The Queen and the City: Royal Female Intervention and Patronage in Hellenistic Civic Communities

In 196 bce , Queen Laodike III issued a decree (I.Iasos 4, I) to Iasos in Caria, Asia Minor, announcing that she was giving the Iasians a ten‐year supply of grain to alleviate their penury after her husband's conquest of their city, and she specified that the grain ought to be sold and the income used to provide dowries for the daughters of poor citizens. This and other donations were part of rebuilding efforts in the wake of military violence by Laodike's husband Antiochos III. For her beneficence, Laodike was honoured by cities with foundations of festivals, priestesses and sacred areas dedicated to preserving her cult. This reciprocity of goodwill was gendered, not only in the establishment of priestesses, but in the nature of the honours given; for example Iasos celebrated Laodike III's birthday with a procession of a maiden priestess and couples who were about to wed (I.Iasos 4, II), and the people of Teos dedicated a fountain in their city centre to Laodike and required that all brides should draw from it the water for their baths (SEG 41, 1003). Laodike's patronage and the cities’ responses to her bring to light the role of female citizens within the structures, perpetuation and ceremonial of the civic body. At the heart of honours given Laodike and her own self‐promotion was the identity of sister and mother, roles shaping her own queenship and the civic participation and power of the women she assisted.     

Digging and destruction: artifact collecting as meaningful social practice

Collected sites are commonly seen as places requiring expert intervention to ‘save the past’ from destruction by artifact collectors and looters. Despite engaging directly with the physical effects of collecting and vandalism, little attention is given to the meanings of these actions and the contributions they make to the stories told about sites or the past more broadly. Professional archaeologists often position their engagement with site destruction as heritage ‘salvage’ and regard collecting as lacking any value in contemporary society. Repositioning collecting as meaningful social practice and heritage action raises the question: in failing to understand legal or illegal collecting as significant to heritage, have archaeologists contributed to the erasure of acts that aim to work out identities, memories and senses of place, and contribute to an individual’s or group’s sense of ontological security? This question is explored through a case study from the New England region of North America where archaeologists have allied with Native American and other stakeholders to advocate for heritage protection by taking an anti-looting/collecting stance. We explore alternatives to this position that engage directly with forms of collecting as meaningful social practices that are largely erased in site narratives.     

Catalogue of the Emblems of Saints

This report describes the excavations of a 4ha multi-period site situated in the parish of Heslerton, North Yorkshire, on the southern edge of the Vale of Pickering. The site came to light in 1977 and a rescue excavation project, sponsored by the Department of the Environment through North Yorkshire County Council, continued on a seasonal basis from 1978 until December 1982.

Occupation at the site began during the late Mesolithic with a flint knapping area, which was also used during the Neolithic and early Bronze Age. During the Late Neolithic a series of shallow gullies may represent the first attempts to establish a field system, and domestic activity may be indicated by two pairs of refuse pits. Other pits of this period demonstrate the presence of an ill-defined avenue of very large post pits running across part of the site. During the early Bronze Age two barrow cemeteries were present. The excavation of Barrow Cemetery 1, besides providing an important series of stratified carbon 14 dates, has produced an important series of Beakers and Food Vessels.

After the barrow cemeteries went out of use, woodland regenerated in the area prior to the late Bronze and early Iron age when the central part of the site became the setting for extensive occupation dispersed along the line of a major boundary which, once established, continued to function, though on a lessening scale through the Roman period when much of the site was turned over to agriculture. During the early Anglo-Saxon period a cemetery was established, focused upon Barrow Cemetery 2, which must have contained well over two hundred individuals, and is associated with a nearby settlement. During the later medieval and post-medieval periods the site continued in use as part of the agricultural landscape. A gradual accumulation of blown sands, associated with periods of denudation, prevented plough damage from disturbing the deposits over much of the area examined.     

Medieval Britain in 1962 and 1963

Abstract

The Hammerbeam roof over the great hall of Edinburgh Castle is one of only two high-status roofs surviving on medieval secular buildings in Scotland. In 1999, Historic Scotland recorded the roof structure in advance of cleaning work. Detailed examination of the existing structure and surviving documentation confirms that much of the original timberwork survives, despite later use as a barrack, then as a military hospital, which resulted in many alterations to the structure, including subdivision of its interior. In 1887–92, the building underwent an extensive restoration by the Edinburgh architect Hippolyte Blanc. Its dating has been a matter of dispute among architectural historians, particularly with reference to its stone corbels. Our dendrochronological analysis indicates a construction date of 1509/10: the roof of the great hall of Edinburgh Castle is, therefore, a rare example in Scotland of major timberwork from the reign of James IV (1488–1513). Much of the original carved stone corbel work survives, despite restoration and partial replacement by Blanc, and the iconography of these is contemporary with the roof construction. The decoration of the corbels is therefore among the earliest use of Renaissance ornament in Britain. With the splendour of the roof, they are a small part of the repertoire used to present James IV in the magnificence of a contemporary European monarch.     

Medieval Britain in 1966

Abstract

This section of the journal comprises two core sets of reports linked to work in 2012: on finds and analyses relating to the Portable Antiquities Scheme (PAS) and on site-specific discoveries and reports in medieval Britain and Ireland (MB&;I), with a selection of highlighted projects. For the PAS report, reviews on coin and non-coin finds and on specific research angles are presented. For MB&;I, the Society is most grateful to all contributors (of field units, museums, universities, developers, specialist groups and individuals) who have provided reports on finds, excavations, field-surveys and building analyses for 2012. Note that while we can advise on content, we are not able to abstract from interim reports. Please also note that in certain cases the National Grid Reference has been omitted from reports to protect sites; do notify the compilers if this information is to be withheld. For MB&;I, see below for the format and content of the Fieldwork Highlights section and for the contact details of the compilers. The annual Specialist Groups Reports now appear in the Society's Newsletter.