Selected Groups of Bones from Skeldergate and Walmgate. By T. P. O'Connor

The vast quantity of bricks needed to build Hampton Court Palace must have required a major brick-building effort. The suppliers are identified from documentary sources and, for Henry VIII's rebuilding, shown to have been both local workers and brickmakers brought in from their own localities—up to forty miles away. Subsequently, in the seventeenth century, bricks for the pre-Wren modifications and the Wren additions came mainly from Hammersmith and Twickenham. On the other hand, roofing tile suppliers were mainly local, notably from Kingston-upon-Thames, and always worked from their own kilns. Finally, the price of bricks supplied to Hampton Court Palace is shown to have increased about seven-times over a period of 150 years.     

The Embarrassment of Riches: Rationalising Faunal Assemblages from Large Urban Sites

Museums and other curatorial bodies face the significant challenge of storing large volumes of material recovered from decades of archaeological excavation, amongst which are very large collections of animal bones. As stores fill up, there is pressure to reconsider curation policies, to the point of refusing further deposition and disposal of existing material. Faced with this situation, York Archaeological Trust looked to develop and implement a strategy to reduce the curated research resource of animal bones, accepting that some excavated assemblages are of low research potential. Applying this strategy to animal bones from the Hungate excavation resulted in a substantial reduction in the volume of material regarded as of significant future research value. The strategy also generated a digital record, including images, that provides the justification for those retention decisions as well as a useful survey that facilitates the location of suitable material for further research. This pilot study shows that it is possible to rationalise what would otherwise be a substantial store of bone assemblages to give a smaller, better‐documented and more research‐relevant archive of material. Copyright © 2014 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.