Newsletter-305-September-1996

On August 9th, Dorothy received through the post an envelope addressed to her, bearing a first class stamp but with nothing inside! Even the postmark was missing. If anyone is awaiting a reply from Dorothy please can they contact her with the details. On the subject of post – while the postal dispute continues it is strongly recommended that Dorothy be telephoned to confirm that bookings for outings have been received in order to avoid any disappointment on the day.

SITE WATCHING by Tessa Smith

English Heritage has alerted us to these sites of archaeological significance where planning permission to build is being sought:

SOPERS YARD, KINGS CLOSE, BELL LANE, NW4 This is close to where a Neolithic axe and a Roman coin were found.

THE CORNER HOUSE, 154 STONEGROVE, EDGWARE Near a possible Roman roadside settlement where the Ministry of Defence found boundary ditches, evidence of timber structures and spreads of occupational debris which could be interpreted as part of the Roman staging post of Sulloniacae. Also nearby, on the east side of Watling Street, a Roman cremation burial was found at Pipers Green Lane.

OUTING TO FLAG FEN AND LONGTHORPE TOWER

The HADAS outing in July was to Cambridgeshire where the morning was spent on a return visit to Flag Fen. Unfortunately, Francis Pryor’s site is under threat as his English Heritage funding has now ceased necessitating a large increase in fee-paying visitors if the centre is to remain open. The afternoon was spent in an urban setting at Longthorpe Tower. Our grateful thanks go to Tessa Smith and Sheila Woodward for organising the visit and to Dorothy Newbury for co-ordinating it

FLAG FEN by Audree Price-Davies

Our guide in Flag Fen may have been a classicist by training, as he informed us, but his roots were in the Celtic bardic tradition and culture. He was a teller of tales with a vivid imagination. However, his enthusiasm and inspiration were matched by his knowledge. As in the best Celtic tradition of threesomes, he took us through the Bronze Age, the Iron Age and the Roman period.

Flag Fen is a low lying, wet basin on the edge of the Fens. It consists of three regions (again – the three). Fengate is the dry land along the Peterborough Fen edge, Flag Fen is the wetland and Northey is the dry land beyond. People lived at Fengate and Northey, they did not live in Flag Fen. The Flag Fen basin was flooded by the waters of the River Nene in the wetter months of the year. During summertime. land that was flooded in winter provided very lush hay and grazing for sheep and cattle.

Around 1350 BC people living on the dry land around the Flag Fen basin realised that their flood meadows were threatened by the flocks and herds of neighbouring communities whose own land was being drowned by rising water levels. So they constructed a kilometre-long defensive wall, a palisade of posts, across the only access into their flood meadows from the open fen. This was a major feat of engineering involving hundreds of thousands of timbers. At one point the palisade had to run across an area of open water. Here the Bronze Age engineers constructed an artificial platform of timber to support and give access to the posts of the palisade which ran across it. Like many prehistoric fortifications, the line of posts and the huge timber platform was a site of religious importance. Many of the objects which were thrown in were made of bronze and were very valuable. Many had been deliberately broken or had been carefully placed in the waters.

Some of the offerings came from Sweden -Bronze Age swords and pottery. Watching the Olympic rowing on television. it is hard to imagine how thirty rowers, perhaps ten of them baling water, in an open boat could cross the North Sea – a notoriously rough stretch of water – and return with valuable goods which they then broke and placed in the votive pool. 327 bronze objects have been recovered. It is as if people were approaching their boundary to make a personal offering to ensure that it remained secure.

After the abandonment, around 950 BC, of the posts and platform to the rising waters, which had now completely drowned the flood meadows, the place continued to be revered, Many Iron Age objects including swords, ornaments and jewellery were smashed and dropped into the waters. These religious rites only peter out with the coming of the Romans. Finally Flag Fen was crossed by a Roman road built in the first century, probably by military engineers.

Our guide showed us the recent excavations on the Roman road, there were two diggers at work. He was hoping to find a marker stone which would indicate the exact width of the road as he had already found two – one he surmised in the middle of the road and one at the other side of the road. The end marker stones would indicate where the ditch was. This road was on top of a previous Bronze Age trackway. He theorised that Hadrian had ordered the construction of the road when the Fenlands were used as the ranching area for feeding the Roman troops used to quell the disturbances in the Iceni tribe after the defeat of Boudicca in AD 61 by Suetonius Paulinus.

A recent theory by Dr Francis Pryor, the Director of Flag Fen, shows that the small Bronze Age fields, ditches, hedges and narrow paths were identical to the pens, bars and sheep barriers of today. Conventional wisdom has been that 3,000 years ago, the Fenland was thinly populated by people growing cereal crops and keeping a few sheep for meat and wool. Dr Pryor is convinced there were not dozens of sheep but thousands, and hundreds of people not just a few. Flocks of 6,000 would be brought in off the summer pastures into the holding pens and droveways for counting, sorting and culling – a time of feasting and trading, of demonstrations and match-making.

This was not a people struggling to subsist on primitive grain and nettle tops but the autumn scene was like the Appleby Horse Fair and lasted for almost 1,000 years, he thinks. Then the weather changed, the sea-level rose, the summer pasture flooded and the society disintegrated.

We were shown a Bronze Age round house. This had a double row of post holes in a circle and was turf-roofed. This weighed 14.5 tons when wet and the posts had to be renewed every six months. The Iron Age house had a single row of posts with a steep angle to the roof. It was thatched and when wet the straw weighed 7 tons. This was an advantage when renewing the timbers. The houses contained about fifteen people.

The importance of Flag Fen lies in the fact that it is one of the best-preserved pre-Roman religious or ceremonial sites ever found in England. Religion is known to have played a very important role in the life of Bronze Age communities and Flag Fen holds the key to a number of important questions. It is hard in an article to summarize all the projects and excavations which are taking place as the work continues and theories emerge. A return visit is a necessity to appreciate the complexity.

LONGTHORPE TOWER by Peter Pickering

The second half of the day was quite different – a medieval tower in a quiet, residential suburb of Peterborough. The tower is not large, though it is part of a large private house; and from the outside seems of only modest interest. But what is inside is remarkable indeed, and we spent a long time in the Great Chamber, studying the paintings with the aid of the comprehensive English Heritage guidebook, with only short forays to the roof to look at the view.

Wall-paintings in medieval churches are always fascinating, but are relatively common. Well-preserved wall-paintings in secular medieval buildings are rare indeed. The Longthorpe Great Chamber had its walls and ceiling covered in paintings, probably round about 1330; a large proportion survived (though with faded colours) to be discovered when the room was being redecorated after Home Guard occupation in the last War.

Although these paintings were in a secular building and there was an understandable emphasis on heraldry, many of the subjects were Christian (a Nativity, the Apostles, etc) and many of the others had a direct moral purpose. The distinction between sacred and secular in medieval art is not clear cut. There was, of course, much in a medieval church that does not seem very religious in inspiration – think of all those misericords.

Several of the subjects were hard to interpret, and may always have been so; lengthy inscriptions to elucidate them have become illegible over time. Perhaps the most memorable paintings were Old Age, the sixth of the Seven Ages of Man, with his life savings in a bag; the beautiful series of birds; the musician playing a portable organ; and the mythical Bonnecon defending itself against an archer by “ejecting backwards the contents of its bowels”, as the guidebook puts it.

Then after lazing awhile in the sun, visiting the restored ancient church, or discovering the Fox and Hounds, the coach took us to the Sacrewell Country Park for our tea, and so home.

THE TOTTERIDGE PARK MOUND by Jennie Cobban

The mound in Totteridge Park, noticed by Cyril Pentecost in the August Newsletter, has an interesting (and rather sad!) little archaeological story attached to it. The following information is an extract from my (hopefully) forthcoming book whose working title is “Geoffrey de Mandeville: The Ghosts, Mysteries and Legends of Barnet”.

Totteridge Park In Norman Brett’s “The Story of Hendon Manor and Parish” (1933), he draws attention to the presence of mounds in the garden of Totteridge Park, containing “bodies and weapons of those who fought in the battle”. Presumably as a result of this reference, one of these mounds was partly excavated in 1958 by members of the Barnet Record Society (which in 1967 changed its name to Barnet and District Local History Society, having become thoroughly cheesed off, one assumes, with being asked to provide the public with records by Jerry Lee Lewis and the Beatles). The story of this brief excavation (it must have been one of the quickest ever) is rather pitiful, and runs thus:

EXCAVATIONS AT THE TOTTERIDGE PARK FARM MOUND

A small party from the Barnet Record Society, including the Chairman, spent about four hours on the 30th August, 1958, excavating the top of an artificial mound of some size situated on the Totteridge Park Farm land.

This mound was at first thought to be an old windmill site but after digging for some time a quantity of broken bricks, plaster and slate was exposed about a foot below the surface, also a short length of brick foundation. This was evidently the remains of a well-built structure of one room – possibly a summer house or shooting lodge of the Georgian period.

An avenue of trees led from the mound towards Totteridge Lane. The mound which measured 7ft 6in in height and 86ft across was very much older than the building which at one time surmounted it.

Owing to lack of co-operation from the owner of the property upon which the mound stands we were unable to proceed further with our examination of the site. He had first granted us permission to dig but afterwards sent word about mid-day that we must vacate the site by 3 pm.

10th Sept. 1958 W. NEWTON (Barnet Museum Records)

Shame! This mound’s contents (i.e. bricks and mortar) do sound rather similar to those which once existed on Hadley Common (already described) though this mound was huge in comparison. However, in addition to this relatively modern debris. Newton claimed to have found a “rusty sword blade” (shown on the plan of the site). Just where exactly he found it is unclear from his rather vague excavation plan and, guess what, we do not know where the “sword” is now, and so cannot be sure whether this really was a sword or a sword-shaped piece of wishful thinking. In the short period allowed on site, it is not surprising that no sign was discovered of Norman Brett’s bodies, and it is possible that Newton had read Brett’s comments about weapons and bodies being present and therefore tried to make the best of a bad job by describing a rusty piece of iron as a sword in consequence. As ever, bodies and weapons of our dead medieval soldiers proved as elusive in Totteridge as they have been in Barnet and Hadley.

MILESTONES: HENDON WOOD LANE TO LONDON by Ted Sammes

This piece, sent in by Ted Sammes eight years ago and published in Newsletter No 208, records his researches into the sites of boundary stones within the Borough. it would be helpful if the sites could be visited by members with a view to reporting back on their condition – for instance, are they still upright, are they undamaged? Send your observations to a future Newsletter editor please.

In 1970, as part of the work which we were doing in collaboration with the Greater London Industrial Archaeological Society, I produced a map showing the milestones I had been able to trace within the present London Borough of Barnet. This work, with other material, was part of our exhibition at their AGM held at the Institute of Archaeology on 4th July that year. Since then I have continued to take an interest in milestones. It was with pleasure that I saw that the eighth milestone from London, close to Hendon Park Cemetery, which with the passage of time had sunk, had recently been dug out and re-erected as part of the rebuilding in the area. Congratulations to all who were responsible for its reinstatement.

There would seem to have been eleven in the series. Mileages were measured from traditional points in London, used in stage coach days. For example Hick’s Hall (St John’s Street, EC1), Tyburn Turnpike (Marble Arch), Hyde Park, Charing Cross and St Gile’s Pound. Our stones were probably erected about 1751 since Peter Collinson, botanist, who came to live at Ridgeway House in 1749, wrote in 1 752 that they were then newly erected. All are of hard limestone and inscribed simply with the distance from London. With one exception, No 11, they are all on the left hand side of the road coming from London.

The location of those in our area are:

IV 4 miles from London, near Whitestone Pond at the north end of Hampstead Grove. I suspect that this stone which reads IV miles from St Gile’s Pound is not measured from the same point as only three

quarters of a mile separates it from the site of No 5 and the rest. It seems reasonable to assume that our stones, which are in the old Hendon parish, are measured from near Charing Cross. That there are differences is not surprising since there was no national road authority, each parish

doing what it believed to be correct.

V Missing, it would have been roughly opposite Welgarth Road. I think it is preserved behind Church Farmhouse Museum, Hendon, NW4.

VI Was by the pub signpost of the White Swan, Golders Green Road until the 1 960s.

VII Built into a wall between shops in Brent Street, between Lodge Road and Church Road.

VIII In Holders Hill Road just before Hendon Crematorium, recently re-erected.

IX At the top of Bittacy Hill, in front garden of No 8, Evergreens.

X Almost completely buried in the grass on Mill Hill Ridgeway, about 20 feet west of the War Memorial.

XI When last noted it was lying in the right-hand verge in Highwood Hill, close to the junction with Hendon Wood Lane.

For further reading: HADAS Newsletters Nos 4 and 22

LAMAS Transactions Vol VIII, Pt II, 1935, p327

Milk, Money & Milestones, HADAS Occasional Paper No 3, 1976 (now out of print).

OVERSEAS ARCHAEOLOGY

Several years ago when on holiday abroad I visited a Viking village in a surprisingly well-preserved condition. This was in Yugoslavia and was in fact the location set of the 1963 film “The Longships” which had been retained, while it lasted, as an unusual tourist attraction – the Yugoslavian equivalent of Disneyland, I suppose! Audree Price-Davies writes below of her visit to longhouses in Norway which would have been more historically accurate. John Enderby has written from his home in “Hardy’s Dorset” sending his kindest regards and good wishes saying “this really is a lovely part of England and we live in a village community almost as friendly and vibrant as HGS although a thousand years older.” John kindly enclosed an item about a location even older than his village of Fontwell Magna.

ANCIENT THEATRES – THE PERILS OF 20TH CENTURY USE by John Enderby

Peter Pickering’s interesting article in the August Newsletter evokes an appreciative personal response resulting from a visit which I made to Pergamon and Ephesus earlier this summer.

Having embarked from Istanbul, a vibrant teeming town of 12 million people forming the “bridge” between Europe and Asia Minor, for a memorable voyage on the “Sea Cloud”, my wife and I sailed serenely down the Turkish coast to Dikili for Pergamon and, after visiting the legendary homes of Sappho (Lesbos) and Homer (Chios), arrived at the large port of Kusadasi. The “Sea Cloud” figures large in marine history as one of the most remarkable sailing ships ever built. The Huttons commissioned her in the 1920s as an opulent four-masted, thirty sail ship of over 3,000 tons with a mast height equivalent to that of a 20-storey building. With a crew of sixty, the thirty-nine passengers fortunately were not required to set the sails and we could enjoy a luxurious life-style to which we were totally unaccustomed!

From Kusadasi we travelled ten miles inland to Ephesus, passing on the way the excavated area of the magnificent Church and Castle of St John and the site of the Temple of Artemis, one of the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World. Unhappily, it is now reduced to one imposing column on which two storks had nested oblivious to the intrusive gaze of hordes of tourists. Arriving at the thronged bazaar-like entrance to Ephesus we were met by the noted archaeologist, Elif Serbester, the grandchild of Kemal Ataturk, the “father” of modern Turkey. She explained it was thought that only about 5% of this once sea port city had been exposed since ordered excavation was begun by J. T. Wood in 1869. At its height in the 2nd century AD it had an estimated population of 400,000 and covered an area of at least two miles. Its later rapid decline was due in part to the ravages of malaria, the scourge of so many low-lying ancient cities.

Apart from the remarkably well-preserved Celsus Library, the theatre is the most outstanding building and can to this day seat 24,000 in reasonable comfort on marble terracing. In recent times, the Turkish Government have allowed internationally famous symphony orchestras and singers such as Diana Ross to hold concerts which help to swell the number of visitors to Ephesus to a staggering four million a year. Alas, performances of this nature are now banned since a famous pop star gave a heavily-amplified concert to a full house resulting in serious damage to the fabric of the Theatre which is still under repair. Why powerful amplifiers had to be installed in an acoustically perfect arena is beyond comprehension but is surely a lesson in the destructive power of such apparatus that has a relevance even when applied to 20th century stadia.

VIKING LONGHOUSES by Audree Price-Davies

On a recent visit to Norway we were taken to see Viking longhouses in Stavanger. Very long -about 60 to 70 feet long and about 16 feet wide, the houses had stone walls four feet in height and then beams and a wooden roof on which the turves were placed, with a gap between the two. Load-bearing posts held a wooden frame which supported the roof inside the house. Unlike the turves on the Bronze Age house in Flag Fen, the turves were green and growing.

The entrance to the house was through a hallway where a fire burned on the floor with a hole in the roof above it. Wood partitions at the sides formed “rooms”. but a central aisle was open the length of the house. Around the main room were benches covered with skins and furs for sitting and sleeping and a central fireplace had a tripod over it for cooking, with a hole in the roof above it. Further into the house a partitioned area served as a dairy. There was a wooden churn for making butter and wooden bowls and pots for storage.

Beyond this was a cow shed, under the same roof and part of the longhouse, but there was a separate door leading to the outside for the cattle to enter.

A weaving loom was in the entrance hall. Our guide, a fair-haired, tall Scandinavian, demonstrated carding the raw wool and suggested that perhaps hedgehogs were originally used for

this purpose. On a hand-held spindle he then spun quite a long length of the wool and showed us the loom which was leaning against the wall of the entrance hall. The warps were weighted at the bottom by stone weights. The wool was passed from side to side without the aid of a shuttle, the weft being straightened with a weaving batten – a sword-like object of wood. The surrounding area would have provided lush grazing for cattle and sheep and the fiord was at the base of the mountain for fishing.

The only crop grown was turnips. A stone quern was kept in the dairy, it was a long stone and needed a pushing technique. A more modern round one with one stone placed on the other seemed to have superseded this and was kept near the central fire.

The tunic and trousers worn by our guide were traditionally woven, but his stout leather shoes were modern. The house – perhaps because of the fire – felt lived-in and warm, but the work necessary to eat and clothe themselves must have made lift, difficult and hard for these Iron• Age dwellers.

WHAT THE PAPERS SAY

The Stone Age Diet

Research at Boxgrove, Sussex, is providing an insight into the use of flint hand axes and the preferred diet of Stone Age Man. An Oxford University researcher is examining the edges of the cutting surfaces with a microscope linked to a laptop computer. The database contains modern examples of the wear caused by various activities such as cutting flesh, tendons,bone, wood and leather. The computer can analyse

and compare the tiny nicks and scuffs on the axes recovered at Boxgrove with the control samples. So

far, thirty axes have been examined, showing that they were used to kill animals and cut away the

flesh. They had not been used on wood or other materials. The number of marks indicate that they

were only used once and then discarded presumably because stones were readily available and axes were

easy to make.

Sunday Times 14th July 96

Celtic prince found near Frankfurt

German archaeologists have uncovered a 2,500 years old, six feet high, 500-pound, sandstone

statue of a Celtic prince at a grave site nearGlauburg, north-east of Frankfurt. It is in near

perfect condition.

Boston Globe 4 July 96

The fall of Jericho dated

A report in Nature today claims that radio-carbon dating has provided a date for the collapse of the walls of Tell es- Sultan (Jericho). Cereal grains buried at the time of the collapse have been dated to 3311 years ago plus or minus 13 year, this ties in with a new date for the eruption of Thera or Santorini in the Aegean 3356 years ago plus or minus 18 years. This date was produced on Juniper logs found in Turkey in a Tumulus associated with the legendary King Midas. The plague of darkness in Egypt before the exodus led by Moses may have been the effect of the Santorini eruption and the 45 years gap between the eruption as the collapse of the walls of Jericho could be linked to the 40 years in the wilderness.

The Guardian 18th July 1996

Anthropologist to study the tribal customs of the BBC

As part of a [2.6 million government-funded study of the media, a University of London anthropologist is to research speech patterns, dress-code and group behaviour at the British Broadcasting Corporation. The aim of the report, which encompasses a total of seventeen media projects, is intended to help the government decide how public service broadcasting may best be managed. Sunday Times 78 August 96 (Where was this money when the funding of the Museum of London Archive Service was being discussed?)

COURSES, CLASSES AND CONFERENCES – A SELECTION FOR 1996-97

ASSESSED COURSES

EXCAVATING EARLY LONDON 24 meetings from 26 September,1.30-3.30pm, 32 Tavistock Square, WC1. INDUSTRIAL ARCHAEOLOGY 20 meetings from 7 October, 7.45-9.45pm, Ewan Hall, Wood Street, Barnet. METHOD AND PRACTICE IN ARCHAEOLOGY 20 meetings from 7 October, 6.30-8.30pm, 29 Gordon Square. GREEK CIVILISATION: THE WRITERS 24 meetings from 20 September, 1.30-3.30pm, The City Lit. EMPIRES OF THE SUN: AZTECS & INCAS 24 meetings from 17 September, 3.30-5.30pm, The City Lit. COMPUTER APPLICATIONS IN ARCHAEOLOGY 11 meetings from 2 October, 6.00-9.00pm, Birkbeck College.

POST-DIPLOMA COURSES

ARCHAEOLOGICAL DRAUGHTSMANSHIP 26 meetings from 24 Sept, 6.30-8.30pm, Institute of Archaeology_ POST EXCAVATION ANALYSIS 24 meetings from 7 January, 1997, 6.30-8.30pm, Museum of London. PYRAMIDS:THE RISE OF CIVILISATION 24 meetings from 18 September, 7.30-9.30pm, The City Lit.

PUBLIC LECTURE SERIES

THE PROVINCES OF THE ROMAN EMPIRE 20 meetings, provisionally from 10 October, 7.00-8.30pm at the Institute of Archaeology. This is a follow-up to last year’s “Revealing Roman Britain” and is intended to explore the variety of the regions and individual provinces that made up the Roman Empire. The lecturers will examine how archaeological work and other research during the last twenty years have altered our conception of these components of the Roman world. More general themes, such as architecture, administration, art, religion, the army and even the enemies of Rome, will be discussed. The speakers will include Mark Hassall, Richard Reece and John Wilkes (University of London), Simon James and Tim Potter(British Museum) and Martin Millet (University of Durham). Harvey Sheldon will chair the meetings.

EGYPTOLOGY PROGRAMME, 1996-97 – WEEKEND EVENTS

These are held at Harkness Hall, Birkbeck College, Malet Street, WC1, from 10.00 am to 5.00 pm.
Fees are £ 50(£24 conc) for 2 day events, £25 (£12) for one day events.

KINGS, QUEENS AND NOBLES: PERSONALITIES OF ANCIENT EGYPT Saturday 9 November, 1996. PHARAOHS & FIGHTING MEN: ASPECTS OF WARFARE IN ANCIENT EGYPT Sat/Sun 25/26 January,1997. ERUDITE EXPRESSION: LANGUAGE & LITERATURE OF ANCIENT EGYPT Sat/Sun 22/23 March, 1997. CURATORS, COLLECTORS & EXCAVATORS: PERSONALITIES IN EGYPTOLOGY Saturday 21 June, 1997.

The above are organised through Birkbeck College from where further details can be obtained – telephone 0171-631 6687 (24 hour answering machine) for the full Extra-Mural Programme.

SCOLA CONFERENCE ON DARK AGE LONDON

Saturday 5th October, 1996, at the Museum of London from 10.00am. Tickets at f 7.50 from Peter Pickering, 3 Westbury Road, London, N12 7NY, enclosing an sae. Cheques payable to SCOLA please.

CBA CONFERENCE ON ROMAN LONDON

Saturday 16 November, 1996, at the Museum of London from 10.00 am. The theme is recent archaeological results from the City. Speakers include Robin Symonds (who lectured HADAS on “Aspects of Roman Pottery” in 1993) and Peter Rowsome (currently directing the MoLAS excavation at No 1 Poultry). Tickets at f5.00 each are available from Derek Hills, CBA Mid Anglia, 34 Kingfisher Close, Wheathampstead, Herts, AL4 8JJ

CHURCH FARMHOUSE MUSEUM

A new exhibition at the Church Farmhouse Museum, Greyhound Hill, Hendon, NW4, starts on Saturday 21st September, 1996. It commemorates the 60th anniversary of the Spanish Civil War and runs until 17th November. You could visit both the Minimart and the Museum on Saturday 12th October.