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If I asked you to imagine a well-defended laboratory, you might think of the top-secret government facilities at Porton Down, near Salisbury. Historic England’s science team, however, carry out their research within the imposing walls of a Georgian fort – although they are rather more open about the work that takes place there. CA recently travelled to Fort Cumberland to learn more about this state-of-the-art research centre, which has just reopened following a year-long refurbishment, part-funded by the AHRC. The historic laboratory buildings have been fully renovated, cutting-edge new equipment has been installed and calibrated, and the site is now back in active service, receiving and analysing material from excavations across the country. But how did it all begin?
The impressive artillery fortification known as Fort Cumberland was built in the 18th century to help protect the vital trade centre and royal docks of nearby Portsmouth. It continued to play a defensive role over subsequent centuries, including serving as a military base and training centre during both World Wars, but after the Royal Marines departed it was transferred first into government ownership, and then into the care of English Heritage. Today the site is a Scheduled Ancient Monument and is Grade II*-listed, while its various buildings have different grades of listing. It has been the home of Historic England’s archaeology teams (Archaeological Excavation, and Archaeological Archives and Geophysics), since 1975, and they were subsequently joined by colleagues from the Ancient Monuments Laboratory.
The AML had first emerged in the aftermath of the Second World War, amid growing recognition of the need to learn more about how to look after historic sites. Established in the 1950s, the laboratory initially focused on examining how different materials decayed and how this could be prevented. As scientific methods advanced, however, the team branched out into techniques including X-ray fluorescence, spectrometry, and microscopy. This pioneering work was initially based on London’s Savile Row, but the scientists ultimately outgrew the available space and moved to the roomier surroundings of the fort.
Today, Historic England’s laboratory is housed inside a red-brick building dating to the 1930s – originally a motor transport repair workshop built for the military, I was told by Ian Morrison, Director of Policy and Evidence at Historic England. Meanwhile, the archaeology teams and administrative offices are based a short distance away in former officers’ houses and other buildings, while the fort’s casements – vaults built into the walls – are occupied by various organisations and charities, as well as by Historic England itself, which uses some of the spaces to hold conservation workshops and training courses. This includes specialist instruction in salvage and disaster recovery, with exercises such as filling a casemate with steam to simulate what it is like to rescue artefacts from a burning building without damaging them.
Clues from cremations
The exteriors of the fort’s buildings are still faithful to their former lives, but inside the laboratory is sleek, white, and fully up to date. The building hosts a wide variety of specialisms, including archaeobotany, zooarchaeology, X-radiography, geoarchaeology, material sciences, conservation, and human remains – and in the area dedicated to the last of these, I spoke to Simon Mays, Senior Human Skeletal Biologist for Historic England. Recent advances in spectroscopy and chemical analysis have transformed what we can learn from cremated human remains, he said, with recent analysis (undertaken with the University of Oxford and academics in Brussels) shedding new light on a Roman cremation cemetery discovered outside Birdoswald fort on Hadrian’s Wall. The cemetery is known to have had two phases of use, and the team’s research has revealed very different intensities of firing involved in each of these episodes. Later cremations may have used more scrap wood as fuel, which seems to have reduced the efficiency of the pyres. The reasons for this switch to inferior fuel are unclear but it may reflect a greater availability of scrap wood, as wooden buildings on the site aged, and/or excessive tree clearance.
The researchers have also examined the cremated individuals themselves, using isotope analysis to establish the geology on which their food had been grown. This work revealed that most were eating food from a single source rather than disparate areas, suggesting some kind of centralised organisation for provisioning the fort community. Moreover, while results suggest most people were long-term local residents, there were some outliers. At the reopening event, the team highlighted a young woman who may have travelled from what is now Poland before she ended her days on Hadrian’s Wall. Her cremated remains had been placed in an urn together with an unusual collection of objects: a fragment of chain mail, a copper-alloy ring, and a shale object, possibly part of a bracelet. These practices have parallels with 2nd-century burial traditions associated with Poland’s Przeworsk culture, perhaps suggesting that this woman had a similar background. As the dead do not bury themselves, it is possible that this individual had travelled with, and lived among, other migrants from the same area who knew which funerary rites would be appropriate to use, and who chose to maintain their home traditions when laying their friend or relative to rest.
Dutch shipwrecks and dinosaurs
Moving upstairs, I next spoke to Archaeological Conservator Angela Middleton about ongoing work on artefacts recovered from the wreck of the Rooswijk, a Dutch East India ship that sank off the coast of Kent in 1740. Today a protected wreck site, its remains are owned by the Dutch government, managed by Historic England, and have been documented by an international team of archaeologists (CA 217 and 331). When the trade vessel sank, it had been on the way to Indonesia, laden with goods, and conservation and analysis of recovered artefacts is ongoing. It is complex work, as many of the objects are made from several different materials, each with their own conservation needs. Displays at the launch event highlighted a wooden cask filled with iron nails, which had been covered in concretion when it was recovered – after carefully removing this, the team found the remains of straw-like plant matter close to the underlying wood, possibly representing some form of packing material that had surrounded the cask in the hold.
Angela also described a group of four chests from the wreck, one of which has been worked on so far by conservation specialists. It was found to contain 100 sabre blades which were unfinished, with no handles attached, but had been finely decorated on both sides with imagery including moons, suns, and clouds. Other objects from the Rooswijk’s diverse cargo include glass beads and candlesticks, as well as a pewter writing box with an integrated inkwell. This last item was picked out at the launch event as an example of an object that young visitors tend to struggle to identify, but which is immediately recognised by earlier generations who are familiar with using pen and ink: a neat illustration of how once-everyday objects can become unreadable as technology advances.
Speaking to Jen Heathcote, Historic England’s Head of Investigative Science, I learned about the new equipment that the lab had been able to purchase thanks to grants from the AHRC under the Research Infrastructure for Conservation and Heritage Science (RICHeS) programme. This includes a scanning electron microscope and energy dispersive spectrometry system (SEM-EDS), which can be used to analyse historic materials in order to understand how they are made, assess their condition, and investigate how we might be able to preserve them for longer.
These insights form a major aspect of an ongoing project focused on the famous dinosaurs at Crystal Palace in London. Unveiled in 1854, these characterful statues are inaccurate by modern standards but represent an important early example of educational reconstruction. Senior Materials Scientist Francesca Gherardi told me about recent work to analyse tiny samples of paint taken from the statues. Each of these contained numerous thin layers (30, 50, or more), showing the different colours and types of pigment that had been used during successive repaintings of the dinosaurs over time. The team are currently trying to understand why some of the paints failed, and seeing if it might be due to reactions between some of the pigments and binders, to help inform future conservation work on the unique statues.
Jen also highlighted that some of the equipment is set up to be accessible remotely, so that it can be used by researchers without the need to travel to the site, or as a teaching tool. Accessibility is one of the renovated science facilities’ key aims, and on that note I will give the last word to Gill Campbell, the Head of Fort Cumberland’s Laboratories. She is currently leading the Heritage Science Collections Hub: South project (also funded through the RICHeS programme), working in partnership with the Universities of Aberdeen and Sheffield to help improve access to Historic England’s research and reference collections. Under this plan, Fort Cumberland will serve as a regional hub for the south, Sheffield will be the central hub, and Aberdeen the northern one; the idea is that students and researchers will be able to apply to have items transferred to their nearest hub for the duration of their project. Work is also ongoing to enhance online resources, transcribe old handwritten records, and digitise other photographs and documents to make them more easily available.
From establishing the date of the Bronze Age timber circle in Norfolk known as ‘Seahenge’, to re-excavating Silbury Hill, the famous Neolithic mound in Wiltshire, and advising HS2 on selecting over 500 individuals from the post-medieval St James’s Gardens cemetery for DNA analysis, the work of the scientists and archaeologists based at Fort Cumberland forms part of a 75-year legacy of illuminating research that has made an invaluable contribution to our understanding of the historic environment. We will watch this space to see what the new facilities reveal next.
All images: Historic England
