Description
In this issue:
– THE MUST FARM INFERNO: Exploring an intact Late Bronze Age settlement
– ALDBOROUGH: Exploring the Roman town of Isurium Brigantum
– ST KILDA: The last and outmost isle
– THE FRAGRANT DEAD: How to treat the departed, Roman style
– A SPITFIRE NAMED ‘KERALA’: Investigating a Battle of Britain training accident
Plus: News, Reviews, Comment, Sherds, Odd Socs, and more!
From the Editor:
It is the immediacy of Must Farm’s archaeology that is so startling.Walking around the site it is easy to believe that the embers havebarely cooled following the disaster that overtook the settlement.Instead, the charred and tumbled vestiges of roundhouses lay inFenland silts for almost 3,000 years. This stunning preservationwill bring Late Bronze Age building techniques into sharp focus, butwhat lies beneath the flattened superstructure might prove even more valuable. If theMust Farm fire did claim the homes of colonists seeking to exploit the Fenland, theirtragedy could revolutionise our understanding of an entire era.
The Roman state indulged in colonisation on a grander scale, but the surviving relics ofits empire in Britain are usually judged pale imitations of continental models. Survey ofthe Roman town at Aldborough in the military north, however, has highlighted hints of asurprisingly cosmopolitan approach to urban planning.
St Kilda, to the west of the Scottish Western Isles, is often celebrated as an isolatedarchipelago insulated from the wider world. Recent research has revealed, though, thatthe romantic appeal of this image has obscured the islands’ links with their neighbours.
Scientific analysis is demonstrating the lengths that the inhabitants of Roman Britainwent to in order to forge a connection with their gods. The elite spent considerable sumsimporting the exotic fragrances that courted divine favour andhelped mask any air of decay during funerary rites.
Finally, we return to the Fens to discover what contributionarchaeology can make to investigating historic aircraft crash sites.
Matt Symonds
Cover Date: Mar-2016, Volume 26 Issue 12