Glastonbury Abbey: Archaeological Investigations 1904–79

Abstract

Netley Abbey began to attract visitors in the 18th century, of whom John Milner was amongst the first to leave an account of the ruins. Certain carvings he saw in the south transept led him to suppose that Richard Fox, bishop of Winchester (1501–28), had been a benefactor to the abbey church. Subsequent historians then followed Milner's supposition. This paper refutes Fox's patronage and reveals the true identity of the patron of Netley. It discusses the nature of the patron's gift to the abbey church and how his friendship with William Paulet, who was granted Netley after the Dissolution, preserved it. The article concludes by presenting details of some of the carved imagery from Netley that survives and other remains recorded in the 19th century which may have formed part of the final phase of building and ornamentation of the abbey church prior to its dissolution.     

Mr. George Thomas Clark

The Bordesley Abbey Project has widened its horizons as it has developed, linking the core excavation of the abbey church with archaeological fieldwork, both in the outer court and beyond the precinct boundary on the abbey's granges, and with architectural and documentary research. Exceptional preservation is the key to Bordesley's importance—the survival of its precinct as a complete set of earthworks and of the unusually deep and complex stratification, yielding data and artefacts which are both very rich and extensive, and very well stratified, within a finely divided chronology. This review is a preliminary attempt to integrate the different elements, and to highlight the potential of the data now and for the future.     

The making of a minor saint in Drogo of Saint‐Winnoc's Historia translationis s. Lewinnae

In 1058, the Flemish abbey of Saint‐Winnoc stole St Lewinna's relics from a minster in southern England. The community worked to establish her cult in Flanders. Although scholars have focused on the material gain Saint‐Winnoc probably hoped the cult would bring, this article argues that the development of the abbey's communal identity figured more prominently in its motives. The community saw Lewinna primarily as a means to help bolster its bid for independence from its mother house.     

Individual experience,collective remembrance and the politics of monastic reform in high medieval Flanders

This paper examines why Simon (d. 1148), the chronicler of the abbey of Saint‐Bertin in Flanders, designated all of the remaining evidence for sixty years of the communal past as ‘unmemorable’. An analysis of the chronicler's sources and context of writing reveals that his rejection of these memories was determined both by personal experience and the desire to advocate the legitimacy of the then current reforms. To these factors he subordinated the need to provide his fellow monks with a sense of historical continuity and the opportunity to present a troubled but significant part of the abbey's history.     

High justice in fifteenth-century Normandy: the prosecution of Sandrin Bourel

By the fifteenth century the seigneurial exercise of high justice had become less common because of the growth of royal jurisdiction. The ancient and wealthy Benedictine nunnery of Montivilliers retained the right to high justice only during the octave of the Holy Cross. In 1493 Sandrin Bourel, a young man who had twice before been imprisoned for theft, was apprehended in the act of stealing from a bourgeois of Montivilliers. As the crime occurred during the octave of the Holy Cross the abbey claimed jurisdiction. A special tribunal was created to prosecute him. After having been tortured, Bourel was found guilty and hanged. The documents generated by this event provide the basis for a case study of the application of criminal procedure at the close of the middle ages. The condemned man's confession, rich in biographical detail, gives us a profile of a petty thief and vagabond on the margin of society. The financial account of the abbey's receiver-general documents in detail the total cost of the prosecution of a single medieval criminal.     

Le prieuré de Saint-Zacharie en i403 d'après le Livre de raison de son prieur

Saint-Zacharie is a small township northeast of Marseille, some kilometers from the main Aix-en-Provence-Nice road. In the middle ages it possessed a priory of Benedictine nuns of St Zacharias which was a dependency of the abbey of St Victor at Marseille. This abbey appointed a monk with the title of prior to administer the nunnery at Saint-Zacharie, while the nuns themselves elected a prioress. The Livre de raison drawn up by Jean de Assana, prior in 1402, allows us to establish the convent's budget. It reveals the efforts undertaken to restore a situation which had been severely shaken by the troubles of the fourteenth century, and in particular to develop the domain, which furnished the greater part of the convent's revenues from the production of corn and wine. Only corn provided a cash surplus. The economy of the priory was thus fragile because insufficiently diversified. The house faced other problems too. The development of its spiritual life was no longer a prime aim: the abbey of St Victor on several occasions arbitrarily limited the number of its nuns. There were ninety-eight of them in 1322; twenty-four in 1402; five in 1461. What is more, they were reduced to an income which provided only a bare living so that the convent's possessions appeared to be being exploited mainly as a source of profit for the prior and for the financial benefit of the mother house of St Victor, the archbishop of Aix, and the papal court.     

Gregor Mendel: the genius of genetics

Abstract

'The Genius of Genetics', an exhibition celebrating the work of Gregor Mendel through science and art, opened in Brno on 21 May 2002 at the Abbey of St Thomas, where Mendel lived from 1843, becoming its Abbot in 1867. The exhibition is intended to be the first step in a larger programme to reestablish the abbey as a centre for life sciences, and its opening was accompanied by a major international conference on 'Genetics after the Genome'. This essay traces Mendel's intellectual development through his education in Vienna, his meteorological and astronomical studies, and his seminal experiments in plant breeding which at the time went unnoticed but fifty years later formed the foundations of classical genetics. The question is asked how it was that Mendel, an Augustinian friar in an out of the way abbey in Moravia, was able to make his momentous discovery. It is suggested that his was the most singular career of any of the great scientific innovators, and that his genius derived from his commitment to natural philosophy in the old sense, from his application of experimental techniques from the mathematical sciences to subject matter situated firmly in the natural sciences.     

Holocene Deposits of Saharan Rock Shelters: The Case of Takarkori and Other Sites from the Tadrart Acacus Mountains (Southwest Libya)

The excavation at Takarkori rock shelter is part of a long-term study of Holocene cultural dynamics in southwest Libya begun in the early 1990s. With a rich Holocene occupation, the area is one of the key spots for reconstruction of human occupation of the last 10,000 years. In this region, similar to the case in the rest of the Sahara, most of the data come from surface investigations at open-air sites, while excavated caves and rock shelters provide just a few. Although less exposed than open-air sites, Holocene archaeological deposits in Saharan caves and rock shelters are characterized by a fairly dynamic nature. Loose sediments, coupled with variability of human occupations and magnitude of natural agents, determine multiple alterations to the archaeological deposits in sheltered sites. In this paper, we present the nature and meaning of the archaeological deposits at Takarkori rock shelter, where a relatively large area has been recently excavated, showing a stratigraphic sequence extending from c. 9,000 to 4,200 BP, unevenly represented by several occupation pulses. In order to sharpen understanding of the development of human occupation at this site, specific procedures for the study and recording of the archaeological deposit have been developed, along with a program of extensive radiocarbon dating. Data from the Takarkori sequence ultimately will be integrated with available published stratigraphies from the Acacus Mountains, with the aim of reviewing the results from past excavations.     

Pre-Columbian Amerindian Lifeways at the Sabazan Site,Carriacou, West Indies

Recent excavations at the Ceramic Age village site of Sabazan on Carriacou, Grenada, indicate long-term occupation spanning AD 400 to 1400. One of the earliest settlements in the Grenadines Archipelago, Sabazan's chronology corroborates late Saladoid colonization of the region with the timing of major developments at this location supported by a robust chronology of 26 radiocarbon assays. Investigation of deep, stratified midden deposits yielded abundant ceramic, shell, and stone artifacts, faunal remains, and burial and domestic features. Zooarchaeological evidence indicates a heavy reliance on marine resources and a well-developed tuna (Scombridae, Thunnini) fishery. While data point to sustainable resource exploitation over a millennium, shifts in foraging strategies are evident, including declines in the fish catch and increasing reliance on large or easily acquired mollusks, particularly queen conch (Lobatus gigas) and nerites (Nerita spp.). These trends may be driven by the greater aridity and warmer sea surface temperatures of the Medieval Warm Period (ca AD 900–1300). Exotic artifacts and the remains of introduced mammals at Sabazan provide evidence for inter-island and continental interactions. Here, I synthesize these findings and their significance for reconstructing West Indian colonization, tracing exchange and interaction networks, and understanding human ecodynamics and long-term adaptation to small island ecosystems.     

Adaptation and foraging from the Terminal Pleistocene to the Early Holocene: Excavation at Bubog on Ilin Island,Philippines

Abstract

The recently discovered human remains from Callao Cave, northern Luzon, Philippines securely date the migration of hominins into the Philippines to ca. 70 kya (thousands of years ago). The direct route to reach Luzon from the Asian mainland is via Borneo, Palawan, through Mindoro and into Luzon. Our research focuses on Mindoro Island as a potential stepping stone to the main Philippine Archipelago. While Palawan and Luzon have produced evidence for early human occupation, no systematic research on the prehistory of Mindoro has been conducted until now. We report on recent archaeological investigations at the Bubog rockshelter sites on the small island of Ilin just off the coast of Mindoro. The excavations produced evidence of stratified sequences of human habitation at the two rockshelter sites in the form of dense shell middens that date to ca. 11 kya onwards. They provide direct evidence on how variability in landscape formation, sea levels, and landmass during the terminal Pleistocene and early Holocene influenced the behavior of early human populations. Numerous species of molluscs were recorded and provisional results indicate variations in the invertebrate faunas throughout the stratigraphic sequences, resulting from sea level rise and the establishment of coral reefs between Ilin and Mindoro at the end of the Pleistocene. Our results contribute substantially to our understanding of the processes of human island adaptation, complement ongoing research into Island Southeast Asia’s paleogeography, and enhance current knowledge of prehistoric subsistence strategies across the region.     

Study of the Impact of Urban Development on Surface Temperature Using Remote Sensing in Ho Chi Minh City,Southern Vietnam

Rapid urbanisation and industrialisation have resulted in sharp land cover changes. Urban change not only impacts on land cover but also on urban climate. Land surface and atmospheric modifications due to urbanisation generally lead to a modified thermal climate that is warmer than the surrounding, non-urbanised areas. In this research remote sensing technology was used to evaluate urban growth patterns and its thermal characteristics through mapping impervious surfaces and evaluating thermal infrared images. The case study was carried out in the northern part of Ho Chi Minh City, which has experienced accelerated urban development since the late 1980s. Landsat and Aster images were used to calculate variations in urban impervious surfaces from 1989 to 2006. Thermal bands were processed to obtain radiant surface temperatures for investigating the urban heat island effect associated with increasing impervious surfaces, both spatially and temporally. Impacts of urban development on surface temperature were shown by investigating the surface urban heat island effect intensity. The results show that the built-up area in the northern part of Ho Chi Minh City expanded by 6.5 times between 1989 and 2006. Urban development has altered the magnitude and pattern of the surface urban heat island, with the highest land surface temperature cores found in the industrial (greater than 45^oC) and urban areas (within 36^oC and 40^oC). In suburban and rural areas, where agricultural land still remains with full vegetation cover, the land surface temperature is usually lower. Using remote sensing, the impervious surface was extracted with overall accuracy and a Kappa coefficient for all three years greater than 96%, and the retrieved land surface temperatures with variations from in-situ measurements of less than 2^oC. The results presented here indicate that remote sensing can help to spatially monitor urban development and land surface temperature changes over the whole area and over a long period of time.     

New Insights into Mesolithic Human Diet in the Mediterranean from Stable Isotope Analysis: The Sites of Campu Stefanu and Torre d'Aquila,Corsica

Mesolithic human remains are rare in the archaeological record of the French Mediterranean. Only the island of Corsica has so far produced relatively well‐preserved burials, and recent archaeological excavations have brought to light new Mesolithic human remains. The site of Campu Stefanu , located in Sollacaro in the southeast of the island, contained a collective burial of seven to eight individuals in a previously unobserved funerary context. A re‐evaluation of collections in regional museums yielded the remains from another Mesolithic individual from the site of Torre d 'Aquila , excavated at Pietracorbara, in the northern part of the island, at the beginning of the 1990s. These two discoveries presented the rare opportunity to obtain new radiocarbon dates and paleodietary insights from this crucial time period using stable isotope analysis (δ¹³C, δ¹⁵N) on collagen. From Campu Stefanu, one individual had sufficient collagen preserved for radiocarbon dating, revealing that it is the oldest Mesolithic human known on the island, dated to 10216–9920 cal. BP. At Torre d'Aquila, radiocarbon dates indicate that the individual belonged to a younger Mesolithic phase than Campu Stefanu, dated to 9903–9596 cal. BP. δ¹³C and δ¹⁵N isotope ratios are similar between the Campu Stefanu and Torre d'Aquila individuals and indicate a diet dominated by the consumption of terrestrial animal protein and a lack of marine resources. These findings are in contrast with the previous results from two other Mesolithic individuals from Corsica from the sites of Araguina Sennola and Monte Leone , for which about 25–30% of the consumed proteins came from a marine diet. The dietary variability recorded in Corsica is consistent with results obtained from Mesolithic human remains of Sicily and the Iberian Peninsula. We can hypothesise, that despite the nomadic lifestyle, the distance to the sea played a major role in Mesolithic food choices in Corsica. Copyright © 2016 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

A Technical Note on the ‘Gloucester Candlestick’

Abstract

The Association is pleased to acknowledge the generous support of Manx National Heritage towards this publication.

The excavation of the only Cistercian abbey firmly established on the Isle of Man produced evidence for an east range of only three rooms, apparently dated to a single constructional period. After the Dissolution this range was gradually robbed and then the area was used as a farm-yard, receiving rubbish deposited from the neighbouring mansion. It was partly excavated in 1914 and turned into an aviary and later into a rose garden. The rere-dorter was not found nor was there any evidence of the main drain adjoining this range.     

Post-Roman crop production and processing: Archaeological evidence from Goldthorpe,South Yorkshire

The remains of a ditched field system dating from the late Iron Age to the early post-Roman period, and two associated corn drying ovens (dating to the 5th–6th centuries AD) were revealed during archaeological excavations at Goldthorpe, South Yorkshire. The site was excavated during 2012 and 2013, during which bulk environmental samples were taken in order to retrieve any surviving botanical remains from deposits associated with the corn drying ovens, and other features across the excavated area. Early post-Roman occupation is under-represented in the archaeological record, especially in northern England, as such human activity and subsistence during this period are currently not well understood. This paper combines evidence for the field system, the physical remains of the corn drying ovens and their associated botanical remains to further understand early post-Roman change and continuity in landscape use and crop production and processing practices.     

Fregatten Mynden: a 17th-century Danish Frigate Found in Northern Germany

The remains of a small 17th-century Danish frigate were investigated off the island of Rügen in Mecklenburg-Vorpommern, northern Germany. Through research in the Danish National Archives in Copenhagen it was possible to identify the ship. Using documentary and archaeological sources, the layout, equipment and appearance of one of the small and less prestigious warships of the 17th and early 18th century could be reconstructed. In addition, aspects of shipboard life will be illustrated.
© 2004 The Nautical Archaeology Society     

The Chronology of the Last Scandinavian Kings of York,AD 937–954

Abstract

The Cistercian Abbey of Holm Cultram was a twelfth-century royal foundation of Prince Henry, son of King David I when this part of northern England was under Scottish control. The abbey developed a successful network of benefactors spanning both sides of the Border. It was also effective in developing positive relationships with key ecclesiastical figures including Bishop Christian of Whithorn and bishops of Glasgow. The economic strength of the abbey was derived from wool, salt and fish production. In 1193, a daughter house named Grey Abbey was founded in Ulster. The benefits of the frontier location were cut short with the onset of the wars in the 1290s. Holm Cultram Abbey found itself on the path of the marching armies and had to provide supplies and lodgings. When the estates of the abbey and the precinct were attacked by the Scots on several occasions in the fourteenth century, the community turned to the English kings for compensation. On other occasions the abbots did not hesitate to pay ransom to prevent damages to the abbey. Not only the economic difficulties brought by the war, but also loss of contact with the mother house of Melrose and Scottish benefactors more generally, altered the character of Holm Cultram, which became a much more English institution when the cross-Border networks were cut off.