Description
In this issue:
– Great Ryburgh’s log coffins: an Anglo-Saxon cemetery revealed
– Roman Mucking: coming to terms with messy reality
– The cist on Whitehorse Hill: inside an Early Bronze Age burial
– Killiecrankie: excavating the opening battle of the first Jacobite Rising
– Mousetrap: the archaeology of ancient mice
– CA Live! 2017: conference details, and award nominees
Plus: News, Reviews, Comment, Sherds, Odd Socs, and more!
From the Editor:
Archaeology is alive with uncertainties. Time and again new sites or technologies upend longstanding theories. All this month’s featured sites show the sometimes fractious relationship between fresh research and what we think we know.
Early digging at a newly discovered Anglo-Saxon cemetery at Great Ryburgh unearthed a rare coffin created from a hollowed-out tree. The team wondered whether it held a local dignitary, but then another such coffin emerged, and another. Eventually it turned out that most of the investigated graves contained these caskets. Is this a local tradition, or a glimpse of what has been lost at other sites?
A recent report on the Roman archaeology at Mucking has embraced the unknowns. In the past, attempts to impose order on the archaeology involved viewing the site as a villa estate – with the villa itself proving frustratingly elusive. Focusing instead on what was found highlights an intriguing industrial complex that sent products the length of the province.
Working from what was known was a less complex business in the case of the Dartmoor cist burials. In the 19th-century heyday of antiquarian investigation scores of cists were opened to reveal that little or, more often, nothing lay within. Excavations in 2011 produced a major shock when they revealed the intact contents of an Early Bronze Age burial.
Survey of the 17th-century battlefield at Killiecrankie, in Perth and Kinross, is helping to piece together how the fighting unfolded. On this occasion, though, archaeology is vindicating an eye-witness account of the conflict.
Finally, this issue unveils the nominees for the 2017 CA awards. Good luck to them all – do vote for your favourites!
Matt Symonds
Cover Date: Jan-2017, Volume 27 Issue 10