Meet Rowan, who was lucky enough to find the Roman ‘Darlington Eagle’ on their first ever site as a commercial archaeologist!
For the Festival of Archaeology Rowan shares the thrill of finding this amazing artefact and why they love working in commercial archaeology. Rowan outlines theories about the eagle put forward so far… is it the Lost eagle of the ninth, off a helmet or military standard, or is it simply scrap metal? Is it a brazier or part of an oil lamp? What do you think?
In Roman Britain brooches were worn as symbols of identity. They revealed various aspects of an individual’s life such as where they came from, and their status and position in society.
This type, in the form of a sitting cockerel, is thought to indicate that the wearer was a devotee of the cult of Mercury. These are usually found individually, so this pair, recovered from a pit fill in Suffolk, is a remarkable find.
Staff from our office there have unearthed over 1.5m of a timber-lined medieval well, buried in the alluvium under Upper Brookes Street car park, whilst carrying out a mitigating archaeological excavation ahead of the construction of a new medical practice.
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Site Supervisor Tom worked alongside Elliott, Colin and Holly to recover the brilliantly preserved timbers from the deep urban stratigraphy.
We look forward to what the post-excavation processing can reveal of the timbers and associated sediments.
A red phone box in Great Yeldham has been repurposed in an inspired way by the community: as a mini museum with a display of finds from our excavation in the village!
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Prior to the construction of new homes, PCA undertook an archaeological investigation of the site. Trial trenching revealed artefacts dating from the Mesolithic/Neolithic, Iron Age and Roman periods so a second stage of fieldwork, consisting of three excavation areas, was carried out in the summer of 2021.
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The earliest human activity encountered was a shallow pit or natural hollow containing 45 pieces of worked flint, including a bladelet core of Mesolithic/early Neolithic date (very broadly 8000–3000 BC), which also contained fragments of animal bone, charcoal and a few charred cereal grains. The site is close to a stream with a good source of flint pebbles suitable for knapping, and a passing band of hunter-gatherers had found it a good spot to spend time making tools and having a meal on at least one occasion.
Many millennia passed before humans left a further imprint on the site. In the Late Iron Age (100BC to AD43) several ditches were dug as part of a nearby farmstead’s extensive field boundary system. Few artefacts of this period were recovered from the ditches, indicating that the farmstead stood some distance from the site; this was further attested to by the discovery of a group of cremations dating to the same period.
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Several of the cremation pits were furnished with grave goods, including fineware pottery vessels and a Chatelaine set, a belt adornment that was typically presented to Roman girls as a ‘coming of age’ gift. The range of grave goods suggests that the people buried here were moderately prosperous with access to markets supplying Roman goods in the years before the Roman invasion.
Around the middle of the 1st century AD, perhaps in the decade immediately following the Roman invasion, the area of the Late Iron Age ditch system and cremations was re-organised. This may have been associated with a change in land ownership, as no attempt was made to respect the location of the cremation cemetery and the new ditch system was set out on a different alignment. There was little evidence for domestic occupation, although a number of pits and postholes may be associated with agricultural activities. However, several of the ditches contained relatively sizeable assemblages of Roman pottery and a small Roman knife was recovered from one feature, suggesting that the ditch system lay close to an area of occupation, probably to the south or west of the site. In the western corner of the site two large Roman extraction pits were investigated (probably dug for clay), which were up to 30m in diameter and up to 2.4m deep. This part of the settlement appears to have fallen out of use in the 2nd century AD.
The process of examining the results of the excavation is currently underway and will be reported on in due course. The excavation has provided a great opportunity to learn about Great Yeldham’s distant past, in an area that has seen limited detailed archaeological investigation.
PCA would like to thank Rose Builders (Properties) Ltd for commissioning and funding the work, Nick Cooke of RPS Group for appointing PCA to undertake the excavation and Teresa O’Connor of Place Services at Essex County Council for monitoring the work and providing archaeological advice and guidance. Finally, a big thank you to Christine Caney and her husband for arranging the display.
We have an unusual find from a site in East London – the severed head of a monkey from a mid-19th-century context.
Our animal bone specialist Kevin says “Its wisdom teeth haven’t erupted so it is probably less than 6 years of age but definitely more than 2 years. I think it is likely to be a macaque type, the most famous of which is the variety living on Gibraltar, which is also known as the Barbary Ape. The same type also lives in North-West Africa especially in the Atlas mountains, where no doubt the Gibraltar monkeys originate.”
Kevin adds “It’s too large to be an organ-grinder’s monkey, these were small capuchin monkeys. It may have been a sailor’s pet which suffered the ignominy of being stuffed, hence the discovery of just the head (the taxidermist would just keep the head, feet and tail parts of the skeleton).”
Monkeys were highly desirable pets in the 18th and 19th centuries, to the extent that a popular book called Notes on Pet Monkeys and How to Manage Them was published in 1888.
“The menagerie and the zoological collection are incomplete without a certain complement of monkeys; and whatever else may awe, and frighten, and command the admiration of the gaping crowd, it is this department that awakens the broad grin and the hearty laugh.”
Arthur Henry Patterson
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Alongside tips on the care and management of monkeys, the book is full of “amusing stories” of owners who’d acquired them with the expectation that they’d behave like mischievous children only to find them destructive and wild. Patterson suggests to be “Bully, Peggy, Mike, Peter, Jacko, Jimmy, Demon, Barney, Tommy, Dulcimer, Uncle or Knips” as suitable names for monkeys but adds that “Pets are liable to fall ill, so there is a chapter on ‘Monkey Ailments and How to Cure them.’ If they can’t be cured and die, Mr. Patterson gives us instructions how to stuff them!
We recovered a white metal medal during recent investigations in Gloucester. These medals, 39mm in diameter, were awarded to those who took a pledge of abstinence from alcohol. On one side the medal reads “Band of Hope Medal – Prevention is Better than Cure – I Promise to Abstain from All Alcoholic Drinks as Beverages”. The reverse has an image of hands shaking and an open Bible with the words “Wine is a Mockery – Strong Drink is Raging – Thy Word is Truth.”
The Band of Hope was first proposed by Rev. Jabez Tunnicliff, a Baptist minister in Leeds, following the death in June 1847 of a young man whose life was cut short by alcohol. While working in Leeds, Tunnicliff had become an advocate for total abstinence from alcohol. In the autumn of 1847, with the help of other temperance the Band of Hope was founded. Its objective was to teach children the importance and principles of sobriety and teetotalism. In 1855, a national organisation was formed amidst an explosion of Band of Hope work. Meetings were held in churches throughout the UK and included Christian teaching.
The Band of Hope and other temperance organisations of the period fought to counteract the influence of pubs and breweries with the specific intention of rescuing ‘unfortunates’ whose lives had been blighted by drink and teach complete abstinence.
by Sean Rice
We have a wonderful rare find from Bermondsey Square – a moulded Chinese stoneware lion sejant figurine from a late 18th century domestic context.
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This has been tentatively identified as an incense stick holder, 香插, xiang cha (‘incense device for insertion’) or possibly 香台 xiang tai (‘fragrance platform’). It’s 6cm tall and almost intact except for the missing lower jaw which may have once held a ball. It has applied spiral, snail shell-like objects on its head and along its back to represent the lion’s mane. A damaged small hollow cylinder, possibly an incense stick holder, was applied to the base at the back of the figurine between the fore and hind legs. In experiments carried out recently in the PCA London Offices, it was found that a joss stick can stand nicely in the presumed holder. There is also a rectangular space between the creature’s front legs and into its hollow body. If a joss stick, or possibly a small briquette of incense, is placed there, the smoke comes out of the creatures mouth, which was probably the intention.
Ceramic lion figurines have been made in China since the Tang Dynasty period (AD 618–907), although the Bermondsey find is more likely to date from the Qing Dynasty (1644-1911 AD) and was probably made in the Fujian or Guangdong provinces.
Incense stick holder figurines have been around for more than a thousand years and there are many examples: one from the Ming Dynasty (a dynasty earlier than this Qing Dynasty specimen) in the British Museum https://www.britishmuseum.org/collection/object/A_PDF-713, and another featuring the “Lion-dog” also from the Ming period: https://www.britishmuseum.org/collection/object/A_1905-0519-56.
Incense holders familiar to those of us lucky enough to have visited the Far East and seen them in use in temples are far larger, in order to accommodate multiple sticks, and are generally called ‘censers’ 香爐 xianglu…- there are very many specific terms for these important ritualistic items! The Bermondsey Square figurine is likely more secular, being a small table-top or travelling size incense holder to keep away insects such as flies and mosquitoes while at a desk writing or eating at a table.
The lion figurine, which has been erroneously called Fo-Dogs or “Dogs of Buddha” since C.A.S. Williams (1932) wrongly termed these items, may possibly also represent one of the many mythical creatures in Chinese iconography. In Chinese culture, the lion, not native to the region, symbolizes power, wisdom, and superiority.
Lion figurines could also take the form of water droppers (shuizhu or shuidi) used for adding water to ink stones for calligraphy as part of a stationery kit. These have a cavity in the body and a hole on the spine, whereas this example is hollow with openings at the mouth and between the front legs. Excavations at the Huai An ( 怀安 ) kiln in Fuzhou City, Fujian Province uncovered Tang Dynasty period lion figurines and water droppers as kiln wasters, while a couchant find from the Philippines was dated to the 14th century. Dating the Bermondsey lion figurine is somewhat problematical from published examples, although the item was found with pottery dated c. 1730–50 and indicates a mid-18th-century or earlier date.
How the item was utilized and viewed by its users in Bermondsey can only be guessed at and the find may have simply been an ornamental import from a fashionable source, reflecting the passion at the time for all things oriental!
A great find from Joel this week! This unusual, decorated chalk spindle whorl came from an Iron Age ditch at St Neots, Cambridgeshire. Chalk objects like this are very fragile and rarely survive.
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