TORCS IN EARLY HISTORIC SCOTLAND

Summary Torcs are a prominent element in the Gododdin poem from Early Historic Scotland. This is intriguing as the archaeological evidence for torcs is much earlier. Examination of references to torcs in the poem shows that they were important status symbols worn by the entire war band. Archaeological evidence shows that gold torcs were worn in this area during the Iron Age, and in the early Roman period torcs occur on both native and Roman military sites. Some examples on Roman sites seem to be linked to the ala Petriana, an elite cavalry unit. As the poem is concerned with another elite cavalry group whose ancestors interacted with the ala Petriana the poetic prominence of torcs was probably influenced by this. Sculptural and hoard evidence confirms the use of torcs in Early Historic Scotland and reinforces both the idea of Roman influence and the link with cavalry.     

Recent Excavations in the Keep of Farnham Castle,Surrey

Abstract

Several alternative schemes for the dating if Pictish relief sculpture have been advanced during the last century. Representations if artifacts which can be dated archaeologically, decorative devices associated with the Viking Period and details if animal ornament are used to provide new date-ranges for some stones usually dated earlier. The early dating often advanced for some low-relief sculptures is accordingly questioned, and a tentative scheme for the dating if Pictish relief sculpture proposed.     

试论古代铜镜镜面凸起的成因及其相关问题

通过对古代青铜镜的复制研究发现,古代铜镜镜面凸起的原因,是与镜背的镜钮、浮雕及镜缘等的大小及厚度有关。战国镜的镜钮既小又薄,其镜缘都是横截面较小的镜缘,可直接磨成平面,不致出现铸造缺陷。东汉至六朝之间,其镜钮都较大,为使磨制出的镜面没有铸造缺陷,须将镜面中心少磨削、外围多磨削。这样磨削加工的结果,就形成了镜面凸起。     

The Monumental Cemeteries of Northern Pictland

THE EMERGENCE OF FORMAL CEMETERIES is one of the most significant transformations in the landscapes of 1st millennium ad Scotland. In eastern and northern Scotland, in the lands of the Picts, square and circular burial monuments were constructed to commemorate a small proportion of the population — perhaps a newly emerging elite in the post-Roman centuries. This paper presents the results of a project that has consolidated and reviewed the evidence for monumental cemeteries of the northern Picts from Aberdeenshire to Inverness-shire, transcribing the aerial evidence of many sites for the first time. In addition, the landscape location of the cemeteries is assessed, along with their relation to Pictish symbol stones, fortified sites and settlement landscapes of the 1st millennium ad. Two particular elements of the burial architecture of northern Pictland are highlighted — barrow enlargement, and the linking of barrows through the sharing of barrow/cairn ditches. Both of these practices are suggested here to be implicated in the creation of genealogies of the living and the dead during an important transitional period in northern Europe when hereditary aristocracies became more prominent.     

The Legacy of Nineteenth-century Replicas for Object Cultural Biographies: Lessons in Duplication from 1830s Fife

The St Andrews Sarcophagus and Norrie's Law hoard are two of the most important surviving Pictish relics from early medieval Scotland. The entanglement of their later biographies is also of international significance in its own right. Soon after discovery in nineteenth-century Fife, both sets of objects were subject, in 1839, to an exceptionally precocious, documented programme of replication through the enlightened auspices of an under-appreciated antiquarian, George Buist. This well-evidenced case study highlights how and why replicas, things that are widely prevalent in Europe and beyond, are a ‘thick’ and relatively unexplored seam of archaeological material culture that we ignore at our peril. These particular replications also offer new insights into the vision, intellectual and practical energies of early antiquarian societies, and their web of connections across Britain and Ireland.     

A Powerful Place of Pictland: Interdisciplinary Perspectives on a Power Centre of the 4th to 6th Centuries ad

OUR UNDERSTANDING of the nature of late and post-Roman central places of northern Britain has been hindered by the lack of historical sources and the limited scale of archaeological investigation. New work at Rhynie, Aberdeenshire, Scotland (NJ 49749 26345), has begun to redress this through extensive excavation and landscape survey. This has revealed a Pictish central place of the 4th to 6th centuries ad that has European connections through material culture, iconography and site character. In addition to reviewing the place-name and historical context, this article outlines preliminary reflections on five seasons of excavation and survey in the Rhynie landscape. The article also provides a detailed consideration of chronology, including radiocarbon dating and Bayesian statistical analysis. The results reveal the multi-faceted nature of a major, non-hillfort elite complex of Pictland that comprised a high-status residence with cult dimensions, a major centre for production and exchange, and a contemporary cemetery. A series of sculptured stones stood in association with the settlement and cemetery and the iconography of the stones, along with the wider archaeological evidence, provides a rich dataset for a renewed consideration of the central places of early medieval northern Britain with broader implications for the nature of power and rulership in late and post-Roman Europe.     

Fur-bearing species and Scottish islands

Analysis of a database comprising archaeological records of fur-bearing species in Scotland has highlighted the presence of foxes, badgers and other mustelids in areas outside their modern-day geographic range. Of particular interest is the apparent presence of foxes on Orkney for a number of centuries, from perhaps the last few centuries BC to the mid to late first millennium AD, pine marten on Orkney in the Neolithic, and badgers on the Outer Hebrides in the Early Bronze Age and 6–7th centuries AD. While zooarchaeological analysis of the data suggests the evidence from the Outer Hebrides is indicative of imported products of fur-bearing species, such as skins or ‘trophies’, the evidence from Orkney suggests populations of fur-bearing species may have been purposefully introduced by humans. This raises interesting questions regarding human perception and use of the different species in prehistoric North Atlantic Scotland.     

THE DOUBLE-AXE: A CONTEXTUAL APPROACH TO THE UNDERSTANDING OF A CRETAN SYMBOL IN THE NEOPALATIAL PERIOD

The Double-Axe has always been considered as one of the most important religious symbols in Minoan Crete. This paper reassesses the significance of the Double-Axe and puts forward a new interpretation for it. It recognizes the great potential for change in symbolic meanings during the Bronze Age and seeks to understand the Double-Axe in as narrow a period as is realistically possible by filtering out evidence from other periods. Central to the argument is the principle that the meaning of symbols is contextually dependent. It builds, therefore, a new interpretation of the Double-Axe on the basis of as wide a range of contextual associations as possible, both within iconographic sources and in the wider material record. From these contextual associations, it suggests that in the Neopalatial period the Double-Axe was a symbol primarily associated with a social group which exercised power in the economic, military and religious realms and that it became a solely religious symbol only later.     

Behind the Romanesque Frieze at Lincoln Cathedral

The purpose of this short article is to put on record the archaeological observations made between 1990 and 2002 during the decade of stonework conservation on the northern run of the frieze panels on the west front of Lincoln Cathedral. It is not concerned with the frieze sculpture itself but with its stones and the spaces behind the stones. Equally, this article is not an assessment of the sculpture and its dating but is an archaeological investigation which potentially has wider implications for the sequence of construction and carving of the Romanesque frieze now visible at Lincoln.     

巴蜀符号的变迁及其性质分析

巴蜀符号主要发现在东周时期巴蜀青铜兵器、青铜工具和青铜印章上面。依据不同载体,分析了巴蜀符号的特征与演变。不同功能的器物上的巴蜀符号类型差异明显,当时的人们在使用这些符号的时候是有明确的区分,说明它们的性质、功能应该有所区别。青铜兵器上巴蜀符号可能与古蜀的古老传说和信仰密切相关,当时的人们相信其具有神奇的力量,能够增强兵器的神奇威力。印章上的符号可能象征吉祥的喻意,活人佩戴有护身符的性质,随葬于墓中有护佑死者的作用。青铜工具上的符号最大可能是代表所有者或生产者标识性徽记。     

角王巨虚铭文镜及其铸制时期

遗留至今的汉代铜镜中,极少带有“角王巨虚”铭文。目前笔者搜集到6面带有这种铭文的铜镜资料。根据孔祥星、刘一曼两位先生在《中国古代铜镜》中提出的分类原则,这六面“角王巨虚”铭文镜应分属三种类型,即：四乳禽兽纹镜类、多乳禽兽纹镜类和规矩纹镜类。其中规矩纹镜类中又可细分为四神规矩镜和四神间隔规矩镜这两种不同的镜式。     

Methodological problems in the analysis of fossil non-artifactual wood assemblages from archaeological sites

The analysis of fossil wood fragments is often undertaken in relation to the archaeological excavation of a site. However, such analysis does not yet appear to have the strong methodological foundation that the investigation of many other classes of palaeoenvironmental evidence (e.g. seeds and pollen) have. Consequently, it is difficult to evaluate the value of fossil wood analysis at an archaeological site. Using data regarding non-artifactual wood assemblages at one site in southern Scotland, the relative merits of possible analysis are described and discussed. The results from such analyses tend to fall into two broad groups: (I) those of relatively high reliability, and (2) those of relatively low reliability. The results in the former group are often based on moderately secure methodology and tend to provide relatively non-interpretative information (e.g. species lists). On the other hand, those in the latter group are more often based on insecure interpretive methodology and provide relatively more stimulating information, such as evidence for prehistoric woodland management. There are many reasons for this situation, and these are discussed. In conclusion, it is argued that to increase the reliability of results in the second group (in particular), a full understanding of the taphonomy of non-artifactual fossil wood assemblages is needed, and that once this is available attention can then be paid, as elsewhere in environmental archaeology, to the problems of providing statistically valid samples for analysis.     

Newfoundlanders in a Highland Forest During WWII

Abstract

A programme of historical research and archaeological walkover survey, topographic survey and trial trenching was undertaken within Strathmashie Forest, Highland, Scotland by Glasgow University Archaeological Research Division (GUARD) and Laggan Heritage during 2005. The project investigated the remains of the Newfoundland Overseas Forestry Unit (NOFU) who operated within Strathmashie Forest during WWII and comprised an entirely civilian workforce run in a military manner. The fieldwork uncovered and recorded a variety of structures and artefacts relating to the lives and work of the Newfoundlanders within the forest. This was complimented by research into the NOFU activities in Scotland as a whole which, combined with the archaeological evidence present at Strathmashie, gave a valuable insight into an essential, but relatively unknown, contribution to the overall war effort.     

Warriors and blacksmiths: Mediating ethnicity in East African spears

Ethnoarchaeology offers some ability to transform contemporary forms of social constitution into a method for interpreting prehistoric social patterns and for understanding the coevolution of symbolic and utilitarian technologies. In north-central Kenya, one social caste of Lokop pastoralist actors (warriors) interacts with another (blacksmiths) to build a technology for socially constituting gender and social age. Three aspects of this process can help to direct analogous archaeological research in prehistoric contexts. First, this case reiterates that symbols for and symbolic acts of gender and social age continually help actors to constitute or negotiate their places within varied social fields. It is clear, however, that the connection between social prestige—essentially the goal of Lokop personal adornment—and real economic or political power is not necessarily direct. For Lokop herders, foreign traits of spear morphology are the stylistic raw material for constituting internally defined social fields. Ethmic distinctions are more pasively constituted, almost as an epiphenomenon. Second, the constituative significance of material symbols may be grasped without appealing to or understanding the cultural meaning of forms (in an emic sense) from only the archaeological evidence. In fact, prehistorians should not concern themselves with attempts to reconstruct the meaning of cultural phenomena. Rather, archaeological inquiry should attempt to infer the meaningfulness of formal traits within a specific social context, based on significant material patterns in the archaeological record. Third, the items of meaning themselves are constituted with their own material means of production, and these systems may be interpreted through economic models more familiar to archaeology. The Lokop case encompasses producers and users both as specialists. Blacksmiths rely on their marginal positions in herding society to make them the brokers of morphological traits. Warriors, also accustomed to marginal status, effectively collaborate with blacksmiths to set up their own future place as elders. For archaeological applications in prehistory, the exchange and processing of raw materials should reconstitute economic hierarchy in a very clear manner.     

The Approximate Bayesian Computation approach to reconstructing population dynamics and size from settlement data: demography of the Mesolithic-Neolithic transition at Lepenski Vir

Demographic aspects of prehistoric populations have an important role in current archaeological theory and empirical research. In this study, we develop a method to estimate population dynamics and population size and apply it to data on house remains at one of key European Mesolithic-Neolithic transitional sites - Lepenski Vir (Serbia). Lepenski Vir is a site located in the Danube Gorges, well-known for its trapezoidal house floors and stone sculpture. It was most intensively occupied between ~6200 and ~6000 cal BC, the so called Transitional phase, which corresponds to the beginning of the Neolithic in Central Balkans. We combine archaeological evidence and ethnographic information with mathematical models of population dynamics and house accumulation within a Bayesian framework (Approximate Bayesian Computation) to derive posterior distributions of growth rate and population size estimates for the Lepenski Vir population in this period.     

Gladstone’s Land: the changing face of Edinburgh’s Royal Mile

SUMMARY: This paper presents the results of recent archaeological research into the building known as Gladstone’s Land on Edinburgh’s Royal Mile. The aim of the research was to examine to what extent historical fabric had survived in light of extensive historical intervention. The building is a surviving example of Edinburgh’s Old Town urban architecture, which is characterized by tall structures with a shop front and densely occupied residential spaces. The paper presents evidence of the development of the building from the 16th century to its conservation in the 20th century. This development involved the replacement of formerly timber elements in stone and the creation of ornate painted interiors. The history of the building and the archaeological evidence embedded within it offer evidence of the life and changing architectural trends of Scotland’s capital. It also adds to our current understanding of heritage practice in the 20th century, raising issues of authenticity and the social construction of visitor-oriented heritage.     

浙江跨湖桥遗址所出刻划符号试析

浙江萧山跨湖桥遗址是中国东南沿海地区独树一帜的考古学文化,跨湖桥遗址出土的符号是我们目前所见到的最早的可能与数字卦有关的符号类型,这对我们更进一步认识我国传统文化的起源与发展,具有重要意义。     

The power of national symbols: the credibility of a dragon’s efficacy

It is only when symbols gain meaning as effective triggers of associated sentiments in many linked contexts, including that of daily life, that they become powerful. It is what is perceived as the proved ability of the state to correct disobedience to its rule and violation to its sovereignty that commands commitment and loyalty, necessary for state symbols to become effective. As long as the link between symbol and effect can be made credible as a natural connection of cause and effect, by rational or irrational means, by folk narrative or academic theory, triggering the national symbol works in the mind of its believers. In this article I discuss the role of academics in the creation of national symbolism. Using some examples of historical and anthropological interpretations of the notion of the dragon, I argue that the cognitive aspect of nationalism is of crucial importance to the efficacy of national symbols. Thus arguments on the dragon’ various shapes, origins and merits as totem, embryo and sea snake attach and support different symbolic and political meanings of the Chinese nation.     

Plant Use in the Mesolithic: Evidence from Staosnaig,Isle of Colonsay,Scotland

Although it is almost 25 years since David Clark argued that there would have been substantial plant use during the Mesolithic, clear evidence to support his argument in terms of sites with large quantities of plant remains continue to be elusive in the archaeological record. In this paper we describe the plant remains from the site of Staosnaig on the Isle of Colonsay in Western Scotland, which appears to provide precisely the type of evidence that Clark anticipated. We argue that a very large number of hazelnuts were exploited at this site within a short period of time, together with a substantial quantity ofRanunculus ficaria L.     

Early Medieval Jet-like Jewellery in Ireland: Production,Distribution and Consumption

JET-LIKE JEWELLERY, encompassing polished black stone arm-rings, bangles and bracelets, has not been subject to detailed study in Ireland for over 50 years. This paper refocuses attention on the archaeological evidence for the indigenous production of this type of jewellery in early medieval Ireland, with the aims of exploring its distribution and consumption, and its relevance to networks of social control and economic expansion. Using geospatial and stratigraphic interrogation of the archaeological record, and contemporary comparison with recent studies from Scotland, this article demonstrates a hitherto unrecognised level of complexity and diversity in the handling of this ubiquitous luxury item. Regional specialised production centres and separate distribution centres are identified, and while a focus on indigenous sources is apparent, this is not exclusive. Degrees of cooperation and exclusivity are suggested for ecclesiastical and secular social hierarchies.