Archaeology Features

FLARE - Somerton Castle - Medieval Jug - Roman Altar - Palaeolithic Burin - Ancaster Excavations - Visits Then and Now - Lincoln Conference on Anglo-Saxons, 2009 - Conference on the End of Roman Lincolnshire, 2010 - Archaeology in Lincoln: 2010

Friends of Lincoln Archaeological Research and Education (FLARE)

The Society for Lincolnshire History and Archaeology is the product of a series of amalgamations dating from 1965. 2009 sees the most recent one, with FLARE joining and enhancing the Archaeology Team of SLHA. The team, as from 1 April 2009, became known as Friends of Lincolnshire Archaeological Research and Education.

FLARE was established in 1977 at the suggestion of Dr. Kathleen Kenyon, the famous archaeologist of the Near East, who was, at the time, Chair of the Lincoln Archaeological Trust. One of the earliest initiatives was teaching materials on local archaeology. An exhibition of these in 1978 was opened by the city’s then MP, Margaret Jackson (later Beckett).

The continuing programme has been the highly regarded monthly lecture series of archaeological talks by national and international speakers which have broadened the knowledge and experience of members. Dr. Mick Jones, City Archaeologist, has an abundance of 'friends' in the archaeological world who have been pleased to visit Lincoln and share their expertise. There is a full programme for 2009, so these talks will continue and be of benefit to all SLHA members as well members of the general public. (See details of forthcoming Events.)

There are, however, other considerable achievements. Among these are training schemes using government funding to help young people equip themselves with some skills. The first was from 1978 to 1984, which involved training diggers as well as publishing aids for schools. A later one was through FLARE Projects, Ltd., a company set up with the aid of the City Unit and employing between 20 and 30 young people between 18 and 25 years of age with full time training opportunities. Some worked in the city but others were transported to excavation sites across the County. One highly productive site was the Romano-British site at Sapperton. The Company involved three directors, a chairman, a secretary and a treasurer, as well as a manager for the day to day running. A number of the young people taking part went on to become professional archaeologists.

Lincoln City Council bought The Lawn complex when it closed as a mental hospital and it converted the former nurses home, Charlotte House, into the headquarters of the City Archaeology Unit. One of the ground floor rooms became, in 1990, an archaeology exhibition with hands-on displays to explain archaeological terminology and practices as well as highlighting the archaeology of the city. FLARE members became the custodians of the centre for the first part of its life and manned the rota from 10 a.m. to 4 pm each day seven days a week. This dedication proved sufficient to cause the City Council to eventually employ staff to man this popular attraction, which welcomed 40,000 visitors in its first year. An amphora near the door acted as a donation box to this free entry facility giving FLARE a start on funding projects within the City. Some funding went to help research into the City’s past but much went into publications to educate young and old about the City’s stories.

FLARE trip to Brittany

A purely parochial outlook has never been on the agenda as the lecture programme shows. Arranging visits both national and international has been an essential part of the annual routine. There have been regular day visits to sites of archaeological significance as well as week-end and week-long stays across England and Wales and countries in Western Europe. A number of these involved one or two mini buses with the FLARE officers driving them. Touring Brittany, world war battlefields and staying in monasteries like Liguge near Poitier were becoming the norm but, more recently, visits have become more popular necessitating the hiring of coaches and arranging them jointly with SLHA.

During the 1960s and 70s SLHA had a very active Archaeology Team. There were excavations, surveys, and training sessions across the County, but the loss of a few key people brought a halt to these schemes. It is hoped that with the enlarged Archaeology Team working alongside the Local History and Industrial Archaeology Teams, we shall witness a new era where practical works are high on the agenda and members across the County can participate.

Pearl Wheatley

Somerton Castle

Somerton Castle: SE Tower & Elizabethan House

Antony Bek, Bishop of Durham, received licence to crenellate his castle at Somerton, 8 miles south of Lincoln, in 1281. It is quadrangular with circular towers at the angles and linking curtain walls. It was probably not built as a defensive structure but rather as a demonstration of power and wealth, even though King John of France was confined there in 1359-60.

Today, in private ownership, the south-east tower remains at full height with an impressive attached Elizabethan house. The towers at the north-east, which has a fine central pier and vaulting, and south-west also survive but are much truncated. The fourth tower and curtain walling no longer exist, probably swept aside with the development of a substantial farmstead on the site in the Victorian period.

Close against the towers is a moat and there are further earthworks and a second moat mainly to the south. Possibly these were fashionable landscape features.

Somerton Castle: vaulting inside the NE tower

Resistivity Survey

More detail of the earlier form of the castle can be gleaned from Samuel Buck’s C18 drawing and the detailed survey undertaken by J S Padley in the nineteenth century.

Heritage Lincolnshire with the support of SLHA are currently arranging an investigation of the site, including magnetometry and resistivity surveys. Experts on early medieval buildings are also being invited to examine and offer an interpretation of the existing structures. Results of this wide-ranging investigation will be published in due course and also summarised on this website.

A Medieval Jug

This is a painting by Mrs Ethel Rudkin of a medieval jug found at Toynton All Saints near Spilsby in c1954.

Mrs Rudkin made an early study of pottery and pottery kilns in the Toynton All Saints and Bolingbroke area. She conducted excavations of kilns and classified pottery from the Middle Ages up to the Post-Medieval era. She was able to reconstruct several pots from the fragments she found and she also recorded them through paintings, such as this. Many of the pots - and several of her paintings - are now in the care of the Lincolnshire County Council Museum Service.

Cover illustration from Lincolnshire History & Archaeology, Volume 38, 2003

A Roman Altar

This fragment of an altar was found at Ancaster during excavations by Channel 4's Time Team. It had been re-used as part of the stone lining of a grave in the late Roman Christian cemetery there. This surviving portion represents the top and left-hand side of the front face of the original altar. It measures 33cm high, 52cm wide and 12cm thick. The inscription in well cut Roman capitals reads DEOVRID(...)/SANCTI(...), which translates as 'To the holy god Viridius...'

Steve Malone in Lincolnshire History & Archaeology, Volume 37, 2002

A Palaeolithic Burin

A burin found near the River Lymn at the southern edge of the Lincolnshire Wolds. It a is a long slender blade (about 10cm long) which among other tasks enabled early man to open up large animal bones to get at the marrow, a very convenient source of protein. Using this method a bone would be deeply scored with the point of the burin and then the weakened bone could be relatively easily broken into splinters and the marrow taken out.

The way the burin was made was ingenious. One early technique was by snapping off a series of small splinters, which were removed from one corner, down the edge of the flake to form a sharp chisel-like feature.

The burin was to develop into one of the most important tools. From ths humble beginning the Stone Age artificer was able to scribe through not just bone but also wood, horn and ivory. A special burin was developed for the artistic amongst them, an engraving tool called a 'beak burin'. One of the country's earliest artistic images, a horse head inscribed on a bone found at Cresswell Crags, Derbyshire, was probably created by one of these special tools.

T William Bee in Lincolnshire History & Archaeology, Volume 38, 2003

A Most Rewarding Excavation - to make a Garden Feature!

A report in Lincolnshire History and Archaeology No. 26 (1991) describes an excavation in Ancaster which reads like a Time Team Special. The dig took place in 1980 and the report written by Tom Lane of Archaeology Project Services. The excavation was begun when a human skull was found by builders whilst digging the foundations of a new bungalow. No more bones came to light in the foundation trenches but what was to become the new garden was throroughly examined and it produced more human remains.

Ancaster is rich in Roman remains dating from its period as a simple fort through to its growth to become a small town and a considerable amount of exploration took place in the late 1960s to 1980s.

On the bungalow site there were substanbtial walls but since there were plenty of large nails, Tom assumed that the upper walls were of timber. They were certainly plastered and decorated. As is often the case there was evidence of infant burials under the floors including one that was in a stone lined grave. Some bones were built into a wall of a later building.

Some of the exposed walls became a feature of the new garden when it was landscaped. Most likely, if the excavation had taken place in more recent times, the advice wlould have been to cover it up to prevent deterioration from weathering. Needless to say a number of dwellings in Ancaster boast Roman remains in their gardens and who would not like to have them on display!

The photograph shows the quality of the walls at the time of the dig.

The Archaeological Notes in the SLHA Journal keep us in touch with all that's unearthed in Lincolnshire.

Visits Then and Now

The Annual Reports of the Lincolnshire Architectural and Archaeological Society contained lists of comments on churches visited. In the 19th century it was fashionable to consider the Gothic style far superior to any other and their reports reflect this. Their annual meetings, lasting several days, involved calling at as many churches as possible.

The 1872 report has a lengthy comment on All Saints Tealby. The entry commences with the tower.

The etching of Tealby arch shown here is credited to J L Fytche, a very active member of the Society.

SLHA arranged a visit to several churches in 2006. How was this different? Part of the report of this 21st century visit reads:

The photograph (by Mark Acton) shows the tower at Glentworth. The single vertical opening below the bell chamber gave the sexton a view of the churchyard enabling him to toll the bells at the moment of interment.

The 1872 visits were to study the entire church but in 2006 our visit was more selective, providing a comparative study of a special feature. Another difference was the mode of transport. In 2006 a coach was hired but the antiquaries of 1872 used railway and horse-drawn carriages. The stop for lunch would have been the same - the local hostelry.

ARCHAEOLOGY DAY 2009: ANGLO-SAXONS in LINCOLNSHIRE

Day Conference at Lincoln University, Riseholme Centre
Saturday 3 October 2009

ABSTRACTS OF LECTURES

ANGLO-SAXON CROWLAND
Revd. John Wilford

Crowland, of all monastic sites, is unique in producing a detailed description of daily life and contemporary aspirations in our eighth-century Lincolnshire fens. Felix’s ‘Life of St Guthlac’ also provides the earliest references to archaeological features in the county, and was the starting point for a series of studies on fenland transformation – the turning of disease-infested marshland into a comparatively fertile agricultural paradise. Moreover, Crowland stands at the forefront of antiquarian studies. The work of local antiquaries like William Stukeley and John Gresley provides a valuable example of pioneering research and the recording of vanishing archaeological features.

BARTON-UPON-HUMBER: THE STORY OF A COMMUNITY REVEALED IN HUMAN REMAINS
Dr. Simon Mays

Nearly 3,000 skeletons have been excavated from Barton-upon-Humber, Lincolnshire, dating from the 7th-19th century AD. Study of the burial practices has shown how these have changed over the centuries. Scientific analysis of the skeletons offers a portrait of a community over a 1200 year period. Osteological studies have investigated health, mortality, and stature. Stable isotope analysis and the study of dental disease have permitted investigation of diets. Results show that although there was some evidence of dietary change during the period represented by the burials, the overall impression of community health is one of stasis: remarkably few health indicators showed any change in more than 1,000 years.

AN EARLY-MIDDLE ANGLO-SAXON SETTLEMENT AT WEST HALTON, NORTH LINCOLNSHIRE
Vicky Crewe

This talk presented the findings from excavations at the village of West Halton, near Scunthorpe, in North Lincolnshire. Between summer 2003 and Easter this year a team from the University of Sheffield conducted excavations on what is now the village green, revealing substantial multi-period evidence, including Bronze Age, Anglo-Saxon and medieval activity. This presentation will focus on the Early-Middle Anglo-Saxon settlement, which has been detected in various places across the village green. A number of timber buildings within an enclosure ditch have been uncovered over several seasons, whilst a square-ditched enclosure similar to those highlighted by John Blair as possible pagan Anglo-Saxon shrine sites has also very recently been unearthed. Burial activity also took place on the site in the Anglo-Saxon period, and this will be discussed too. In addition, the talk briefly considered the other phases of activity at West Halton, demonstrating that the Anglo-Saxon settlement was influenced by the remains of antecedent landscapes.

LISSINGLEYS AND THE LEGACY OF THE KINGDOM OF *LINDES
Tom Green

This lecture first considered briefly the evidence for a British kingdom named *Lindes having been based at Lincoln through the fifth century and into the sixth. In particular, attention was drawn to a range of linguistic and archaeological material, not least the remarkable concentration of post-Roman British metalwork found in the Lincoln region. The question was then asked: did the later political structures of the region owe anything to this British past? It is argued that not only did the seventh-century Anglo-Saxon kingdom of Lindsey (Lindissi) probably inherit both the territory and name of *Lindes, but that there are reasons to think that at least some elements of the internal administration of Lindissi may have had a similar origin too. In this context, the site of Lissingleys, at the point where the three Ridings of Lindsey meet, is of very considerable interest.

RESEARCHING MEDIEVAL DRESS AND TEXTILES
Professor Gale R. Owen-Crocker

Anglo-Saxon dress is now quite a popular topic among archaeologists and re-enactors, but there is a strong bias towards the evidence of furnished graves, which means that interest has focused particularly on women’s dress accessories, based almost exclusively on fifth- to seventh-century archaeology. This lecture outlined what can be learned from this evidence, but also considered some other archaeological material such as that emerging through the Portable Antiquities Scheme and urban archaeological remains; it considered other, non-archaeological, approaches to the issues of medieval dress and textiles and suggested how archaeologists and historians can exploit these.

GOODBYE WODEN: THE LATE CEMETERIES AND THE END OF ANGLO-SAXON PAGANISM
Dr. Kevin Leahy

The seventh century was a period of great change, the pagan cemeteries, which had been in use for over a hundred years, slowly passed out of use but their final phase saw some remarkable developments. New types of object were included in graves and the way grave goods were used suggests the rise of an aristocracy. While Christianity won in the end the last years of paganism produced some breathtaking objects the wonder of which can still stir us.

ARCHAEOLOGY DAY 2010: THE END OF ROMAN LINCOLNSHIRE

Day Conference at Lincoln University, Riseholme Centre
Saturday 20 March 2010

ABSTRACTS OF LECTURES

LATE ROMAN SETTLEMENTS IN LINCOLNSHIRE
Dr. Steve Malone

The role and status of towns in late Roman Britain has been much debated, their continued vitality, or otherwise, up to the end of the Roman administration and beyond all the more so. Lincolnshire has few settlements that rise beyond the level of ‘minor town’, but the contrast between those supplied with defences and those not raises interesting questions about the nature of these settlements in the later Roman period. An interesting regional grouping of late Roman Christian lead tanks may shed light on the spread of Christianity and relations between the towns and the Episcopal see at Lincoln.

THE RURAL ECONOMY
Mike Wood

Studies of Roman Britain have traditionally tended to focus on urban, military and status sites to the detriment of our understanding of the rural population. Late Roman Lincolnshire is a prime example of this under-representation, with a significant proportion of the population of this agricultural county, living in small, dispersed settlements. Central to understanding these communities is identifying the economic realities they lived with, and how they fitted into the market forces of consumer based urban sites. This paper touched on the agricultural based economy of late Roman Lincolnshire, comparing general trends in animal husbandry and crop production with evidence from urban consumer sites.

CHANGING TIMES AT THE PIDDINGTON VILLA
Roy Friendship-Taylor

During the late 3rd century, the much enlarged stone-built villa was undergoing a major refurbishment and enlargement, when everything came to an abrupt end leaving much of the work unfinished. At least 7 family groups have now been identified and who now were living within these unfinished ‘ruins’ of the once grand villa! But, by the late 4th or early 5th centuries, a small group or family of Anglo-Saxons arrived at Piddington. A Grübenhaus and a small cemetery located within the stone-built villa were found and all dated to about the early 5th century. Although there is no real evidence to the contrary, these folk seemed to have integrated peacefully and settled alongside the original late Roman occupants of the site.

LATE ROMAN HOARDING IN EAST ANGLIA
Jude Plouviez

This paper looked at the diversity and distribution of the 4th and early 5th century hoards of various materials found in Suffolk and Norfolk, comments on the contrasts with other regions and speculated about possible local explanations for the phenomenon.

THE USE OF PRECIOUS METALS IN LATE ROMAN LINCOLNSHIRE
Adam Daubney

Over 13,000 finds have been recorded with the Portable Antiquities Scheme since 1997, along with a number of significant coin hoards dating to the late Roman period. This talk examined the contribution that these finds make to our understanding of late Roman Lincolnshire, and asked just what and whom these finds represent? Roman soldiers, Saxon mercenaries, estate security guards and the late Roman equivalent of the 'Home Guard' have all been discussed in recent years, but what was really happening in the hinterland of Lincoln, and are we too hopeful about what these finds can tell us?

THE MATERIAL OF EVERYDAY LIFE: POTTERY IN LATE ROMAN LINCOLNSHIRE
Alex Beeby

Pottery is the most enduring artefactual evidence of life in Late Roman Lincolnshire. This talk examined the changes that occurred during the late 3rd and 4th centuries and briefly summed up the archaeological evidence for the production and use of pottery in this area during the final years of Roman Britain.

ROMAN TO SAXON IN THE FENLAND
Tom Lane

This presentation examined what is known of the demise of the extensive Roman settlements of the fens, looking in particular at the part environmental change may have played in the process. A traditional model sees the Fenland region swamped by floodwaters in the 4/5th centuries, leaving an unoccupied wilderness. Recent evidence is for use of the post Roman landscape by Saxon farmers and the beginnings of coastal villages.

THE DEMISE OF ROMAN LINCOLN: ALTERNATIVE ENDINGS
Dr. Mick Jones

Lincoln’s significance as a 4th-century provincial capital probably helped to sustain it for longer than most other cities of Roman Britain. As elsewhere, however, major public investment was confined to the fortifications, while private wealth display flourished. All this came to an end towards the end of the fourth century, but there may have been a further generation of urban occupation before the town became largely depopulated. Even then, it may have remained a symbolic power centre.

DARK AGE, SUB-ROMAN, BRITTONIC OR ANGLO SAXON: WHAT SHOULD WE CALL LINCOLNSHIRE IN THE FIFTH AND SIXTH CENTURIES?
Tom Green

This lecture was concerned with the question of which, if any, of the many models and labels that have been offered for the fifth and sixth centuries in eastern England apply to the Lincoln region. Drawing on a range of local archaeological, linguistic and historical evidence, the credibility of each of the labels in the title was considered in turn. Were these centuries in the Lincoln region really a ‘Dark Age’, in terms of either obscurity or degeneration? Do they represent a new start for the region, a wholly new ‘Anglo-Saxon’ age which creates a new ‘Germanic’ society? Did the Roman past have a greater role to play in these years than this would imply, only gradually disappearing through the course of a ‘sub-Roman’ period? Or did the former Romano-Britons of the region play an even more active role in creating a ‘post-Roman’ society, with the result that these centuries, at least, deserve to be considered to some degree Brittonic in nature?

ARCHAEOLOGY IN LINCOLN: 2010

The City Archaeologist, Mick Jones, has recently given a talk to SLHA members bringing them up to date with work in the city in 2010 as well as some of the more significant discoveries in the city in recent years. Some of the highlights are mentioned here. They include the very important collections of Mesolithic stone tools found both on the site of the University pond and others from the St Catherine’s area. According to Jim Rylatt, who has studied the material, the former site was probably a hunting camp of late Mesolithic date (c5000-4000BC), while the St Catherine’s occupation is more likely to represent occupation extending over a longer timescale, into the Neolithic period. There was also some useful information from analysis, by James Rackham and colleagues, of pollen and other environmental samples from the Brayford area sites for the Bronze Age and early Iron Age landscape.

Among other advances, there is an increasing amount of information about the fringes of the Roman city, including Roman suburban occupation, cemeteries and field systems to both north and south, three new areas where pottery kilns have turned up, and the sites of villas – centres for farming estates – close to the city.

New ideas about the end of the Roman city are constantly emerging, even updating some of the evidence discussed at the Archaeology Day held only in March, and Tom Green’s forthcoming book on ‘Britons and Saxons in Early Lincolnshire’, to be published next year by the History of Lincolnshire Committee, takes up the story in the 5th century. Until this year, Lincoln had produced no clear evidence for a ‘-wic’, a mid-Saxon trading settlement of the type known from London and York, but in 2010 the first traces appeared, along with 7th-8th-century pottery, on a site west of Melville Street that may have lain on the so-called ‘Thorngate Island’.

This settlement steered well clear of the former Roman walled town, whereas the earliest churches of the Anglo-Scandinavian city may have made use of visible Roman structures. In turn, the emergency excavations undertaken by Philip Dixon during the laying of a new surface by the west front of the cathedral appear to have proved conclusively that the cathedral succeeded a Saxon church, probably a minster, on the same site.

The final main point was the extent of quarrying to the north and east of the upper city, mainly from the medieval period for limestone but, as Stewart Squires’ research is demonstrating, extending much further east in the 19th century for ironstone. One impact of all this activity was to destroy any earlier remains, but in a few cases finds were recorded.

Photo: View of sand island south of University architecture building, showing squares sampled for Mesolithic flints (John Herridge, City of Lincoln Council).