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Poem to remember
This poem was written at a time when I was a Chemistry Lecturer at Llandaff College of Technology and also an amateur archaeologist. At the time, I marvelled that chemists were detecting cholesterol in graves where only vague stains remained. Other chemists were dating graves by measuring the reduced optical activity of the aspartic acid component of proteins extracted from snail shells found in graves.
My wife Lynne-Myfanwy, née Davies, and I had been married 29 years at the time; she died on 1 March 2010. Both of us volunteered on the Brenig Valley excavations in 1973/1974, and later joined a group digging a Romano-British site near Cardiff, which we did from 1980 to 2000.
The poem speaks for itself and has proved to be correct in both its themes: my continuing love, at age 84, and in the facts that isotopic analysis and the recovery of DNA from ancient bones can tell so much more than was possible in 1982.
I have subscribed to Current Archaeology since the 1970s and thought you might find space for the poem.
Cedric Mumford, Cardiff
To Lynne-Myfanwy
When, in some distant time – don’t frown!
An archaeologist lies down,
To scrape the soil wherein I lay
(But have become part of the clay)
If chemists of those future days,
By who knows what ingenious ways,
Can analyse the merest stain,
And knowledge of a person gain;
Then when that digger scrapes me up,
And puts me in a sample cup,
A chemist may extract the smear
To find what’s left of me – stay dear!
If heart’s sweet rush a hormone be,
And if that substance washes free,
Then still among the stuffs of life
One will proclaim I loved my wife.
April 1992
Legible archaeology
The members of Caistor Roman Project come from a wide spectrum of backgrounds, with many different talents to offer. Among them is Jenny Press, an illustrator of children’s books, who has more recently branched out into archaeological drawing, but who returned to book illustration following a request for a story about Doug, a black labrador pup belonging to one of the group’s trustees, Andy Woodman. Doug’s antics on site caught the attention of Lyn Catchpole (mother of one of our archaeologists, Dr Natasha Harlow), who dreamt that Jenny had written a book called Doug the Dig Dog to raise money for CRP. Sadly, Lyn died before she was able to see the finished book, whose story and illustrations are all Jenny’s own work. The CRP trustees decided to honour Lyn’s dream and publish it; Smokehouse Press of Norwich helped us to achieve this. Copies cost £8.99; if you would like to buy one for any small people you know (suggested age 2-8), please visit http://www.smokehousepress.co.uk/digdog.htm.
Val Cossey, Caistor Roman Project, http://www.caistorromanproject.org
CA ONLINE: What you shared with us this month
Amanda Chadburn @AmandaChadburn
Delighted to have made it to [CA 414’s] front cover! (I am the shadowy hooded figure at the very edge carrying a ‘staff’! It was freezing.) Thank you @CurrentArchaeo.
Oxbow Books @OxbowBooks
If the @CurrentArchaeo review of Northwold Manor Reborn left you wanting to learn more, why not check out their feature on the Grade II* listed Norfolk building?
National Trust Archaeology @NatTrustArch
We’re so excited the wonderful 17th-century papercuts from @SuttonHouseNT in #Hackney are [CA 416’s] cover story – thanks so much @CurrentArchaeo! ‘Scraps of memory: illuminating the imaginative worlds of Sutton House’s 17th-century schoolgirls’.
SNAP HAPPY!
Don’t forget to enter our sister-magazine Current World Archaeology’s ‘Photo of the Year’ competition, sponsored by Hidden History Travel. The closing date is 27 January 2025; for more details, visit www.world-archaeology.com/photo2025.
