Digging an Etruscan House, Part Three: How Does it Affect You and Me?

So, the Casa Del Anfore has been excavated. The finds are many and varied; they have been cleaned, analysed and the best are in a museum in Scansano, Tuscany. The rest are in a converted school, lying in a darkened room. People have written up the site report for others to enjoy. But if you're reading this and you're not an archaeologist or someone who has little interest in the subject, the chances are the last three sentences are not going to convince you any more that you should paying more attention to the archaeology in your neighbourhood.

Herein lies my dilemma; the public must be told of these finds that archaeologists find (in some cases, by law), but is that audience going to listen, when other major things are happening that are considered more important or interesting, like the recent government shutdown in the USA? Here goes...

The exciting world of the Etruscans! 

Italy, c.2,500 years ago: imagine you are a high class Tuscan citizen. you own a house overlooking the sea, and your family has been in the area for many years (family was important to the Etruscans: tombs in Tarquinia attest to family lineage stretching over hundreds of years). They can probably trace their roots to Turkey (new genetic research shows that this is likely for many Etruscans, who are genetically distinct from modern Italians!), and your deceased are interred into grand underground tombs nearby (Tuscany is littered with Etruscan tombs; check out Vetulonia, Tarquinia, Marsiliana to name but a few places). Food was important to you: the countryside gives you food aplenty! You own Greek, Egyptian and Phoenician pottery, clothing, food and other products (all of these things have been found on Etruscan sites). You were highly likely to be literate (the Etruscans had their own language, that is distinct from Latin), regardless if you were a man or a woman, and likely to be practising a religion. You would have dined in grand style (there is so much literature on this!) Your lifestyle may have varied from being a merchant dealing in everything frmo slaves to wild animals, a farmer, a metal-smith, a tax-collector, a pottery-maker, a chariot-owner, a marble sculptor, an engineer, a soldier and so on (all of these job titles can be guessed at using the archaeology and written history of the Etruscans). Oh yes, and you would have had slaves to do your chores. A more Italian desription of the Etruscans can be found here (in English), but also here is a more comprehensive, but short academic approach to the Etruscans.

  

The sort of views you could have enjoyed as an Etruscan! (author's own)

So how does that relate to the Casa Del Anfore (see other blog posts below)? Well, what I've just described above could largely be applied to the Casa, and a lot of what we have found fits this description. Aside from the well, which is rare but not unheard of in Etruscan society, this Casa fits the description of your average high class family in Etruscan times. Ok, so it's biased towards the high-class society, but very little of the lower class society exists compared to the high-class.

Uncanny Similarities

What strikes you most about the Etruscans? A similarity between our lifestyle and theirs, perhaps? My point is that since the dawn of time, where there have been civilisations, there have been later civilisations trying to emulate them. The Romans loved the Etruscans; so much so that Emperors proceeded to take the Etruscan's statues to Rome! By trying to emulate them, and copying aspects of their culture, the Etruscans were nearly lost to history. This is something that the British empire had been doing for some time to a number of modern and ancient civilisations and cultures, nearly to the same extent as the Romans did! Arguably we did it on a grander scale, but at least we were more tolerant of the people whose lands we took.

A late Etruscan tomb (c.4th century BC i.e. after the abandonment of the Cassa Del Anfore), with the statue on top reclining, depicting the man who was buried in the tomb. It was deliberately designed to emphasise the character the person had; for example, if s/he was a political figure of good intentions, or if s/he was overweight! (author's own)

But what about the here and now? What about the government shutdown, for example? Did the Etruscans have a similar situation that we can learn from? Well, their form of government involved a series of city states, not unlike the Greek form of government. While modern democracy is much fairer than the Etruscan system, it too owes it's roots to these civilisations. Now this is speculating, but Etruscan city states would probably have run out of money too, and they would have needed to pay soldiers, administrators, maybe even engineers etc. with debts! There are very records that exist of Etruscans having to deal with political matters, but it seems probable that the situations that people find themselves in today had parallels in older civilisations too!

Conclusions

So the Etruscans affect you and me in one way because we have been doing like the Romans and acquiring (sometimes stealing) bits of culture from other civilisations. But also, because you can argue that we can trace our culture back to the Romans, and the Romans themselves can trace some of their culture to the Etruscans (see here as to the relationship between the Etruscans and the Romans), that means that culturally, we are descended from the Etruscans. you might even be related to the people who lived there! Of course, we are descended from other cultures, like the Mesopotamians, using the same logic, but here it is poignant, becasue the Etruscans were innovative, and were the first to use curved arches in Italy, for example (although this idea was taken from thre Greeks!).

References:

Lockar, C.A., 2011 (2nd edition), Societies, Networks, and Transistions, Vol.1: A Global History to 1500, Wadsworth, Boston.

 

First link: Sorre, L., last updated unknown, Castello Banfi, Montalcino, A Salute to the Etruscan Origins of Tuscan Cuisine, last accessed 05/10/2013

Second and third link: anon, 2007, last updated 2007, University of Notre Dame, Etruscans and Greeks in Pre-Roman Italy,8th-5th centuries BCE, http://ocw.nd.edu/classics/history-of-ancient-rome/lectures-1/etruscans-and-greeks-in-pre-roman-italy-8th-5th, last accessed 05/10/2013

Digging an Etruscan house, part two: photos!

Here are some photos of the excavations, taken from my digital camera, the Vivitar F128 (f=8.15mm):

The site near completion: this is the courtyard full of stones, facing roughly North East.

On the first day of the Macchiabuia dig, this is the exposed remains of one of the previously excavated tombs (excavated in the early 20th century).

The same tomb taken from a different angle, to give an idea of scale. Note the tripod in the background.

A harmless green whipsnake. However, scorpions and vipers were on site, as well as some other wierd and somewhat dangerous creatures!

My favourite find on site: an Etruscan door-hinge. It was found in the doorway of one of the rooms in the casa del anfore!

This Bronze arrow-shaped object was found next to the door-hinge, in the same context. Was the bronze aobject crushed by the collapsing door?

Recording a context- using the string to delimit the 2-dimensional area of the context, an accurate drawing is taken, and a vertical photograph for reference.

Some of the excavators taking new orders in the courtyard-remove the stones!

The pit I was stuck digging in for 3 weeks!

Some rather linear features inside the circular pit- why are they in here? Turns out that it was part of a deep well!

The last picture I took on the camera of the site :(. That tree created a lot of shade, but as you can probably see from the other photos, tree roots were a major problem throughout the Casa!

Digging an Etruscan house, part one!

Hi! It's been  a while, but I have arrived back in the UK from Italy, having spent the last 5 weeks in Tuscany on what can only be described as the best site I have ever worked on. I would like to firstly thank everyone who made this possible; Mark and Joanne at GRAMPUS heritage for advertising and paying for the opportunity (http://www.grampusheritage.co.uk/), Elena, Silvia, Duccio, Lorala and Alessandro from the Etruria Nova Onlus project (http://etrurianova.altervista.org/joomla/en/), the Corsini family for allowing the dig to happen on their land (they are one of the most powerful royal families in Italy!), La Speranza Agriturismo for letting us use their accomodation (www.agriturismolasperanza.it) and the other volunteers who were there on either the Casa del Anfore site or the Macchabuia site  (Jeremy, Flora, Shauni, Ele, Grace, Francesco, Karen, Sofina, Sujata, Liah, Lisa, Graeme and Skander) Also, thanks to Grace for providing some useful comments on site aobut some of the features the team found (you might recognise them here!). Read on...

Outline:

The Etruscans are well known in Italy for 3 things- importing Greek/Phoenician/Egyptian influence to Italy, a language that is not Indo-European (i.e. not related to any other language in Europe today) and tomb building on an unprecedented scale, in terms of quality and quantity. We're talking completely painted buildings built underground for one or two people, or for multiple occupants placed there (or interred) over a long period of time; essentially "houses of the dead". We know that the Etruscan families paid close attention to their family linages; later on in the 4th and 3rd centuries there are well documented accounts of high status Etruscan families marking on their stone coffins that they were descended from kings or other prominent members of society. Although these tombs are too early to be related to high-status families in this way, we may be seeing the emergence of this practice (albeit without any writing on any coffins).  Furthermore, unlike today where a huge forest has overgrown around the hillside of Marsiliana, the hills would have had virtually no tree cover at all, which may have been important for assessing the landscape in ancient times.

The casa site, which is near the top of one of the hills to the south of Marsiliana,  is believed to be an Etruscan site of the 6-5th century BC (like a Roman villa but smaller) (Humphrey, Kacorzyk, Pallechi and Santoro 2011), which, upon discovery a few years ago, contained an entire layer of amphora sherds across the whole casa (herein referred to as anfore). As a result, it is known as the Casa del Anfore (House of the Amphorae). Unoriginal as it may sound, the site itself is actually very unique, and it is the largest Etruscan period structure that has been found in the area. It would also have had a dominating view of the sea, since back in the day the plains below would have been much closer to the sea, although evidence suggests that the Etruscans were capable of reclaiming the land from the sea. Meanwhile, the landscape is dotted with smaller houses (often unexcavated) and tombs. The necropolis of Macchiabuia (the second site) is near to a multitude of other contemporary tombs of the 7th-5th century BC. It is a square room built just a few feet under the surface, which was filled with elaborate grave goods. One nearby tomb turned up 2 iron spits for roasting things!

The team this year mostly consisted of British students, who were there from the 25th August-28th September. Other participants were there for a shorter period of time from Germany, Norway and the USA. Both sites were excavated to a similar standard, with some variation in methodology; the Macchiabuia necropolis team had access to a total station, for example, while the Casa del Anfore site had to make do with string and known base points to work out the relative positions of contexts. The team also got to wash the finds from the sites, and identify what sort of pottery had been found in a series of workshops in the Etruria Nova headquarters.

Map 1: The location of the two sites, just a few kilometres from each other (Google Earth).

Previous Work:

 Prince Tommaso Corsini had previously excavated over 100 tombs in the area in 1908, as well as indin one of the earliest abecedarian tablets in Italy (ibid. 2011). The Etruria Nova project initially tried a number of non-destructive methods to identify more Etruscan settlement near Marsiliana, using aerial photography and field walking (in a forest). The aerial photography was something of an unmitigated disaster, since it failed to find the Casa del Anfore, which was found a few years later (Santoro 2013, pers. comm.). It was fortunate to be found, as it was next to a track that is used for heavy logging and agricultural machinery! Since 2009, the Casa del Anfore has been excavated, with the help of students from all around the world, as it is now an international field school. Meanwhile, a number of smaller houses and a large number of tombs have now been found, but the work has not yet been complete; new tombs are still being found in the area!

Casa del Anfore:

The structure, some 20 by 30 metres in length, was a one-story building, with  a courtyard in the centre, surrounded by at least 6 rooms on 3 sides. The floor was made up of clay, and it is highly likely that the walls were covered in clay too (the layers above the floor level were made up of large amounts of clay and silt) The main features within the casa that had been identified from previous seasons included a drain, with a amphora inside that, upon the use of chemical analysis, had potentially no function. This was all the more remarkable given that the vast majority of the amphorae that had been tested showed their use for fish and vegetable oils (a common combination that resulted in the increased longevity of the meat, hence you could transport the goods further); this leads to the technologically advanced idea that this one amphora was used for collecting rainwater. There was nothing special about the amphora itself, except for this one crucial chemical analysis, and it's position within the house to suggest this function. How wierd is that?

In addition, a large number of the rooms had been excavated, but there were still 3 to finish (one was partially started towards the end of the dig). Each one seemed to have a different function; room L, for example, had turned up a very fancy plate that would have been used for Etruscan banqueting. It had just been left there, possibly abandoned. Bucchero pottery was also fairly common across the site; it is a black colour, quite thin, and was often used in small bowls and the like. Krater pottery was also present, indicating a more localised storage usage. Seriously, go check out the size and shape of them (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Krater)! In addition to Kraters, other red-figure wares were also on site (these are Greek pots, from the 7th century BC). It is highly likely that this was a high-status family, or group of families, who lived here, with their dominant view of the coujntryside, facing the sea and with lots of varied pottery, both local and imported from Greece, Egypt and probably the Near East as well.

The house appears to have been abandoned over a short space of time, from the current evidence, with no sign of continued occupation after about the 5th-4th centuries BC. However, in the 18th century, a bandit's hut was set up over the site of the Casa ()

Photo 1: The Casa, taken from the west corner of the house. Rooms G and L are just off to the left of the photo.

Photo 2: A reconstruction of a probable Etruscan storage vessel. Small child for scale!

The main courtyard, it was theorised, would have a central basin, since the drain led to the centre of the courtyard, which was covered in stones. This was the aim of this year's team in the courtyard. Meanwhile, rooms G and L were going to be excavted to the floor level, but there was a lot of amphorae in room G (and a skylight); meanwhile room L had a strange pit-like feature between it and the courtyard.

Photo 3: Taken from within the Casa, this was the courtyard, with some of the stones removed. 

So the results? Well, the courtyard team found a LOT of stones, but didn't quite make it to the level of the theorised basin (effectively the ground level). A shame, but it is likely that if it was there, it will be found next year. Room G, meanwhile, just kept turning up more and more pottery as they kept digging! They also got a lot fo cup fragments, which was unusual. Between rooms G and L, some dispute arose as to whose room got to claim the iron door hinge and associated bronze arrow-shaped object as their own (it was right in the middle fo the doorway!). Finally, the pit in room L looked like one large post hole, until a significant amount of moisture was found underneath a layer of ordered tiles; this looks likely to be a deep square-shaped well! I was so very excited when I was told this; I had been working on that pit for 3 weeks straight! But, why would you have both a well and a water drainage system? Maybe they were in use at diffeent times; it is a question that has not been fully answered yet! Incidentally, the majority of the pottery we excavated dates from  around the 6th-5th centuries BC. To put that into perspective, Rome was a small town at best, and the Iron Age Brits were still throwing metal objects into rivers!

Photo 4: One of the team carefully excavating broken pieces of Etruscan cup from room G with a fine brush.

Photo 5: The well! A lot of the tiles had been taken out by this stage, but you can see some of them, and the roughly square shape of the infill.


Necropolis of Macchiabuia:

Meanwhile, the necropolis of Macchiabuia, several kilometres away, was also being excavated. The term necropolis, in this case, was being used to describe a multitude of burials; they are dotted all around this area of land! Often dating to around the 7th century BC (i.e. either contemporary or before the use of the house).
Their shaped was relatively consistent: an underground square room that often had no entrance to it, but stuffed with material goods as mentioned above. In one tomb nearby, there was a juvenile female burial with 3 "groups" of pottery usage found within the tomb: "la dispensa" (wine and grain residues found within these pots), "l'area privata" (wool making products, glass spindle, and a spit hook (don't ask me how a spit hook is used in the wool manufacturing process!)) and "l'area focolare" (an area containing a small stone circle, that has been tenaciously interpreted as a fireplace). Combine these elements together, and these would not look out of place in the living world of the Etruscans. Hence, these tombs are essentially literal "houses of the dead". Other examples of these square tombs with elaborate domestic items have been found all across Northern Italy and Campania from this period, although some rose above the ground, such as at Vetulonia (http://www.mysteriousetruscans.com/vetluna.html).  Arguably the most impressive tombs were at Tarquinia (although Vetulonia would disput this!), where some 6,000 tombs have been discovered stretching over the entirety of the Etruscan period (also, some of these tombs have beautifully painted walls, which is unheard of anywhere else in Etruscan tombs) (UNESCO)!

Photo 6: One of the tombs from the surrounding area.

Unfortunately, I didn't get to dig on the Macchiabuia site, but from the team I heard that plent yof grave goods were found, as well as cremated remains within one of the tombs, which is extremely promising, because it could be potentially be dated with radiocarbon!

Photo 7: One of the tombs (unexcavated) on the site of the Macchiabuia necropolis. How far could it stretch underground?

Post-Excavation

In preivous years, the Casa del Anfore has been made into a virtual model in a Geographical Information System, which has enhanced our understanding of the structure and of the surrounding area, as well as better explaining to the public about what the site would have looked like.This year's work at the Casa will also be added to the virtual reconstruction (correct at time of writing). All the finds will be assessed, and the best ones may well end up in a museum in Scansano, where a dedicated exhibit has been built to explain the area's Etruscan arcdhaeology and heritage in more detail.

Summary:

So in summary, the dig was amazing for the sheer quantity and variety of finds that were on site. From Greek wares to wells to cremated remains that could potentially be human, we have a lot of Etruscan activity around Marsiliana. Next year, more excavations are planned for both the Casa and potentially for some more of the tombs in the area. The relationship between the well and the rainwater pottery needs to be answered, but crucially, in an area where rainfall has always been quite low, we now have the evidence to show that long term settlement would have been possible, without relying on climate patterns that have so often been the ruin of other civilisations. The question I want to ask is why did the occupants of this house just simply abandon this property? Did a combination of local weather patterns work against the occupants? Disease? Were economic or social forces at work against them? Or did the occupants simply find a new opportunity elsewhere, that involved suddenly abandoning everything they had to set up a new life elsewhere? Perhaps we will never know!

Meanwhile, the significance afforded to the Etruscan dead has been emphasised here, with the location of the domestic areas not far from the places of the dead, although their spaces have been demarcated very clearly. For them, death appears to have been another step towards the afterlife, much like some other contemporary societies (like the Egyptians and their pyramid building for their pharoahs of the Old Kingdom), which was regarded quite differently than it is today.

References:

Humphrey, N, Kacorzyk, J, Pallechi, S and Santoro, E., 2011, Life and Death of an Etruscan Settlement, Etruria Nova Onlus, Italy

The Mysterious Etruscans, Vetluna (Roman Vetulonia), http://www.mysteriousetruscans.com/vetluna.html, last accessed 01/10/2013, last updated 02/05/2009.

Santoro, E., September 2013, personal communication to some members of the team concerning the failure of the aerial photography to find the Casa del Anfore(!).

Wikipedia, Krater, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Krater, last accessed 01/10/2013, last updated 23/09/2013.

UNESCO, last accessed 01/10/2013, Etruscan Necropolises of Cerveteri and Tarquinia, http://whc.unesco.org/en/list/1158, last updated 

Appendix:

All photographs were taken from my Vivitar F128. All rights reserve by the author.

Unofficial Barby Hill update (week 3)

This week's excavations have fundamentally altered our understanding of Barby village's history as we know it. You have been warned.

To recap from the last few weeks, we have found very little of relevance; a modern sheep tooth, and a couple of bits of iron age pottery that came from an unsecured context. So this week, we extended the trenches northwards and southwards, and taken them down to an average depth of about 70cm, removing all the modern spoil. While our finds from last week could be counted on one hand, this week's iron age finds alone far exceeded our expectations! And we also have some lovely features that are contemporary with a small to medium-sized iron age village.

So, the finds. The vast majority of our finds looked like this:

(author's own)

Whil you could be forgiven for thinking that htese are just pieces of mud placed on a plastic sheet, I can assure you that a lot of these pieces (or pottery sherds, to use the correct terminology) are mid-late Iron Age in date, and are common to iron age settlements in Britain. Some of them are actually in a distinctive rim shape (see below), so it cannot be a naturally-occuring stone fragment. Their black appearance may be due to the use of plant material as a tempering agent i.e. during the process of firing these pots, plants were wrapped around the pot to give it some structure, so it wouldn't fall apart! This leads to charcoal being found in lumps inside the pot (known as inclusions-see next sentecne), but sometimes also contributes to the black colour of the pot. Some of these pots contain "inclusions" or small additions, like small pieces of stone, which can tell us the sort of geological area that these pots were made in, or what was added to the clay before firing. In this case, they are likely to be materials that came from the local area. In addition, as you can see, there is more than just black pieces of pottery, there is some more reddish-coloured pieces, giving us a more varied picture of the pots that were used during this time. Often the pots would be used for all manner of things, including cooking and storage. However, the excavation has not yielded any other Iron Age finds... yet (except for charcoal)!

 This particular example has a nice rim to it, indicating part of the shape of the pot. This will be important for later analysis to tell us what these pots were used for! (author's own)

But what has come out of the ground unexpectedly are two features, which can be related to building activity and a possible working surface! The former is known as a post-hole (see below): this feature would have contained a wooden post (hence the term post-hole), that coulde have been used as part of a fence, or a house, or a granary, and so on . We need more post holes to prove that it being used for one of these structures. The hole here contained some charcoal in a secure context, i.e. it has not been disturbed since it was sealed. This proves that a wooden object was placed within the structure at some point, either burnt during it's last days, or a small wooden object was thrown into the hole before it was sealed; we can't tell yet.
The locally made pots were almost certainly made within the household, probably by male, female and juvenile members of the family. Hence, this was a cottage industry, which was fairly common, not dissimilar to pre-industrial revolution styles of making many household goods. The question is now can we find something more exotic, to show that this site was known to outsiders of this community? We believe that a major prehistoric road ran near the settlement, on a NW-SE trajectory, so we may find evidence of say metalworking, or maybe even artefacts created using materials from the coast!

Tis post hole is about 25cm wide and 12-14cm in radius. This should help us to reconstruct what sort of iron age building was being used here!

The working suface I mentioned is very peculiar, because it is a hard layer that contains a smattering of small stones, that appear to have been cracked in half. Why would you crack your stones in half? If they were the wastage from the pottery process, then we would expect to see burn-marks on the stones. But we don't. Are these the remanats, then, of an early trackway, or a courtyard? More importantly, the pottery fragments have been coming from this layer of softer material, but also right on the boundary of the context of these suspected features (both the post-hole and the working surface)! This almost definitely shows that these features are Iron Age in date, given that thay have been undisturbed for over 2,000 years!

While not very clear, there is a harder surface containing stones in the centre of this picture, while the scale is on a softer piece of ground.

Why is this so groundbreaking? Well, all the previous focus on Barby's settlement history had been on the medieval, Viking and Saxon periods, with Barby's modern origins probably coming from the Saxon period. This has been because of a biased use of historical evidence. Most of the surviving archaeology around the village is medieval or post-medieval in date (mostly ridge and furrow, and some outlines of a house and a probable manor house, as well as the church, which is over 1,000 years old!), which gives a misleading impression of Barby's origins.

Before this excavation, no one had suspected that Iron Age people had settled here; even the project director was somewhat uncertain! But now, with this evidence of definite activity, we can trace Barby's (pre)history back into possibly the middle Iron Age, and almost certainly into the late iron age (i.e. some 2,200 years ago, or even 2,500 years ago); this would extend the village's history by almost 1,000 years from the Saxon origins of the current village! Thinking ahead now, we can ask questions like why did they settle on this flat piece of land overlooking the west midlands? How can we relate this settlement to the more modern village of today? If so, why did the village move eastwards (some 750 metres to be precise) to it's current location during the Dark Ages (i.e. the Anglo-Saxon and Viking periods)? Given that Barby's name has been researched already, do we have to reassess it i.e. does Barby's name come from Viking (Barby roughly translates to "hill-top settlement"), Anglo-Saxon (Barby roughly translates as "barley", indicating it's proable main commodity, apparently) or even from Celtic origins (no suggestions yet)? Just how large was this settlement? And if it was a significant site, what was it's influence, compared to other local sites, like Borough Hill (a defended iron age site, which could be contemporary in date) in Daventry, just a few miles to the south-east?

Unfortunately this is the end of the unofficial diary, since I will be off to Italy on the Etruria Nova- run excavations in Tuscany! I will have lots of lovely photos to put on this blog...

Any comments/opinions are very much appreciated for this post!

Unofficial Barby Hill update (week 2) and Digging For Shakespeare highlights!

So this week I have been on two excavations (and done 3 days part time work!); Barby Hill and New Place, Stratford-upon-Avon (the Digging for Shakespeare project). More on that in a second, but first:

Barby Hill, end of week 2:

The good news? We've found archaeology! It started with a sheep tooth on wednesday morning, and then some likely Iron Age pottery sherds! In addition, a probable partial sheep jawbone was also found, all in the same context( i.e. the same layer/ time period of deposition). Could this be an Iron Age ditch, full of rubbish that, in the next few days, will reveal the lifestyles of these ancient people?   The bad news is that these were found with a Victorian floor tile. Oh dear... this means that either the pottery and sheep tooth are relatively recent, or that the context we have found is not an archaeological feature; or worse, if it is a feature, it has been heavily disturbed, and probably not by the reservior's construction. The geophysics wants us to believe that a feature is somewhere along our trench. There will be some pictures of the trench in the next update!!

Digging For Shakespeare:

This has been without doubt one of my favourite digs I have ever been on, not least because this is the 4th year that I have been here! Although I am not actually excavating this year, I am still helping out with other tasks, such as backfilling, washing finds, and generally explaining the site to tourists. in previous years volunteers have been participating in the excavation of the building.

One of the trenches this year; an 18th century wall that may have been part of Shakespeare's house! (author's own)

So why did they decide to excavate here in the first place? Well, New Place was Shakespeare's largest house in Stratford; he purchased it once he became rich enough to buy it! Shakespeare is also reputed to have written some of his later works like the Tempest, and he may also have died here (he's buried in a nearby church). However, New Place passed onto various families after his daughter's death in the 17th century, and in the 18th century it was initially rebuilt, then a Yorkshire vicar burned it down because he refused to pay full tax on a property he only lived in for half the time! He also tried to cut down the mulberry tree that Shakespeare planted in the garden behind the house. So now the house is nothing more than just a few foundation walls and a lot of burnt material.

The site of one of the older trenches from last year's dig. (author's own)

Or so we thought it was! In the 19th century the local antiquarian Halliwell Phillipps spent 2 years excavating, nearly 150 years before the most rrecent excavations (Mitchell 2010). Unfortunately he didn't concentrate on anything more than the walls themselves; a lot of perfectly good artefacts were simply thrown back into the ground! For more information on the property, including finds from the excavation from 2010-2012, click here and here.

The family archaeology tent, in the gardens. There's an old theatre buried under this garden!! (author's own)

But back to this year, and this excavation has been scheduled for only 2 weeks, rather than 6 months! Therefore, these trenches have been targeting walls that may have a particular significance, in potentially redefining the history of the house. This may sound rediculous; yes, there are historical sources, and yes, there are old plans of the house, so why are we chasing walls that have already been drawn? The problem with these older plans is that they often have an asthetic bias to them, or in layman's term, people wanted to draw for the sake of drawing, rather than for planning applications. So they might have deliberately missed a wall, just because it was obscured by another feature. Even the more recent plans from the 18th and 19th centuries are, while more objective, subject to human error. So a new plan would not go amiss for the final report (due for 2016).Furthermore, the team have found that the New Place wall does not run parallel to the house next door. What does this mean for the house? We know that the house has medieval origins, but not it's relationship to other houses i.e. which houses were built first? 

The very tree that Shakespeare planted, and nearly chopped down by an angry vicar! (author's own)

One of the surprises of the Digging for Shakespeare excavation has to be the Iron Age pits that were found last year! These were completely unexpected, and confirmed suspicions that the Romans were not the first settlers of Stratford-upon-Avon. We are unfortunately unlikely to find any more with the time we have left, but nonetheless they have extended the lifespan of New Place into prehistory. We hope that the full report of the excavations will come out in a few years time.

Nash's house, next door to New Place. Would they have been touching in the old days? We don't really know for sure... (Author's own)

What makes the dig so special is the volunteers who give up their time; people from all over Warwickshire and beyond! They have become really enthusiastic about it, and many of them, like me, have given up their tim over the space of 4 years to come and see this site evolve, and allow us to find new discoveries about Shakespeare's house, such as the Iron Age pits. I think this is also an example that other excavations can follow, if they think that using volunteers is the way forward. The York Archaeological Trust, incidentally, have been using volunteers sucessfully for over 40 years in excavations across York!!

These two sites show just how diverse the archaeology is underneath our feet, and how the general public can get involved!

P.S. on an unrelated note, read this opinion on the fracking situation in Britain! http://losttimelady-geologist.blogspot.co.uk/2013/08/an-open-letter-to-frack-off-community.html

References:

Mitchell, W., 2010, "Dig for Shakespeare", New Place, Stratford-on-Avon, Warwickshire: Archaeological Excavation 2010,  Birmingham Archaeology for the Shakespeare Birthplace Trust, Birmingham

Links:
link 1:http://www.shakespeare.org.uk/visit-the-houses/nashs-house-amp-new-place.html
link 2: http://bloggingshakespeare.com/digging-the-dirt-on-shakespeare

Unofficial update on barby hill excavation: end of week 1

A quick update on the Barby Hill excavation:

So far the going has been slow, and, alas, nothing of interest has been found. Having said that, we only managed one day out on site and we have only just reached what we believe to be the original surface of the soil from 20 years ago, since it was buried by a load of spoil from the construction of a nearby reservoir! That turned out to be a depth of approximately half a metre. Hopefully in the next few days we will get some features, and more importantly, some finds, by digging just a little further under the surface!

So why did we choose this particular area to excavate, rather than take on a more promising piece of archaeology from the survey, like a roundhouse which was picked up in the survey results? Well, as mentioned in my previous update (which can be found here) the ground in the area has been used for livestock (mainly cows). Last winter was very bad; one guy saw the cows go up to their bellies in mud because there was so much rain and snow!! Because cows hooves are very strong and each one has to share the weight of half a ton of very rare meat, this is going to damage the archaeology underneath if it can go down a certain distance. so in normal circumstances, we would dig a more important feature. But we fear that the chance has already gone, because we believe the archaeology is very close to the surfvace. Furthermore, the patch that we are excavating is right next to a reservior, that is due to be expanded next year, onto the patch of land that we are excavating on. In Britain, we call the work that we are doing "rescue archaeology" because we are in a race against time to excavate what is there before it is irreversibly destroyed!

So what do we expect to find? Well, a survey from a little while back done by Cotswold Archaeology produced a survey which has produced a possible Iron Age ditch just under our excavtion, part of a (proably contemporary) complex of ditches and roundhouses (a picture of which is available here). What the picture doesn't show you is that there is another circular feature near to the Cotswold Archaeology survey, close to where we are excavating! So we could hit evidence for Iron Age settlement very soon...

Furthermore, the BHAP have undertaken some field walking and discovered a roman coin on a slope, within this "complex". Could this be a village that existed during the roman period? I'm yet to be convinced, but the site manager is more optimistic.

On a more practical note a small tent has been erected for the use of the archaeologists, so now they have some shelter for when it rains!

Stay tuned for next week's site update, which will hopefully contain more than just conjecture...

links (that don't redirect to my blog):

Hatton, May 2012, Archaeology at Barby Hill: part 3, self-published

Barby Hill excavation: introduction and how to get involved!

For the next few weeks, I will be helping to excavate a Late Iron Age (c. just before and after the Romans arrived) site at Barby Hill in Northamptonshire before I go out to excavate in Italy! You can also get involved  vat Barby Hill too, with details of how to get involved below.

Barby Hill is a small protruding hill that sits just to the west of Barby village, rising to some 50m high and covers a plateau of several hundred acres. It is technically part of the Northampton Uplands (which runs southwest-northeast), and overlooks the Vale of Warwick to the west, for the best part of at least 10 miles. On a clear day you can see Coventry, some 15 miles away. Rugby lies just a few miles northwest of Barby, sitting on it's own hill. The river avon flows through Rugby before going through the vale. Barby Hill is used for mixed agriculture by a few farms. The 18th-19th centuries had the biggest impact- the Grand Union canal was built (and modified), next to the hill. The Great Central railway also used to run alongside the Grand Union canal before being dismantled.

The archaeological record for Barby Hill is not great. Previous historical work by Gren Hatton (who organised the excavation) has shown that Barby hill used to have a large forest on it which was cut down in the post-medieval period, probably to make way for the profitable sheep industry, which has been the mainstay of the hill's local economy. Cotswold Archaeology surveyed and excavated part of the hill before a reservoir was put in, which hinted at some Late Iron Age works, but it wasn't very spectacular; one possible building (a roundhouse, to use the correct terminology, along with some pottery). More information about previous historical and survey work on Barby can be found here and here (thanks to Gren Hatton). 

So will this new site be spectacular? It's near to the previous excavation, so it might just give the same results. But this time, the Barby Hill Archaeology Project (BHAP) group have been busy fieldwalking and geophysically surveying the hill. This has uncovered a previously unsuspected Iron Age complex, what you and I might call a village, consisting of roundhouses and field systems on a hitherto unknown scale! Who knows what the inhabitants of this village were making, trading or sacrificing into the ground. This village existed all the way along the side of the hill and looks to have extended into Onley. The main problem now is the preservation of the site. Poor weather, combined with agricultural practices, may well be destroying the site. In addition, there are plans for the reservior on top of Barby Hill to be expanded, which will remove any trace of archaeololgy below it. But a small area between the farmland and the reservior, that is due to be built on, will be excavated this month, and a small team of local volunteers (including me!) and representatives from Northamptonshire Archaeology will be excavating a small strip of undisturbed land before it becomes a concrete reservior.

If you are interested in getting involved in some excavating or helping out in any way, please contact me asap at aligalt@chess.com, or 07788605846! No previous excavating experience required. Unfortunately you must be 18 or over to get involved, but I can give you more information on other archaeology excavations if you are under 18.

So stay tuned for this site diary!

My thanks must got to Barby Hill Archaeological Project and the Community Landscape and Archaeology Survey Project for their help in funding this excavation and providing the opportunity to participate, in particular Gren Hatton for all the hard work he has put inot getting this excavation going!

Links:

Hatton, G., July 2011, Archaeology at Barby Hill: Part 1, iself published

Hatton, G., November 2011, Archaeology at Barby Hill: Part 2, self published

Hatton, G., May 2012, Archaeology at Barby Hill: Part 3, self-published