A handful of tiny paper items discovered at Sutton House in Hackney offer a unique insight into the interests of the girls who were educated there in the 17th century. Carly Hilts spoke to Nathalie Cohen, Isabella Rosner, Kate Simpson, and Abigail Winslow to find out more.
Peter Wade-Martins has visited all 649 of Norfolk’s surviving medieval churches to study the stone types used in their construction. As a result, he has identified the use of conglomerate – along with grey quartzite, millstone grit, and tile, much of it reused from ruinous Roman buildings – as important indicators of the churches constructed in the 11th and 12th centuries, before the ready availability of limestone. Chris Catling reports.
A recent experimental archaeology project has seen three Bronze Age-style logboats constructed and launched at Stanwick Lakes in Northamptonshire. Carly Hilts visited the project’s grand finale to learn more about the excavated evidence that had fed into the design of the dug-outs, and the rich heritage of the site itself.
In the early part of the 19th century, there began a gradual move away from antiquarian ways of simply describing archaeological features and sites towards a more analytical approach of enquiry into the past. Stephen Upex takes up the story of Edmund Artis, one of the pioneers of this progress who, he argues, should be considered among the founding figures of modern British archaeology.
Vitrified forts I was interested to read (in CA 415) that one version of Tinnis fort [underlying Tinnis Castle, which is shown in its medieval prime BELOW] had been set alight and vitrified. It is remarked that this is not…
Recent excavations at Bodicote, just south of Banbury, have revealed the remains of an Iron Age farmstead where ten storage pits had been repurposed as graves. This was not an uncommon practice for the period – but other aspects of the inhumations were rather more unusual, as Rebecca Trow, Milena Grzybowska, Roger Doonan, and Robin Holgate report.
Two hundred years ago, George Smith was granted the first licence to distil whisky legally in the Glenlivet area of Speyside, in the Scottish Highlands. Now archaeological fieldwork by the National Trust for Scotland, in partnership with The Glenlivet, has shed new light on how the whisky-making process was industrialised in the 19th century, as Derek Alexander and Daniel Rhodes report.
My final geographically themed review focuses on London. I touched on some sites there in my reviews of Roman archaeology and the Thames (CA 330 and CA 343), so these columns will look more widely across modern-day Greater London. There…
Stylised dolphins and fish, in contrasting hues of red, blue, and yellow, swim across a sea of white tesserae. This striking mosaic was uncovered during excavations at Wroxeter Roman City (ancient Viroconium) in a collaborative effort by the University of…
On Saturday 4 May 1471 the ‘Wars of the Roses’ came to a head at Tewkesbury, Gloucestershire. The Yorkist army commanded by Edward IV and his brother, the future Richard III, chased down and defeated the Lancastrian army of Queen…
Sherds has recently been working on a response to the Welsh Government’s consultation on its draft Culture Strategy. This has been an opportunity for the arts, heritage, and culture sector to reflect on questions that are not just relevant to Wales.
The latest on acquisitions, exhibitions, and key decisions.
A new museum, created and funded by the local community, has opened in Knaresborough, North Yorkshire. Leon Corneille-Cowell explains how the space came to be, and highlights some of its latest work and upcoming projects.
There are lots of great opportunities to get stuck into history and archaeology this autumn, whether you’re looking for conferences and lectures or new exhibitions and museum attractions.
If you would rather get involved at home, though, there is a wide variety of resources on offer online, from digital collections and virtual heritage site tours to new podcasts, TV shows, and more. Amy Brunskill has put together a selection of some of the options available.
REVIEW BY CH The earliest surviving written reference to Edinburgh is found in a charter of 17 July 1124 – and, to celebrate the city’s 900th ‘birthday’, Alistair Moffat has written an engaging biography of the Scottish capital. He begins…
REVIEW BY WILL FLETCHER This is a charming book. It features the conservation of a fine Grade II*-listed English vernacular building, situated in rural Norfolk. In total, the 13 chapters and appendices describe the building, its history, the former occupants,…
REVIEW BY AB In AD 793, Scandinavian raiders launched an attack on the island of Lindisfarne that would go down in history, and thus the Viking Age began. Or did it? In this new book, Alex Harvey takes a wider…
REVIEW BY JAMES O’DRISCOLL The passage-tomb complex of Knowth is often relegated to the status of smaller sibling to the better known Newgrange, despite it being of international importance in its own right. This book summarises over 60 years of…
REVIEW BY ADAM DAUBNEY This volume sets out the results of excavations and survey along a 5km stretch of the A160/A180 in north-east Lincolnshire. Excavations were carried out within an archaeologically important landscape of drained former marshland near the Humber…
REVIEW BY RP The site of Regis House (encompassing 41-46 King William Street and adjoining properties in EC4, London) was extensively excavated between 1994 and 1996 by the Museum of London Archaeology Service (MoLAS, now MOLA). This new report by…
Archaeological investigations in south Lincolnshire, linked to the ‘Digging Market Garden’ project, have uncovered objects relating to one of the largest airborne assaults in history – as well as some unexpected medieval finds. Operation Market Garden was an attempt by…
East Africa’s earliest farming Excavations in Kenya have uncovered equatorial east Africa’s earliest evidence for plant farming. Working in Kakapel Rockshelter in the Lake Victoria Basin, archaeologists have discovered remnants of the legume crop cowpea (black-eyed pea) in a hearth,…
Archaeologists excavating an Anglo-Saxon monastery in Cookham have unearthed 23 intact human burials, along with the disturbed remains of multiple other individuals. The site, which has been excavated by the University of Reading since 2021 (see CA 392) with permission…
Excavations at Arthur’s Stone, a Neolithic burial chamber overlooking the Golden Valley in Herefordshire, have revealed evidence of a second megalithic monument on the site: a possible stone circle some 65.5ft (20m) in diameter. Dating back 5,500 years, Arthur’s Stone…
A new study published in Fish and Fisheries has uncovered the piscine preferences of medieval countries in the southern North Sea area. The research analysed fish-bone remains from sites across the UK, France, Belgium, and the Netherlands, focused on the…
A summer excavation in the Oxfordshire village of Brightwell-cum-Sotwell has revealed a Roman road lying beneath the local primary school’s field. Jason Debney, chairman of the local history society, recalled being told by a resident many years ago that the…
An intricately set Pictish ring has been unearthed during excavations at Burghead, in Moray, home to the largest-known Pictish coastal promontory fort. Overlooking the Moray Forth, the fort would originally have covered around 5.5ha, but the construction of the town…
The remains of a ‘lost’ 17th-century house built by a friend of Oliver Cromwell has been rediscovered during excavations at Auckland Castle in County Durham. During the Interregnum (the period between the execution of Charles I in 1649 and the…
Restoring Boden Fogou Volunteers from the Meneage Archaeology Group have restored part of a passageway in an Iron Age fogou, which was rediscovered near Boden in west Cornwall in 2003 (see CA 414 for more about excavations on the site…
This Roman chatelaine was found in Walkeringham, Nottinghamshire, and dates to AD 100-200. Cast from copper alloy, and weighing just 7g, it is beautifully decorated with a pattern of 15 rectangular cells, some still set with the sky-blue enamel that…