Rowing archaeology - Dorney Lake

For those of you who don’t know, yesterday was the Oxford/Cambridge women’s boat race (Oxford won). Whilst this event had traditionally been held at Henley-on-Thames, this year bad weather caused the event to be relocated to Dorney Lake (and from 2015 it will be held on the Thames with the men’s race).

Dorney is a purpose-built rowing lake, around 2200m long, which took 10 years to fully build (completed in 2006), and it was used as the Olympic rowing course during London 2012. However, before they were allowed to build a lake, archaeologists excavated the area over a period of 18 months in order to ensure no valuable archaeology would be destroyed during the construction process.

The lake is a stone’s throw away from the current course of the river Thames, but this course has changed several times since the last Ice Age, and this has left damp soil in its wake – good for preservation of certain types of archaeological evidence, meaning that it was possible to construct a good site sequence.

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Although the area was woodland in the distance past, it has been used for settlement since, although in more modern pre-lake times only fields existed (it would have been hard to get permission to build a rowing lake on top of someone’s house, obviously). The above image shows the full diversity of archaeology found at the site.

The chronology of the site was phased from radiocarbon dates of timber structures (bridges amongst the features found), and human bones found there. A prehistoric field system was visible from the air, as a series of rectilinear enclosures, trackways and pits. These features were concentrated where the main body of the lake is today, so are no longer visible. However, Bronze Age barrows are still visible (image from Google maps below) now, between the lake and the river.

In more modern times the area was used as a ‘Starfish’ bomb decoy for the nearby town of Slough. The starfish worked by the detonation of controlled explosions during an air raid to simulate the effects of an urban area being targeted by bombs – making the bombers think they had hit their target when in reality they were bombing only empty fields.

I haven’t even touched on the wealth of artefact evidence found at Dorney, but one of the highlights of the finds was the oldest scythe found in Britain. It is interesting to think what archaeologists 2000 years in the future might make of the remains of the lake, especially if rowing no longer exists as a sport like it does now.

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[1] Parker et al. 2008 “Late Holocene geoarchaeological investigation of the Middle Thames floodplain at Dorney, Buckinghamshire, UK: An evaluation of the Bronze Age, Iron Age, Roman and Saxon landscapes” in Geomorphology 101 pp. 471-483.

Pyramids of Perception

I’d hazard a guess that for pretty much anybody, when you say the word ‘archaeology’ there are certain things that spring to mind – specific items or sites that seem to characterise the essence of archaeology in popular or modern culture; Indiana Jones, Stonehenge, the Pyramids of Egypt. What I love about archaeology is that each of these prevalent associations is just the tip of the iceberg, just the beginning of something bigger.

For starters, I’m sure most people don’t know that the academic Indiana Jones is meant to be influenced by the Marxist Archaeologist, V. Gordon Childe, who proposed a theory of (moderate) cultural diffusion. Indiana Jones obviously didn’t share in Childe’s avoidance of fieldwork, but that’s perhaps a story for another blog.

The Mayans gained quite a lot of popularity/notoriety last year, due to the hype over the end of the Mayan calendar, believe by some to signify the end of the world. Luckily, that didn’t happen, and we were all able to sing in 2013 free of death and destruction. However, the intricacies of the Mayan calendar are just one of many fascinating points about these peoples.

Pyramid at Chichén Itzá

While the Egyptian pyramids might arguable be the most famous, they are not the only ones.[1] There are pyramids and similar sites dotted throughout Mesoamerica.  Why were such geographically disparate people building such similar structures? What lies in the human psyche that fuels this need to build?

It has been suggested that the height of a pyramid creates a separation between the general population that exists at ground level, and any dominating elite/ruler who took their place at the summit. In Mesoamerica this contrast is supplemented by evidence for animal (rarely ever human, if at all) sacrifice found in conjunction with pyramids.

La Pirámide del Sol from below – what’s the difference between the bottom and the top? [2]

Having visited several of these Mesoamerican pyramid sites, it is easy to understand this contrast, but perhaps in a different sense. For example, if the only way you experienced the site of Teotihuacán was from ground level, then on a hot Mexican summer’s day, this experience is far removed from someone who has climbed to the top of La Pirámide del Sol (the largest) – there is a physical and mental division. They also create a very different atmosphere to those in Egypt – which were a separation between life and death.

This week’s blog is not about the archaeological evidence found at these sites, because I can’t claim to know much more than what’s found on Wikipedia. What this week is, is a challenge perhaps, to just think about the way that structures and buildings affect us. Pyramids are huge structures, whether in Egypt or Mexico, and they dominate whatever landscape they are placed in – what does this domination mean for those living under their shadow? And how can we begin to understand what they meant for the people who built them?

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[1] The largest pyramid at Giza has a base area of 5.3 hectares – larger than many hillforts.

[2] Images are my own.

Why Iron Man is a problem for archaeologists

One of the problems with studying archaeology is the (necessary?) fact that we are wholly separated from the past that we are studying - making it hard to access the minds and understanding of the people we want to learn about.

For historical archaeology part of this problem is reduced by the use of historical documents, written either by contemporaries, or the people in question themselves. But in prehistory this written source material does not exist. There is no literature that can place us directly in the minds of prehistoric people in Britain.

What do you think of when you hear the word “iron”? Even as an Iron Age scholar, my first thought isn’t necessarily the Iron Age. I think of Iron Man, I think of the Great Swords in the Game of Thrones books (technically “steel”, but that’s an alloy of iron so it’s ok – and an indication of how my mind works). You might think about the Ironbridge Gorge[1] in the Midlands, a UNESCO World Heritage Site called the “Birthplace of the Industrial Revolution”.

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My point is that iron and the uses of iron are so widespread nowadays it is hard to separate ourselves from these modern uses and connotations. How can we ever really escape them and fully understand the importance of metal in the Iron Age? Iron Man bares no resemblance to the practicality of iron smelting and metal-making for Iron Age people, and yet it’s still one of the first things that I think of.

I know from school how iron is extracted from its ore, but in prehistory the knowledge of the underlying chemical process was not known. The creation of metal from rock was viewed as a magical transformation. Although this viewpoint was first formed in the Bronze Age, when metalworking was introduced, the creation of iron is perhaps more mystical than that of bronze (an alloy of copper and tin).

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Chalcopyrite, the primary copper ore in Britain is already remarkable, it’s already shiny. And it has been suggested that this eye-catching property was one of the things that first attracted prehistoric peoples to the ore.

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The main source of iron ore is haematite, grey and dull. It doesn’t possess the same inherent attraction of copper, and yet this seemingly dull rock can still make metal – the transformation is amplified.

This concept of metal-making as a magical process has been discussed repeatedly in archaeology, most notably by Hingley [5] and Taylor & Budd [6]. Our problem as archaeologists is that we’ve lost this connection and belief in magic – we know too much about the science behind the process.  And so this makes it infinitely more difficult to access the minds of prehistoric people, without colouring our interpretations with our own modern connotations.

This problem of truly understanding the minds of past peoples is one of the central challenges in archaeology, and one without a definite solution.

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[1] http://www.ironbridge.org.uk/

[2] Iron Man artwork by Salvador Larroca from Wikipedia

[3] Image from the British Geological Survey “Copper Profile”, available here 

[4] Image from Wikipedia

[5] Hingley, R. 1997: Iron, Ironworking and Regeneration: a study of the symbolic meaning of metalworking in Iron Age Britain. In Gwilt, A. and Haselgrove, C. (eds.), Reconstructing Iron Age Societies (Oxford, Oxbow Monograph 71), 9–15.

[6] Budd, P. and Taylor, T. 1995: The faerie smith meets the bronze industry: magic versus science in the interpretation of prehistoric metal-making. In World Archaeology, 27, 133–43.

The archaeology of tea and cake

Today’s blog is somewhat whimsical, but definitely still informative about important matters of archaeology. It’s also an excuse to make cake.

In archaeology, whenever we dig into the ground we are looking for artefacts from the past. However, we also want to know when these artefacts date to, and how different artefacts relate to each other throughout time. One of the ways that archaeologists do this is through soil.

This is known as stratigraphy, which is a term from geology. The underlying principle is that in one generation to the next, soil gets treated in different ways (e.g. an era of heavy rain will leave different soil to a dry era), and so time creates layers in the soil - different colours and consistencies. Archaeologists use these changes in the soil to delineate time periods.

When digging a site, archaeologists take great care to faithfully depict the layers of stratigraphy in order to correctly sequence the site, and any artefacts found. This sequence is mapped out in a Harris Matrix, which shows how the soils relate to each other, like a soil timeline.[1]

So, I’ve made a cake that has these layers, although sadly there are no artefacts buried inside (but there are smarties).

That’s five layers of “soil” (three sponge, two buttercream), and grass (with worms) on top.

The idea of the stratigraphy cake is not new, and many people have already done it much better than I have here (a quick internet search will show you several mouth-watering examples). However, it was definitely a cake-day here in Cambridge, and it tastes great.

But wait! I hear you cry. Surely you can’t have cake without a nice cup of tea? And anyway, it’s in the title for this week’s post. You’d be correct, of course. Any good archaeologist loves a good cup of tea, and it’s really the only way to start the day, especially when you’re out on dig and have possibly just woken up in a tent.

Another tool that archaeologists use in relation to soil is the Munsell colour system, which classifies colours in terms of hue, value, and chroma. It allows archaeologists to offer a consistent and quantifiable definition for each colour, meaning that someone else can understand what context they are talking about, without any confusion about colour perception.

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Another beautiful thing about the colour chart is that the colours of soils correspond with the colours of tea. So if you like milky tea, you can specify an exact colour higher up on the scale when instructing someone how to make your tea. The lower colours may perhaps correspond to a mug of rich, dark cocoa.

In other words, all archaeology, and soil, is basically just tea and cake (and maybe coffee, or cocoa). Now you can teach your friends/spouse/children/minions to create your perfect cup of tea by pinning up a Munsell colour chart in your kitchen. Easy.

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[1] A lot more complicated that my brief description makes it sound, for more see here.

[2] Image from http://nesoil.com/images/munsell.jpg