Description
In this issue:
– Lavishly laid to rest: an Anglo-Saxon bed burial in Trumpington
– The host of historic sites revealed by this summer’s heatwave
– Silchester’s Roman bathhouse
– Doon Hill’s timber halls: Neolithic rather than medieval?
– Rediscovering the sophisticated architecture of Anglo-Saxon England
– WWI ANZAC graffiti on Salisbury Plain
Plus: News, Reviews, Comment, Sherds, Odd Socs, and more!
From the Editor:
As I write, with a mid-August downpour hammering on the roof, this summer’s sweltering heatwave already feels a lifetime ago. During those drier times, though, the parched ground yielded a wealth of archaeological secrets as the ghostly outlines of buried features became strikingly clear. Hundreds of monuments, settlements, and other sites have been captured in aerial photos across Britain and Ireland – we have put together a round-up of some of the highlights.
Long-hidden secrets have also come to light at Trumpington, Cambridgeshire, where excavations have uncovered evidence of a community dating back 1,400 years, as well as a cluster of unusual Anglo-Saxon graves. One of these held the skeleton of a young woman lying on a wooden bed and accompanied by ornate gold-and-garnet jewellery. Still in her teens at time of death, why had this individual been accorded such a lavish burial?
From elaborate funerary rites to the elegant haunts of the living, we also visit Silchester in Hampshire, where the Roman public baths have been re-excavated over a century after their antiquarian investigation. Sophisticated architecture is also the subject of our feature examining Anglo-Saxon buildings and arguing against stereotypes of these structures as a poor shadow of Romano-British achievements.
Meanwhile, two timber structures at Doon Hill, East Lothian, have long been thought of as early medieval – but new archival research suggests their origins could be millennia earlier. Historical records also proved invaluable to a recent survey of graffiti left by ANZAC troops stationed on Salisbury Plain during the First World War: painstaking detective work has linked inscribed names to actual individuals.
Carly Hilts
Cover Date: Oct-2018, Volume 29 Issue 7