Description
In this issue:
– Ice Age Island: tracing Jersey’s French connection
– Life and death in the early Neolithic
– Anglo-Saxon haute cuisine
– Boxford’s mythological mosaic revealed
– Rediscovering Roman London after the Blitz
Plus: News, Reviews, Comment, Sherds, Odd Socs, and more!
From the Editor:
It is a startling thought that (thanks to a quirk of the publishing process) this is the last issue of CA with 2017 as the cover date. There is plenty to look forward to in the new year though (not least our annual conference, 23-24 February – save the date!), even as we continue to look back into the past, exploring some of the most exciting discoveries from the field.
This month’s cover feature takes us to Les Varines, Jersey, home to a hunter-gatherer camp dating from the end of the last Ice Age c.15,000 years ago. Moving into slightly more recent prehistory, we also take a trip through early Neolithic Britain to see the transformation of human lifestyles that came via the new tastes and technologies that emerged between 4000 and 3400 BC. Among these innovations was the cultivation of wheat and barley, which made new foodstuffs available, such as bread and beer.
Food also forms the focus of our visit to Sedgeford, in north-west Norfolk, where two decades of archaeological work have exposed the rare remains of a middle Saxon village – a kind of site usually obscured by later settlement. Here, we consider the link between control of food supplies and the rise of new social hierarchies between the early 7th and late 9th centuries AD.
Clues to elite lifestyles have also been revealed at Boxford, Berkshire, where a community project has uncovered a stunning Roman mosaic adorned with images from Greek mythology. Finally, remaining with the Romans, we head to the City of London to learn how the remains of Londinium were rediscovered among the ruins of the Second World War.
Carly Hilts
Cover Date: Dec-2017, Volume 28 Issue 9