln was renowned for not just the high quality of dye used but also the consistency of the colour (apparently Kendal green which was notoriously inconsistent)! The green colour, created by dying the wool with woad and then with ‘dyers broom’, was less expensive than Lincoln scarlet, a cloth that was aimed at more affluent members of society (Santos 2013). Lincolnshire green (or greene as it was known) was, of course, made famous by being worn by Robin Hood and his merry men, or so legend has it.

Sadly, the textile industry collapsed between 1275 and 1300 AD. The loss of wool staple, which designated that Lincoln was a key place for its trade, was a result of increasing competition from both nearby towns such as Boston and from abroad (Stocker et al 2003).

So, getting back to the Chinese New Year, it appears we’re all exempt from doing laundry, using scissors and cleaning floors today – great news for a Friday! Although managing to avoid crying babies may provide more of a challenge, particularly for those here at AAL with young children…

References

Pawley. S., 2001, Maritime Trade and Fishing, 1500 – 1700, In: An Historical Atlas of Lincolnshire, Bennett. S, and Bennett. N (eds), Phillimore, West Sussex

Santos. C., 2013, Lincoln: Where Robin bought his ‘Hood’, The lincolnite http://thelincolnite.co.uk/2013/05/lincoln-where-robin-bought-his-hood/ (16^th February 2018)

Vince. A., 2003, The new town: Lincoln in the High Medieval Era (c.850-c.1350) pp. 159-249, In: Stocker. D (eds), The City by the Pool, Oxbow Books, Oxford

From pipe-smoking to PPE!

By Isobel Curwen, Heritage Research Supervisor

Archaeologists excavating the Oseberg Ship in 1904 or 1905

As you can see from this photograph of an excavation in 1904 or 1905, some things have changed quite a lot in terms of what we wear during archaeological excavation today. Note the smartly dressed men in the centre of the photo (and also the slightly grubbier men to the left!). Suits, ties and bowler hats are a stark contrast to what we wear on archaeological excavations today.

However, as the fashions have changed, so has what we wear during our excavations. Today we have strict health and safety procedures in place to ensure that we are safe whilst on site. For this, we have Personal Protection Equipment (PPE) that includes an array of kit from hard hats, steel toe-capped and midsole boots, gloves, safety glasses, and hi-visibility clothing.

As we as field archaeologists are at the mercy of the Great British weather (see previous blog posts for some prime examples of this!) it is essential that we have good quality, warm and waterproof clothing. This not only means that we are kept warm and (hopefully) dry but that team morale during a particularly cold or wet day is kept high!

However, importantly, the main role of PPE is to keep us safe. The nature of our work means that we are often on construction sites with set rules and regulations that we need to abide by. This includes wearing hard hats where there is a risk of falling objects, safety glasses to protect eyes from flying sparks and dust, gloves to protect hands from sharp objects or hazardous chemicals, and safety footwear to protect our feet from falling objects. Hi-visibility clothing also keeps us seen (even through the layers of mud!). Obviously the type of PPE varies from site to site and is dependent on the nature of the site.

At Allen Archaeology, everyone is issued with PPE which we have in various sizes. Each site undergoes a risk assessment and toolbox talks are given as and when required which act as reminders as to the correct usage of our PPE.

So how times have changed! I wonder how our field staff would feel about swapping their PPE for a suit and tie?!

Some of our fieldwork team working on a site in rural Lincolnshire, complete with PPE!

‘The ploughman feeds us all’ – January is over

By Harvey Tesseyman, Heritage Research Supervisor

January is finally over, a month with five Mondays to kick the year off. Since we’ve spent January out in the field excavating, geophys-ing, and undertaking earthwork surveys, we’ve been thinking about what people in the medieval period would have been doing out in their fields this month.

The Julius Work Calendar was a twelve page book measuring just 200mm by 130mm and produced in c.1020 in Canterbury Cathedral. It was divided into the calendar year we recognise today, each page showing a zodiac sign, the holy days of that month, and an illustration of a particular task http://www.bl.uk/manuscripts/FullDisplay.aspx?ref=Cotton_MS_Julius_A_VI. This ‘Work Calendar’ was a religious text, likely produced to help young monks with their learning (Robert and Danziger 2003). It was rescued from destruction following the Dissolution of the Monasteries by a 17th century Member of Parliament, antiquarian, and book collector, Robert Cotton, from whose shelves the calendar gets its name: each of Cotton’s bookcases in Westminster library was topped with the bust of a notable figure of the classical world; Augustus, Caligula, Claudius, Cleopatra, Domotian, Faustina, Galba, Nero, Otho, Tiberius, Vespasian, Vitellius and, of course, Julius.

The calendar suggests that January’s task was ploughing. The ploughing season began in earnest on Plough Monday, the first Monday after Twelfth Night. Plough Monday may have had associations with rites surrounding fertility, whereby local young men would wear special badges and engage in ploughing competitions (Gilchrist 2012). We decline to pass comment on this aspect.

Ridge and furrow earthworks visible during an earthwork survey in Lincolnshire

The open field systems that dominated much of the medieval landscape comprised areas of arable land up to c.50ha big, divided into furlongs which in turn comprised a number of narrow, enclosed strips. Generally between two and four of these giant fields served a single settlement, with somewhere between one third and one half of the rural population living in places given over to this system (White 2002). Medieval ploughing was difficult work. Teams of people goaded and sung to their slow-moving oxen to drive them through the fields, whilst the plough was steered to deliver the perfect furrow within which to sow seeds; not too shallow nor too deep. It was a system that worked for hundreds of years before oxen were put out to pasture in favour of smaller teams of horses. A plough team could cover an acre a day, which would have involved walking something like 17.5km (Ochota 2016). Quite a distance even on level ground (our geophysicists walk up to 25km a day and that’s with just a magnetometry rig, not a team of oxen)! Unlike modern ploughs, medieval examples had a single blade, not unlike a spearhead in shape, or an archaeological trowel held at an angle. They were designed to cut a small trench into the earth and push the dislodged soil to one side and this created a characteristic set of linear earthworks, known as ridge and furrow (or furrow and ridge, respectively). Due to the wide turning circle on a team of oxen when compared to a modern tractor, ridge and furrow ploughing has a gentle ‘S’ or reverse ‘S’ curve to it to give the animals enough time to turn around and start another furrow, in an area referred to as headland.

With time, many examples of ridge and furrow ploughing were in turn ploughed out. Where evidence for these medieval field systems survives, often soilmarks showing where the old furrows used to be are the only trace but happily for archaeologists, these soilmarks and remaining earthworks can be quite easy to spot both by eye, and using LiDAR. They’re interesting to dig, and useful to identify during a desk-based assessment or heritage statement as they often indicate further activity nearby.

January was busy, and February is already off to a good start. Luckily for us according to the Julius Work Calendar we’ll be out in February clearing vines…

Ridge and furrow visible on LiDAR near a site in Leicestershire

References:

Gilchrist, R, 2012, Medieval Life: Archaeology and the Life Course, Suffolk: Boydell Press

Ochota, M., 2016, Hidden Histories: A Spotter’s Guide to the British Landscape, London: Frances Lincoln Ltd

Robert, L., and Danziger, D., 2003 (3rd ed), The Year 1000: What Life Was Like At The Turn of the First Millenium, London: Abacus

White, G.J., 2002, The Medieval English Landscape 1000–1540, London: Bloomsbury

Carillion collapse: lessons to be learnt for archaeology?

By Mark Allen, Director

The 15^th January 2018 was a momentous and shocking (though not surprising) day with the announcement that Carillion, the second largest construction company in the UK had gone into liquidation. The signs had been there, with three previous profit warnings over 2017, the share price plummeting, and indeed the markets even betting against their survival since 2013! This has of course led to questions over why public sector contracts continued to be awarded to the company throughout 2017, but that is for others to discuss…

Now I am not, of course, saying our company was in any way comparable with Carillion at the time they ceased to exist: they had 43,000 staff worldwide, literally a thousand times the number of staff at Allen Archaeology! However, commercial archaeology is intrinsically linked to the construction sector; indeed its format of tendering for work is based on that of the construction industry. In addition, many archaeological contractors are likely to have been subcontractors on Carillion schemes across the UK, and, unless their financial contract was with a third party (e.g. the public sector), then they are almost certainly going to receive no reimbursement for invoices submitted or work yet to be invoiced for. There will not only be a financial impact but also a loss to archaeology as projects are shut down part way through, potentially leaving significant volumes of new data that will not be assessed or analysed or published, making it practically meaningless.

It has been written that Carillion continued with the ‘recession mind-set’ that prevailed after the financial crash of 2008, when the construction industry, and indeed archaeology, were hit particularly hard. Although many companies have moved forward over the last decade, not all have done so, and Carillion’s continual pursuit of this strategy resulted in serious ‘suicidal’ pricing shortfalls to keep the order book growing, the staff working and supply chains intact, whatever the cost. They piled on too much debt, chasing new business to make up for the shortfalls of cash caused by losses from the high risks that they continued to take.

Carillion sites across the country shut down immediately on the 15^th January, and their once competitors have been quoted as saying they would only take on many of the contracts with a 20% uplift in price, such was the artificially low price that Carillion had offered to undertake the work.

So why was Carillion given so much work, when many insiders in the industry were particularly concerned with their practices? Simply put, money. Large public sector (and indeed many of the larger private sector) schemes usually require at least a Pre-Qualification Questionnaire (PQQ) to be prepared by the tenderer. A large portion of the PQQ is focussed on showing the company’s suitability and experience for undertaking the work but usually anything from 40-60% of the tender package is focused on the bottom line, i.e. the overall price the company is willing to do the work for. There has been further criticism that many of those in the public sector reviewing PQQs do not have sufficient training or experience to do this, so the bottom line cost has carried some weight with the rest of the PQQ. After all, the lower the construction budget the higher the chance the overall project will be completed, as the construction element is almost without question the largest portion of the project finances.

The high risk approach of slashing potential profit to the bone or accepting a ‘loss leader’ in the hope of further work, or even a loss just to keep staff busy, simply must stop if there is going to be a healthy construction industry moving forward.

Now to here I realise I have focussed solely on the construction sector; however all of the above relates to the commercial archaeology sector too, albeit the financial values are somewhat lower.

Far too many times in the past when a contract has been awarded to a competitor, and the client has provided the range of (anonymous) quotations for the work, it has been shocking to see how low the winning bid has been, often significantly lower than all other quotations. You may think that this is sour grapes, but far from it. We are never going to win every contract, but the alarm bells should ring when three tenders are almost identical and one is, for example, half the price. This means that the winning contractor has decided to take on a lot more risk than any of their competitors, i.e. that they hope that significantly less archaeology will be encountered than the other tenderers have predicted. This is not because they know anything different, all known information on the archaeology is provided in the tender package and the answers to any queries during the tender stage are made available to all interested companies. They may be lucky, but it is more likely that they will not be, so they either make a loss, push for compensation events to recover additional money from the client (resulting in an unhappy client), or the archaeology suffers.

Whatever the case, the practice perpetuates the race to the bottom mentality, as competitive tendering forces companies to try to match or beat their rivals. This also sustains the continuous concerns over the levels of wages within the industry, as wages can only be set at levels that the company can afford.

We are living in a time where there is serious investment in public infrastructure projects such as HS2 and the Thames Tideway Tunnel, as well as a good level of private sector work, so it should be seen as an opportunity for the industry to stay busy with a fair price for work of high standard, to be treated with respect by the construction industry and not just viewed as a hindrance, and most importantly to use this opportunity to improve our standing in the sector allowing us to provide more archaeologists jobs, job security and higher wages, in line with their qualifications and experiences.

Best site hut biscuit with Isobel

What is your job role?

Heritage Research Supervisor

How long have you worked for Allen Archaeology?

Just over three months – it’s gone very quickly!

How would you describe your excavation technique?

By now – probably a bit rusty! I used to take such pleasure in making a straight section…

How long have you been working in archaeology?

2 years and three months.

How did you get into archaeology?

I was studying geography at the University of Reading in 2011 and had the option to take some modules in Archaeology (up until then I wasn’t wholly sure what archaeology actually was). So I thought I’d give it a go (clearly I wasn’t finding my geography degree very stimulating…). The first archaeology module I took was entitled ‘Bones, bodies and burials’ and from then I was hooked. I found it fascinating! Once I finished my undergraduate I wanted to study archaeology in more detail, and in particular I wanted to specialise in human remains so I enrolled on an MSc in Bioarchaeology at the University of York. I absolutely loved it – lots of bones, mud and labs. When I finished this I got a job working in commercial archaeology and here I am!

The Heritage Research office in all its Christmas glory!

What is the best thing about your job?

I enjoy heritage research because it’s great fun to build up a historical picture of an area and combine all the elements of our research (i.e. HER searches, local histories, historic mapping etc) to make one (hopefully) cohesive timeline. I am a self-confessed map geek and I love going to the archives and looking at historic maps – as Harvey will tell you I get pretty excited about this…

Maps aside, I have recently learned how to use GIS programming to create illustrations and for map regression and am enjoying being able to create a nice set of figures!

Specialist skills?

Well I was going to say being able to read old handwriting but I’m still not great at this…

Best site hut biscuit?

Without doubt the chocolate digestive. It was also voted as the favourite site biscuit in our recent Christmas poll in 2017 so this gives me confidence that most of my colleagues agree with me on this matter!