Volume 86, 2006

Papers

  1. A Miniature Viking-Age Hogback from the Wirral by Richard N Bailey, FSA, and Jenny Whalley

  2. An Early Seventeenth-Century Gold Seal of the Winthrop Family of Groton, Suffolk by Simon Bendall, FSA

  3. Bridging the Two Cultures – Commercial Archaeology and the Study of Prehistoric Britain by Richard Bradley, FSA

  4. The Name of Truro, Cornwall by Andrew Breeze, FSA

  5. The Discovery of an Anglo-Saxon Painted Figure at St Mary’s Church, Deerhurst, Gloucestershire by Steve Bagshaw, Richard Bryant, FSA, and Michael Hare, FSA

  6. A Rare Medieval Burnishing Tooth in the Museum of Writing, London by Alan E Cole and R A Rosenfeld

  7. The Eastern Arm of Norwich Cathedral and the Augustinian Priory of St Bartholomew’s, Smithfield, in London by Jill A Franklin, FSA

  8. Collecting the Past, Constructing Identity: the antiquarian John Mortimer and the Driffield Museum of Antiquities and Geological Specimens by Melanie Giles

  9. Church Alignment and Patronal Saint’s Days by Ian Hinton

  10. An Inscribed Lead Pendant from Norfolk by David Howlett, FSA

  11. Rocks in the Landscape: managing the Inka agricultural cycle by Frank Meddens, FSA

  12. ‘King Arthur’ and Cadbury Castle, Somerset by Dai Morgan Evans, FSA

  13. A Portrait of Sir Christopher Hatton, Erasmus and an Emblem of Alciato: some questions by C W R D Moseley, FSA

  14. Public and Private: the late medieval wall paintings of Haddon Hall chapel, Derbyshire by Mellie Naydenova

  15. The Burlington House Case, 2004–5 by Bernard Nurse, FSA

  16. Did the Anglo-Saxons Play Games of Chance? Some thoughts on Old English board games by Ian Payne, FSA

  17. ‘Particular Thanks and Obligations’: the communications made by women to the Society of Antiquaries between 1776 and 1837, and their significance by Anna Catalani and Susan Pearce, FSA

  18. A Technique for Distinguishing the Textures of Bricks and Tiles by John F Potter

  19. The Savoyard Cousins: a comparison of the careers and relative success of the Grandson (Grandison) and Champvent (Chavent) families in England by Michael Ray

  20. Lapides reclamabunt: art and engineering at Lincoln Cathedral in the thirteenth century by Roger Stalley, FSA

  21. Some Smaller Moulded Samian Forms from La Graufesenque by Peter Webster, FSA

1. A MINIATURE VIKING-AGE HOGBACK FROM THE WIRRAL

A Viking Age hogback, recently discovered in the Wirral, is the smallest known example of this type of stone monument and forms part of a marked concentration of tenth- and eleventh-century carvings around the beach market at Meols. Its elaborate decoration is not only allusively Christian but visually asserts an identity with Hiberno-Norse groups in north Yorkshire.

2. AN EARLY SEVENTEENTH-CENTURY GOLD SEAL OF THE WINTHROP FAMILY OF GROTON, SUFFOLK

This gold seal is of early seventeenth-century date and bears the arms of the Winthrop family of Groton, Suffolk. The arms are differenced by a label of three points, indicating that it belonged to an eldest son. Since the seal has a British provenance and the arms were only granted in 1592, there are only two contenders for its ownership – John Winthrop II (1588–1649), who emigrated to America in 1630 and became the first governor of Massachusetts, and his son, John Winthrop III (1606–76), who joined his father in America in 1631 and governed Connecticut from 1660 to 1676. Even though it is not possible to say which of these two John Winthrops owned the seal, it is nevertheless important both as a rare example of a gold seal of the period and because of its connection to the early history of colonial America.

3. BRIDGING THE TWO CULTURES – COMMERCIAL ARCHAEOLOGY AND THE STUDY OF PREHISTORIC BRITAIN

This paper was given at a meeting of the Society held on 12 January 2006 and it discusses the relationship between academic research and developer-funded archaeology in Britain today, highlighting the strengths and weaknesses of each. It considers the relationship between archaeological theory and practice and discusses the changing roles of academics, fieldworkers and managers. It argues that important issues need to be resolved, including the dissemination of information from recent archaeological fieldwork and the use of ‘grey literature’ in informing more ambitious interpretations of the past.

4. THE NAME OF TRURO, CORNWALL

Truro’s name seems to come from the Cornish cognate of Welsh tryferau, ‘spears, javelins’, referring to the city’s rivers.

5. THE DISCOVERY OF AN ANGLO-SAXON PAINTED FIGURE AT ST MARY’S CHURCH, DEERHURST, GLOUCESTERSHIRE

The church of St Mary at Deerhurst in Gloucestershire is well known for its Anglo-Saxon fabric and sculpture. In 1993 a painting of an Anglo-Saxon figure was discovered, and in 2002 it became possible for the authors to study the painting in detail. The painting is on one of a pair of triangular-headed stone panels set high in the internal east wall of the church. The discovery provides a significant addition to the tiny corpus of known Anglo-Saxon wall paintings. The identity of the standing, nimbed figure remains elusive, but the figure can be tentatively dated on art historical grounds to the middle to late tenth century. The authors also explore the structural context of the painting. It is suggested that in the first half of the ninth century the church had an upper floor over the central space (the present east end), and that this floor possibly extended over the whole church. At the east end, there were internal openings from this upper floor into a high-level space in the polygonal apse. At a later date two of these openings were blocked and covered by stone panels, one of which is the subject of this paper. It is possible that the panels flanked a high-level altar or an opening through which a shrine, set on a high level floor in the apse, could be viewed.

6. A RARE MEDIEVAL BURNISHING TOOTH IN THE MUSEUM OF WRITING, LONDON

Many of the tools commonly used in book production in the later middle ages have proved remarkably elusive in the archaeological record. Thousands of extant manuscript pages are decorated with gold leaf, yet no examples of the tools used in gilding have been reported. An exception is a bovid tooth in the collections of the Museum of Writing (London). The tooth bears marks consonant with modification as a burnisher, appropriate wear marks and traces of gold leaf. The object was first recorded in association with other scribal tools. The tooth is illustrated and described, its provenance and the potential significance of the assemblage to which it belonged are discussed, and it is put into a larger craft context by surveying the range of tasks for which tooth burnishers served, the preferred animal sources and the chronological range of the practice.

7. THE EASTERN ARM OF NORWICH CATHEDRAL AND THE AUGUSTINIAN PRIORY OF ST BARTHOLOMEW’S, SMITHFIELD, IN LONDON

The church of St Bartholomew the Great in West Smithfield is not generally thought of as a building of major importance, probably because the plan of its presbytery seems to suggest that it was a rather outmoded imitation of Norwich Cathedral. The first part of this paper examines the basis for such an assumption and offers an explanation for the similarities between the presbyteries of the two buildings. Affiliations between the two institutions are placed in the wider context of the aspirations of the London episcopate in the decades either side of 1100. Smithfield emerges as an extraordinary building, highly untypical of contemporary Augustinian architecture. The twelfth-century foundation narrative of Smithfield implies that, while in building, the church struck onlookers as astonishingly innovative. Taken at face value, this is puzzling, since most of the elements of its design had been common architectural currency for a generation or more. This apparently paradoxical situation is explored in the second part of the paper and the basis for Smithfield’s perceived modernity while under construction very tentatively reconstructed.

8. COLLECTING THE PAST, CONSTRUCTING IDENTITY: THE ANTIQUARIAN JOHN MORTIMER AND THE DRIFFIELD MUSEUM OF ANTIQUITIES AND GEOLOGICAL SPECIMENS

2005 marked the centenary of the publication of Forty Years Researches in the British and Saxon Burial Mounds of East Yorkshire by John Mortimer. This review explores the key concepts underpinning his work – those of progress and racial identity – and how they were developed both in the monograph and in the fieldwork and museum arrangements upon which the monograph was based. It argues that although Mortimer is best known for his work on the Neolithic and Bronze Age of East Yorkshire it was the material from Iron Age burials in the region that crystallized his thinking on these issues. The article also explores the way in which this archaeological collection shaped Mortimer’s own relationships and sense of place, while contributing more broadly to regional and national discourses on identity. Finally, it highlights the contemporary significance of this collection and its associated archive, currently held at the Hull and East Riding Museum.

9. CHURCH ALIGNMENT AND PATRONAL SAINT’S DAYS

The results of this survey of almost 1,500 rural churches do not support the oft-repeated idea that churches are aligned with their patronal saint’s sunrise. In fact, they provide evidence that the churches specifically do not face different sunrises and that churches dedicated to saints with summer feast-days are aligned in the same direction as those dedicated to saints with winter feast-days. However, the results of the survey raise significant questions about other aspects of church alignment. A significant variation in alignment has been uncovered east to west across the country, with a difference of 10º in the mean alignment of churches between the west and east of England. Possible reasons for this are explored. In addition, churches built on sloping sites are found to have downhill-facing chancels. If the choice of site were random, churches would face uphill as well as down. The possible implications of this for church and village location are also explored.

10. AN INSCRIBED LEAD PENDANT FROM NORFOLK

This note describes the scene on Side A and offers a reading of the inscription on Side B of a recently discovered lead pendant from Norfolk. The inscription is read as two symmetrical lines of Anglo-Latin verse that contain transcriptions of one word of Greek and two words of Hebrew, both divine names. All the phenomena on Side B are illustrated by close parallels in Insular Latin literature from the seventh century to the tenth, and related to the scene on Side A.

11. ROCKS IN THE LANDSCAPE: MANAGING THE INKA AGRICULTURAL CYCLE

In this paper an extensive structured system of carved stones in Peru’s Chicha valley is presented in its local setting, analysed within its agricultural and social context and compared with similar landscape features elsewhere. In any agricultural society, the timing of planting, irrigation and harvesting events is crucial to maintaining crop yields. To a state system where the administration is dependent on non-written systems of record keeping, highly visible landscape markers would be essential in defining labour allocations and designating the appropriate allotment of irrigation water. This paper presents evidence that boundaries for water distribution and for management of the irrigation cycles during the Late Horizon period of Peruvian prehistory (c AD 1438–1534) were clearly set out and marked in a manner that enabled state administrators to manage the agricultural round. Though clearly the use of quipu-based recording systems should not be underestimated in this context, timing of the agricultural cycle on a local level could not solely be dependent on central directives from Cusco: local calendrical tools were necessary to ensure successful agricultural seasons.

12. ‘KING ARTHUR’ AND CADBURY CASTLE, SOMERSET

The major excavations at Cadbury Castle, Somerset, which took place in the 1960s, owed their inspiration in part to the identification of the site as ‘Camelot’, thus forging an association with ‘King Arthur’. John Leland, the sixteenth-century antiquary, was the author of this identification and this paper considers how he might have arrived at this conclusion. Factors identified include the role in Tudor politics of ‘King Arthur’ and of the owners of the site – the Hastings family. Consideration of the evidence of later writers on the site, both national and local, shows their almost total dependence on Leland’s original description, but the evidence of the Hereford Mappa Mundi suggests a new dimension. It is suggested that the interpretation of the archaeology of the site would benefit from a clearer understanding of John Leland’s description and of Tudor and Stuart activity at the site.

13. A PORTRAIT OF SIR CHRISTOPHER HATTON, ERASMUS AND AN EMBLEM OF ALCIATO: SOME QUESTIONS

This note discusses the enigmatic double-sided portrait of Sir Christopher Hatton now in Northampton Museum and Art Gallery. It seeks to illuminate the ways in which it could be read, how it might have been viewed, and suggests its possible functions. It also connects the picture with some central texts in Renaissance humanism, Erasmus’s Adagia and Alciato’s Emblematum Liber.

14. PUBLIC AND PRIVATE: THE LATE MEDIEVAL WALL PAINTINGS OF HADDON HALL CHAPEL, DERBYSHIRE

This paper focuses on the mural scheme executed in Haddon Hall Chapel shortly after 1427 for Sir Richard Vernon. It argues that at that time the chapel was also being used as a parish church, and that the paintings were therefore both an expression of private devotion and a public statement. This is reflected in their subject matter, which combines themes associated with popular beliefs, the public persona of the Hall’s owner and the Vernon family’s personal devotions. The remarkable inventiveness and complexity of the iconography is matched by the exceptionally sophisticated style of the paintings. Attention is also given to part of the decoration previously thought to be contemporary with this fifteenth-century scheme but for which an early sixteenth-century date is now proposed on the basis of stylistic and other evidence.

15. THE BURLINGTON HOUSE CASE, 2004–5

The legal basis by which the learned societies occupy Burlington House was the subject of a hearing before the High Court in 2004. No verdict was given because terms of occupation were eventually agreed by all parties in 2005. This paper contains transcriptions, with background notes, of some of the more interesting and previously unpublished documents presented in evidence on behalf of the societies as part of the negotiations.

16. DID THE ANGLO-SAXONS PLAY GAMES OF CHANCE? SOME THOUGHTS ON OLD ENGLISH BOARD GAMES

H J R Murray, the distinguished board games historian, stated categorically in 1952 that the popular Germanic game of tæfl (more specifically referred to in a ninth- to twelfth-century Norse context as hnefatafl), a game entirely of skill, was the only board game played in Anglo-Saxon England. But Old English literary evidence might pose a challenge to Murray’s thesis, and could be taken to suggest that the English also played games of chance (perhaps even tabula, an ancestor of backgammon) in the first millennium AD.

17. ‘PARTICULAR THANKS AND OBLIGATIONS’: THE COMMUNICATIONS MADE BY WOMEN TO THE SOCIETY OF ANTIQUARIES BETWEEN 1776 AND 1837, AND THEIR SIGNIFICANCE

This paper brings together the evidence bearing on the relationship between the Society of Antiquaries and the women who contributed to it during a significant period when archaeology, through the work of such men as Samuel Lysons and Richard Colt Hoare, was beginning to emerge as a distinct field with its own conceptual and technical systems. It takes its departure from the first substantial appearance by a woman in the Society’s publications in 1776, and continues until the accession of a female monarch, Victoria, in 1837, a period of just over sixty years. It explores what women did and what reception they received and assesses the significance of this within the wider processes of the development of an understanding of the past and the shaping of gender relationships through the medium of material culture in a period that saw fundamental changes in many areas of intellectual and social life, including levels of material consumption and the sentiments surrounding consumerism.

18. A TECHNIQUE FOR DISTINGUISHING THE TEXTURES OF BRICKS AND TILES

A simple, relatively non-destructive technique is described which can be used to distinguish between the fabrics and textures of different bricks and tiles. Its use should help to prevent the continued confusion that exists in the identification of different kiln-based clay products in the field.

19. THE SAVOYARD COUSINS: A COMPARISON OF THE CAREERS AND RELATIVE SUCCESS OF THE GRANDSON (GRANDISON) AND CHAMPVENT (CHAVENT) FAMILIES IN ENGLAND

In the mid-thirteenth century members of two branches of a family based in Savoy came to England and, through royal service, they reached baronial rank. One family, the Grandsons, thoroughly embedded itself in England and its members are recalled even today while the other, the Champvents,  lapsed into obscurity, the name disappearing from the records after 1410. To discover why, this article looks at the significance of royal service to the families, the amount of royal patronage they received, their marriage strategies, how they related to the localities into which they were implanted, the extent to which religious loyalties and family piety illustrated their attitudes and whether they cut their ties with their former home lands.

20. LAPIDES RECLAMABUNT: ART AND ENGINEERING AT LINCOLN CATHEDRAL IN THE THIRTEENTH CENTURY

This paper examines the collapse of the crossing tower at Lincoln Cathedral, an event that took place in the 1230s and one that has not been explored in detail before. The absence of previous studies is curious, given the architectural importance of the cathedral and the interest attached to structural failures. Although the circumstances that led to the collapse are far from clear, it is argued that a contributing factor was the lightweight pier design furnished by the master mason of St Hugh’s choir. The reconstruction of the crossing was carried out with considerable skill, and the process included the dismantling and subsequent reuse of original masonry. The implications of the collapse have more than local significance, for the events at Lincoln take us to the heart of medieval design, to the supposed empiricism of the architectural process and to the implied assumption that architects learnt from their mistakes. All too often they did not.

21. SOME SMALLER MOULDED SAMIAN FORMS FROM LA GRAUFESENQUE

A detailed examination of three of the less common moulded forms of samian, Déchelette 67, Hermet 9 and Knorr 78, along with associated shapes found at the production site of La Graufesenque, aims to define the forms more closely. It is intended to open the way for chronological study from site evidence and to supplement study of the decoration. It is based upon the premise that closer examination of shape as well as decoration can assist our study of the samian industry as a whole. In this case, such an examination reveals details of the manufacturing processes, some of which point to production by women or, more probably, children.