Beginner’s Guide to Archaeology: Metal Detecting, Nighthawking and the Portable Antiquities Scheme

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archaeology, Beginners Guide, Britain, education, England, Leicestershire, Loughborough, Scotland, Wales, WEA

In our last session we looked at the Treasure Act 1996,  Treasure Trove in Scotland, metal detecting, nighthawking and the Portable Antiquities Scheme.

This video is of a lecture entitled “The Treasure Act and Portable Antiquities Scheme: experience from South of the Border” that was given by Roger Bland, Keeper of the Department of Britain, Europe and Prehistory at the British Museum joint with the National Museums Scotland, to the Society of Antiquaries of Scotland in 2014 on the application of the Treasure Act and the development of the Portable Antiquities Scheme to record discovered artefacts.

Another chip at the bluestone problem — Mike Pitts – Digging Deeper

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archaeology, England, news, prehistory, stone age, Stonehenge, Wales

A new study of Stonehenge bluestone is out. It’s short and densely written, and not dramatic. But it confirms the direction of current work which suggests that many of the Welsh bluestones came from north of the Preseli hills, rather than the top or to the south as traditionally believed (HH Thomas identified Carn Alw as a […]

via Another chip at the bluestone problem — Mike Pitts – Digging Deeper

“I’m sorry but what is a Scheduled Monument?”

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archaeology, England, Heritage, Wales

Heritage Calling

The well preserved remains of No. 1 Filling Factory at Barnbow, near Leeds, have today been granted Scheduled Monument status. Women made up the vast majority of the workforce, engaged in the incredibly dangerous work of filling shells for the western front including the Battle of the Somme.

Jane Siddell, Inspector of Ancient Monuments for London at Historic England,  sheds some light on the term and talks us through some of the fascinating scheduled monuments she’s come across.

“I’m sorry but what is a Scheduled Monument?”

This was a question I received recently after giving a talk about recent archaeological projects in London. The questioner was a little embarrassed, but it’s a remarkably good question. He wanted to know how something qualifies to be a monument; what gives it that special quality? It proved surprisingly hard to answer.

Kits Coty House © Tony Austin

We’ve had Scheduled Monuments (sometimes known…

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The Norman World: The Welsh Marches

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archaeology, education, medieval, Normans, Nottingham, Nottinghamshire, Wales, WEA

In our last session of The Norman World we briefly looked at the Welsh Marches. As we can see from the Wikipedia entry on the subject: ‘the English terms “Welsh March” and “the March of Wales” (in Medieval Latin Marchia Walliae) were originally used in the Middle Ages to denote a more precisely defined territory, the marches between England and the Principality of Wales, in which Marcher lords had specific rights, exercised to some extent independently of the king of England.’

The question arose of what, exactly, was a ‘march’. Again, I quote, : ‘the word “march” derives ultimately from a Proto-Indo-European root *mereg-, meaning “edge, boundary”. The root *mereg- produced Latin margo (“margin”), Old Irish mruig (“borderland”), and Persian and Armenian marz (“borderland”). The Proto-Germanic *marko gave rise to the Old English word mearc and Frankish marka, as well as Old Norse mörk meaning “borderland, forest”, and derived form merki “boundary, sign”, denoting a borderland between two centres of power.’

A march was, therefore, a medieval European term for any kind of borderland, as opposed to a notional “heartland”.