Newsletter 189 November 1986 edited by Camilla Raab
DIARY
Thursday 4 November Lecture at Hendon Library “The Roman City Centre Project 1986” by Gustav Milne. This is a return visit by Mr. Milne, who is a member of the Urban Archaeological Unit at the Museum of London. In 1981.he gave us an excellent talk on the Roman Port of London, then being excavated. This month’s talk is about the excavations at Leadenhall Market in the City, which many members have visited recently.
Friday 12 December PLEASE NOTE change of date from that on programme card) Christmas supper and tour at the Tudor Gatehouse of the 12th-century Priory of the Order of St John in Clerkenwell
Please see separate application form, and return it with your remittance as soon as possible. We hope to run a coach, and numbers are important to keep down costs. Let us have a very good attendance at this finale to our anniversary year!
Throughout November until 7 December HADAS 25th Birthday Exhibition, ‘One Man’s Archaeology’ at Church Farm House Museum, Hendon, by founder member Ted Sammes. Open on weekdays (except Tuesday), 10 am 1 pm and 2 – 5.30 pm,Tuesdays 10 am – 1 pm. Sundays 2 – 5.30 pm. Admission free HADAS publications available at weekends. For details see October Newsletter.
ONE MAN’S ARCHAEOLOGY: A 25TH ANNIVERSARY EXHIBITION
The 25th anniversary is that of HADAS. The ‘one man’, Ted Sammes, who has mounted the exhibition at Church Farm House Museum in honour of our Silver Jubilee, has been interested in archaeology for over twice that length of time. He admits to being hooked on the subject since 1930, when his father took him to see Sir Mortimer Wheeler’s excavations at St Albans. When HADAS was formed in 1961, therefore, Ted as a founder member brought to it a considerable stock of knowledge and expertise
In Room 1 of the exhibition there is a picture of Themistocles Constantinides, our founder to whose interests in the missing history of Hendon we owe our existence. He looks down, appropriately enough, on a selection of exhibits from various excavations undertaken by HADAS since 1961. Pride of place goes to the Church Terrace dig of 1973-74, directed by Ted Sammes. It produced the evidence for Saxon Hendon in which our founder had so firmly believed, together with a wealth of fascinating material spanning the centuries from Roman occupation to the1900s. Ted’s booklet on this dig, ‘Pinning Down the Past’, is on- sale at the exhibition. – see final paragraph below.’
Other aspects of the Society’s work – and play – are vividly recalled by photographs and memorabilia: the processing of finds, graveyard recording, and the celebration of the Quincentenary of the Battle of Barnet, the many exhibitions mounted by HADAS, its publications, its lectures and its outings. I note that the very first outing in 1961, to Waltham Abbey and Greensted, set off from the Quadrant, as our outings still do, but at the civilized hour of 10.30 am! Arrival back was ‘6 pm at latest’, and the cost was 10/(50p).
One of the great delights of the exhibition is the opportunity it affords to see some of Ted’s magnificent photographs, both black-and-white and coloured. These are not confined to HADAS ‘events’ but range widely, for Ted has visited archaeological sites from Orkney to Majorca, from Eastern Turkey to Southern Ireland. The photographs include such gems as the terracotta figures from Ayia Irini in Cyprus, marvelously well preserved and so lively, The splendid line of marching gods from Yazilikaya, Eastern Turkey, the great Lion Gate at Bogazkoy, and the brilliantly coloured and graceful traditional boats of Malta. There is an interesting group, of ‘old and new’ views in the Hendon area; a charming sequence of photographs of castles, and another of old Mills. Ted has also included some items from his collection of old sepia photographs for example, views of Egyptian sites before the tourist hordes invaded them.
The opening of the exhibition on 18 October by the Mayor of Barnet;
Councillor Denis Dippel, accompanied by the Mayoress, was attended by HADAS Committee members old and new, headed.by our Chairman Andrew Selkirk, and by many of Ted’s friends from the archaeological world. These included. Ralph Merrifield, born in Hendon but, revisiting.it for the first time since early childhood, and Cherry Lavell, representing the Council for British Archaeology.
To coincide with the exhibition, Ted’s booklet on the Church Terrace excavation, ‘Pinning Down the Past.- Finds from a Hendon Dig’, with an ,introduction by Andrew Selkirk, has been published as HADAS Occasional Paper NO.6. Ted has selected items of special interest from each Period covered by the dig and has commented on their historical background, manufacture, purpose and use, and the light they throw on Hendon’s past. There is a mine of information on coinage and traders’ tokens, the production of pins, the manufacture of window glass, the history of delftware.. We are told the price of tea in 17th-century London, and invited to speculate on whether ‘clay-pipe makers also produced pipe clay wig-curlers. The booklet is eminently readable, attractively produced, and, modestly priced at £1.50. Get your copy now either, at the exhibition or from Miss Joyce Slatter .5, Sentinel House Sentinel Square, London NW4 2EN
SHEILA WOODWARD
MAIDENHEAD SOCIETY TO VISIT HENDON
On Sunday 16 November a party of Maidenhead Archaeological & Historical Society will be walking in the Totteridge, Mill Hill area in the morning.. In the afternoon they will visit the Church Farm House Museum, Hendon, to see Ted Sammes’ exhibition. Ted is Chairman of the Maidenhead Society:
GRAHAME WHITE HANGAR
The campaign against demolition continues. HADAS has had a letter in The Times (6 October) and we hope there may be a follow up. About 20 organisations concerned with preservation of Aviation history have been contacted, and most of them have made their protest too. We had publicity in the specialist press and in the Hendon advertiser.
There are now two issues: 1. the hangar itself, and 2. the other historic buildings at Hendon which are not even listed. The Department of the Environment, which is the ‘listing’ authority, has referred the matter of the non-listed buildings to English Heritage, If anyone who has not done so would like to add their protest, please write to the appropriate ministry and/or-English Heritage. BILL FIRTH
MINIMART
A great effort by so many Members made the day a huge success, not only financially but by the friendly spirit that everyone threw into it, both by helpers and by members dropping in to buy goods or have lunch. One member remarked that he’d not seen so many old members together for a long time. And a non-member was heard to remark “Everyone seems so friendly!’ .The general public, were in good numbers too about 150 ,paid at the door. Our takings to date are about £840 with more still coming in, so we shall easily achieve last year’s figure. Many thanks to all concerned. I hope you all think it was worth the effort.
WEST HEATH EXCAVATION Margaret Maher.
The excavation has now finally ended because the area to the NE of the site; which was the focus of this year’s work, has been subject to disturbance at some time from the 17th century onward.
Mesolithic deposits may still exist beyond the disturbed area but are inaccessible because of criss-crossing tree roots. Thus the modern limits of the site have been reached.
Backfilling and clearance of equipment took place on Sunday 28 September. The weather was fine and sunny and a marvellous group of-people turned out to do this heavy and unpopular job. My thanks to them all – Sheila Woodward, Alan Lawson, Helen Gordon, Lisa Maher, Peter Loos, Jean Snelling, Victor Jones, John Morfey, Howard Bouldler and Terry Keenan. Peter Wilson, though suffering from a cartilage injury, struggled to the site to bring welcome assistance from his son Simon and a friend Bradley Rothman; Laurie and Michael Sevell shifted the larger equipment to College Farm; and Daphne Lorimer paid a very welcome visit and toasted our endeavours. It seemed fitting that she who began the excavation in 1976 should also have been there as it finished.
I would also like to give special thanks to Sheila Woodward and Myfanwy Stewart. Their help throughout the three seasons was vital, and without it the excavation could not have taken place. They both worked whatever the weather conditions, and their support and advice have been invaluable. Others on whom the success of the excavation depended were the diggers. As over 100 members have worked there since June 1984, there is insufficient space to list them all. Thanks especially to those who were able to commit themselves to a block of time or for regular days through a season. Jean Snelling dug for all three seasons and June Owen kept the finds recording under able control for the same period.
Many others contributed to the success of the dig too – all the people who made or mended equipment, or who loaned or donated items, or who contributed special skills.
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One last appeal for help now – it is too early to discuss results yet, as much processing remains to be done. A volunteer to mark finds would be welcome ring.me on 907 0333 if you can help.
THE LOST KINGDOMS OF THE MIDDLE NILE by Dr John Alexander
A sizeable gathering assembled at Hendon Library on 7 October and were warmly welcomed by Andrew Selkirk, making his debut as Chairman of the Society. He then introduced with obvious pleasure Dr John Alexander, who had enthralled members on previous occasions with accounts of his excavations at Ibrim in the Sudan and the history of the Safety Pin. Dr. Alexander is plainly a. practitioner to whom the trowel has become as mighty as the pen, and the fascinating story of the ‘lost’ Nubian Kingdoms came vividly alive. The three Christian Kingdoms of Nobatia, Makouria and Alwa were, all adjacent to the banks of the Nile and flourished from about AD 540 for over eight hundred year’s. Indeed, it was not until the fifteenth century that the southernmost kingdom, Alwa finally succumbed to the pressure of the fanatically Muslim camel-keeping Nomads from Arabia., Until the excavators from Britain and Poland arrived on the scene and the wind-driven sand of centuries started to reveal the largesse of history, these Christian kingdoms were largely unknown in what had become a Muslim Nubia dominated by Egypt. From the 1930s, however, the impressive strength and glory of these Kingdoms which supported at least fourteen Bishops (although there is no extant record of an Archbishop) began to be uncovered by archaeologists from Europe. A complex hierarchical organisation, owing much to the Byzantine and Coptic Churches came to light. Christian artefacts and symbols on pottery and wood, were found. Dr Alexander showed astonishing slides, not only of well-preserved Christian religious objects but also, at places such as Faras and Ibrim, of Cathedrals and monastic buildings (at Faras the walls of the Cathedral are still twenty feet high) in which wall paintings depicting Christian themes still retained a brilliance of a colouring and rich imagery unsurpassed for this period of history. Many of the churches were small, but clearly prosperous, in a riverine area where the use of the water-wheel had achieved a high standard of cultivation for millet and other staple crops. Surprisingly, Christianity had been permitted to co-exist with the idols and plural deities of Egypt. It was only in the later part of the period that church buildings began to be fortified, and ‘castle-like’ structures, such as those found at Ikmindi, appeared, although these could have been designed to resist the incursions from the Muslim Nomads from the south west rather than the Egyptians in the North. When Egypt became part of the Ottoman Empire in the seventeenth century, nothing further was heard of the Christian kingdoms. Before that the Baqt Treaty had kept the peace sometimes tenuously between Christian and Infidel for several hundred, years, although the Crusades put a heavy strain on the relationship. .Dr.Alexander was not one who believed the collapse of Christianity in Nubia to be due solely to the crusades; external pressures from alien cultures had grown over several centuries. When the collapse finally came, the Sudan quite quickly became the pastoraI and primitive area that we know today. Traces of Christianity can still be discerned among the people, such as women who were in the habit of taking their children to wash in the, river and would make the mark of the Cross.
Of the secular organisation of the Kingdoms, little has so far emerged. Fragments of language (shown on slides) incised on wood, proved indecipherable. As burials were Christian, no rites of passage of the dead could be found, and there were no grave goods to be interpreted. We were shown a series of slides illustrative of the ‘rescue work’ which had been carried out at important sites such as Debira that had subsequently become submerged in the waters of Aswan. A project is on hand for the creation of a Nubian Museum for the finds which are now mostly – apart from a mummified bishop resting in Cambridge stored in the cellars of Cairo’s museum.
As Andrew Pares, who proposed a vote of thanks, rightly, said, the Society could not have had a better lecture to open its 25th Anniversary season. JOHN ENDERBY
VISIT TO WINCHESTER AND THE DOMESDAY EXHIBITION Reva Brown
The bus dropped us at King Alfred’s statue, and a magical day began. In the Guildhall a Craft Fair was taking place, and it was possible to tour the Fair with its undertones of a medieval market stalls of handcrafted articles made of wood, glass, wool or metal, all enticingly displayed.
We split into groups for a guided tour of Winchester, walking along the River Itchin, the city walls and gates. (Fronted by a metal grille, a little niche protected the fragment of Roman wall still existing.). We saw the flint-walled exterior of Winchester School (founded 1382 for 70 scholar and going strong with a ‘cast’ of hundreds and the house where Jane Austen died. We looked at the ruins of Wolverley Castle (1130) which was the Bishop’s Palace until it was destroyed in the Civil War.. The ‘new’ Bishop’s Palace standing beside the ruins of the old one is 1684. The small church of St Swithin was being prepared for the harvest festival and bedecked with flowers and greenery. A small stained glass window depicted St Swithin Bishop ofWinchester, tutor of Alfred, and at his feet the bridge over the Itchin which he had built to replace the. Roman one.The Cathedral deserved more time than we had available to us. The outline of the Anglo-Saxon church which the Cathedral replaced was marked out in the grass.
Our guides left us at the City Museum, the oldest museum in Hampshire, containing a range of artefacts from prehistoric stones to an Edwardian bathroom, and we met again outside the Great Hall for the Domesday Exhibition This achieved its aim – giving an understanding of why the Domesday census had been undertaken, how it was achieved (in only eight months) and the kind of England that it surveyed. Banners Over the entrances to the linked tents in which the Exhibition is housed portrayed excerpts from, the entries – one which caught my eye concerned the property owned by a woman jester (Where does one find but about court jesters, and how did a person become one, and how many were women?)
Also displayed along the walls of the Hall is the Bayeux Tapestry carved in wood by a French craftsman (a task of eight years duration) and at the end of the Great Hall, the medieval Round Table, ostensibly that of King Arthur. A young man minted a William I, silver penny, using the methods available in the eleventh century. Using the values of the time, when a sheep was 4p, it was possible to work out that the penny was worth around £20 in today’s money.
Each of us has taken home-different memories of a sparkling autumn day packed with sights and sensations. It says something for the quality of enjoyment and knowledge gained on HADAS trips that two… members who missed. the coach, made their own, way to Winchester to catch us up
THE WORLD ARCHAEOLOGICAL CONGRESS Andrew Sinclair
The World Archaeological Congress, which took place at Southampton from 1st to 6th September, was one of the most controversial archaeological conferences for a long time. The cause was the banning of the South African delegates, this led to widespread withdrawals of support and as a result the official Congress has been transferred to Mainz next September; when the CBA polled its members as to whether it should withdraw, HADAS followed the majority of CBA members in voting for withdrawal.
In the event the congress took place, but on a somewhat reduced scale. Instead of 3,000 participants expected only 1,000 came; there was a good attendance from black Africa, South East Asia and the communist world, but there was no-one from Israel or the Arab countries:, nobody from Japan, and only a handful for America, and Western Europe. Some, at least in Britain, may have been put off by the high price – £200 just to attend (I only went because at the last minute I was offered a press ticket free!).
The congress was of the sort where there are many sessions running simultaneously, and one had to decide which to attend. The other main innovation of the congress was that they wanted to break away from the old formula of dividing the subjects by period and place. In recent years the Congresses have degenerated into nit-pickings instead of presenting major research delegates have preferred to give the most abstruse papers possible. The Congress therefore decided to introduce some general topic sessions; however these either tended to be overtly political – especially those on so-called ‘objectivity’ or they degenerated into gobbledegook the flavour was well expressed in titles such as ‘Multi-culturalism and ethnicity in archaeological interpretations’.
The other aspect that should concern HADAS was the lack of reference to local archaeological societies or their role today. The high price ensured that there were no amateur archaeologists present, but though references were made to the importance of popular archaeology, this was done by inviting one of the hippies along from Stonehenge to put his case. There was also a session on what was called ‘Cultural Resource Management’, when the various professionals decided how they were going to run our heritage for us –but there is no role for local societies in their management plans.
At the plenary session at the end they voted to set up a holding body, to negotiate with the official body; and if there was no agreement within the year, to go ahead and hold a further congress. Since however this is an issue on which compromise seems unlikely, it looks as if for the foreseeable future there are going to be two rival World Archaeological Congresses.
(ED. Members might also like to see Peter Ucko’s letter in Guardian 18 October)
NOTES FROM THE COMMITTEE Brian Wrigley
A document, ‘The Future of Hampstead Heath’ from the London Residual Body, was discussed. HADAS stressed the importance of consultation with local bodies on the future management of the Heath.
Redevelopment at Finchley Manor House. After a site visit, views will be presented to the Borough of Barnet. The building on the site encroaches on the moat, which is a scheduled site.
DOMESDAY EXHIBITION AT THE PUBLIC RECORD. OFFICE Jill Braithwaite
This fascinating exhibition was on for most of this summer, but unfortunately it closed on September 30th. It was an unusual, low-key exhibition, with an immense amount of very interesting information which took quite a lot of reading and digesting, so that one would have been well advised to buy and read the catalogue first, and then go round the exhibits.
The exhibition, as stated in the catalogue, had two main themes: Domesday England, its people, its landscape, its agriculture and the history of Domesday. To introduce the first theme there was a good video, lasting half an hour, using extant material and many a shot of Butser farm and West Stow village to give an impression of England at the time of the Conquest. This was useful, because due to lack of space there was not a great deal of visual material; it was mainly extracts from manuscripts with written commentaries. There were however two rather good audio-visual. exhibits, namely an extremely life-like figure of an Anglo-Saxon monk, whose whole face moved as he spoke (some kind of holographic projection we presumed), who delivered a recording, first in Anglo-Saxon, and then in English, of the rather disapproving passage in the Anglo-Saxon chronicle which describes the commissioning of the Domesday survey at Christmas 1085, when the king was at Gloucester; and another similar figure of a rather severe King William addressing his people in English. For the rest of Domesday England, we had to make do with a life-size model of an endearing, tousled ox pulling a plough (normally, apparently, it would have been drawn by eight oxen) and a lot of well researched descriptions of the landscape, the towns, farming, diet, social order, etc., using information from both Domesday and archaeology.
Then came Domesday itself, First there was quite a large section devoted to ‘The Survey’, using photographs of extracts from contemporary manuscripts, or slightly later ones, which describe how the Domesday survey was carried out, or provide corroborating evidence. England was divided up into circuits, probably seven, .and three or more high-born commissioners were appointed to each one. The main; donkey-work seems to have been done by officials of the shire and hundred courts who had to answer a set number of questions concerning each, manor: how many hides, villeins, slaves, mills etc. Much of the information was gathered from existing sources such as geld records, church records and estate accounts, some of which survive. Then, when the data collection was complete; the commissioners visited the shire courts, heard sworn evidence, and ensured that the information was compiled in the correct way (or tried to). All the surveys from the different circuits were then sent to Winchester, the principal royal city, to be condensed and collated into the complete Domesday Book. One set of records, however, those for the eastern circuit embracing Norfolk, Suffolk and Essex, never got included into the Great Domesday Book, and have remained in their original, less condensed and more detailed format to this day, known as Little Domesday. Why they were not included is not known very likely it was King William’s death.
Finally, Great Domesday itself. Amazingly, it was written by one scribe alone, in less than a year, from late 1086 to mid or late. 1087. The complete project, survey and all, had taken just two years: It is written on parchment made from the skins of between 500 to 1000 Dorset sheep and in a separate room there was an on-going demonstration of parchment making, starting from the basic skin and ending with thin vellum or parchment sheets. Domesday always used to be bound as, one book, but it has recently been re-bound and divided into two volumes. Little Domesday, which has smaller size pages, has also been rebound, into three volumes, one for each county. All five volumes were on display in the exhibition.
The rest of the exhibition was devoted to ‘the Domesday Book in. use’ from the 12th century to the present day. ,This seemed to be the least interesting part of the exhibition, but perhaps we were running out of energy. Needless to say, computer buffs are having a heyday with. Domesday, now that the new translation: started by John Morris 20 years ago has finally been fully published in the Phillimore edition.
For those who missed the exhibition there is an excellent guide published by the National Domesday Committee, Domesday, 900 years of England’s Norman Heritage, price £3, which should be available in bookshops. It has a number of .very useful and readable articles about the making of Domesday,- ‘the first national account of its kind in the post-barbarian world’ and the historical events leading up to and following the Conquest.
CYPRUS WITH THE PREHISTORIC SOCIETY Enid Hill
Cyprus in the sun with its fine coastline and lofty Troodos Mountains in the centre made a very happy place for the Prehistoric Society’s summer outing. Several HADAS members were in the party, and we spent 5 energetic days visiting archaeological sites all over the southern part of the island. Unfortunately we were not able to visit the north because of the Turkish occupation – of which we had a stern reminder by the 20-foot high wall near our hotel dividing Nicosia into two parts.
Many of the sites were manned by their excavators, who very kindly took time off to show us round, We were especially grateful to Dr Karageorghis, the Director of the Department of Antiquities, who not only showed us his late Bronze Age defended site at Maa, on a promontory overlooking the sea, but also gave us a personal tour of the Museum of Cyprus at Nicosia. Many of us found it surprising that the earliest record of man in Cyprus was in the sixth millennium BC, but Neolithic, Chalcolithic and Bronze Age sites, let alone the Archaic, Greek and Rome, are there in abundance. In particular, I enjoyed the sites of Khirokitia, a neolithic village on a steep slope in the foothills of the Troodos mountains, with its stone circular houses and long stone extended wall:: Kalavassos-Ayios Dhimitrios, a late Bronze Age settlement, which seems to have been a highly organised town with fine public buildings probably concerned with the copper trade from the mines a few kilometres distant, and Kition- under the modern town of Larnaca,- an ancient harbour town inhabited from about 1300 to 311 BC, when it was destroyed by earthquakes. Here there were remains of the ‘Cyclopean Walls’ of the town, and five rectangular temples constructed of large ashlar blocks marked with ‘ship-graffiti’, no doubt because sea-going ships docked in the vicinity; to deal with exports of copper and possibly timber:
Those of us who are interested in Greek and Roman sites were pleased to visit Nea Paphos, the capital of Cyprus from the second century BC to the fourth century AD, when the area was devastated by earthquakes. Here we saw the city walls, the ‘Tombs of the Kings’ cut down into bedrock and constructed in the form of houses, plus the remains of two great houses – of Dionysus and Theseus, both with memorable mosaics, though the sight of a live Black Widow spider in a bottle found on the site a few minutes earlier was unnerving. Our final visit was to Kourion, where we had too short a stay, to see the Temple of Apollo, the theatre and the House of Eustolios. Our special thanks go to E.J. Peltenburg of Edinburgh University who. organised the programme of visits as well as showing us his own Chalcolithic site at Mosphilia in the Paphos area with its circular buildings, pit and chamber .graves – all set near a grove of bananas, lemons and pomegranates. The weather was hot, but during the middle of the day we would relax for a couple of hours in the shade of a taverna, while some of our members managed to swim in the sea.
UNIVERSITY OF LONDON DEPARTMENT OF EXTRA MURAL STUDIES
Lectures on Thursday evenings at the Institute of Archaeology, Gordon Square, at 7 pm (£2 at door)
November 6: Dr R.G. Robins, ‘Proportions and Style in Egyptian Art’
November 13: Dr J.A. Alexander, ‘Qasr Ibrim: Fortress of Nubia’
November 20: Dr D.T. Martin, ‘The Tomb of Horemheb’
November 27: J.D. Ray,- ‘The Carians in Egypt and the Decipherment of Carian Script’
December 4: Prof. H.S. Smith, ‘Memphis’
‘MUSEUM OF LONDON, Saturday 8 November – DOMESDAY LONDON: THE MISSING PAGES Starts at.10.15 with John Clark on ‘The Making of the Domesday Survey’, followed until late afternoon with Alan Vince, ‘Saxon London and the Norman Conquest’, Gustav Milne, ‘Life along the Domesday Waterfront, Frances Pritchard, The Domesday Londoners’, John Schofield, ‘The Buildings of Domesday London’, John Clark, ‘Summing Up The Missing Pages’.
Tickets. £6.50, available from Citisights of London, Domesday 900-London, 102E Albion Road, London N16 9PD.
BRITISH MUSEUM LECTURES on Wednesdays at 6.15 pm in Lecture Theatre (free),
November 5: Prof. Barri Jones Hadrian’s Wall: New Discoveries
November 12:.Dr Tim Potter, ‘New Perspectives on Roman Britain’
November 19 Prof. Martin Biddle, ‘Royal Burials of Anglo-Saxon England’.
November 26: Dr. Warwick’ Rodwell, ‘The Archaeology of Churches
December 3: Prof. Peter Fowler, ‘Making our Countryside,: BC/AD”
OXFORD UNIVERSITY DEPT FOR EXTERNAL STUDIES conferences:
November 14-16: Art and Archaeology in Greece
November 22-23: Air photography and archaeology
December,. 12-14, _The origins of Anglo-Saxon Kingdoms
Two linked day schools, Making the Most of Statistics: An Introduction for local Historians’,
Saturday.15 November and Saturday 10′
January. 1987. Further details from Archaeology/Local History Course
Secretary, OUDES, Rewley House, 1. Wellington Square, Oxford OX1 2JA
RESCUE ARCHAEOLOGY – WHAT’S NEXT.
A conference will be held on this theme at the University of York on 19-21 December 1986.
An impressive line of 19 speakers are billed, including our Chairman. Fee is £20 -.nonresidential, Residential accommodation is available for an additional £42. Details: from Brenda Hobbs,.
RESCUE, 15A Bull Plain, Hertford, Herts., SG14 IDX.
This conference marks the final fifteen years of RESCUE; and is an opportunity to look into the future of rescue archaeology, and to assess its past achievements.
THE PAST IN THE PIPELINE (Archaeology. of the Esso Midline)
This is a glossy, coloured booklet published by The Trust for Wessex Archaeology. -This has been funded-entirely by the Esso Petroleum Company. The pipeline runs from Seisdon in Staffordshire to Fawley in Hampshire, in all crossing parts of five counties. There has been a major archaeological effort on Esso’s part throughout the pipeline route. They have financed radiocarbon dates, specialist reports, and the preparation of sites and monument data for five counties.
The booklet describes how the pipeline was built. Separate sections deal with: Early Man, Iron Age farmer, After the Roman Conquest, Ancient Monuments, Wansdyke (a Saxon frontier), the Middle Ages, and, to conclude, living archaeology. It contains excellent material for teaching, especially the double-page spread of an Iron Age farmstead.
Free copies may be requested from: Corporate Affairs Department, Room T/11/22, Esso U.K. plc, ESSO House, Victoria Street, London SW1E 5JW TED SAMMES
