Hydrogeological Modelling of Water-Level Changes in an Area of Archaeological Significance: A Case Study from Flag Fen,Cambridgeshire, UK

Concern exists regarding the long-term viability of the internationally important archaeological remains of the Flag Fen site near Peterborough. This paper describes a hydrogeological numerical groundwater model which has been used to understand the groundwater situation with regard to the archaeology, including drainage impacts, and also to explore future scenarios. Observed and modelled groundwater levels have been interpreted using three zones: the ‘dry’ zone 1 above the seasonal maximum water table; zone 2 of seasonal water table fluctuation; and a deeper zone 3 of permanent saturation. Archaeological wood is best preserved in Zone 3. Much of the Bronze Age wooden structure is located within Zone 2 or above. The hydrological conditions are therefore not ideal for the long-term in situ preservation of the material. Groundwater modelling indicates that the main factor controlling groundwater levels in the area is artificial drainage. The approach would be applicable to other wet-preserved archaeological sites.     

Re-evaluating the Monitoring of the Shardlow Log Boat

Following the discovery of a Bronze Age log boat in Shardlow Quarry, Derbyshire in 2003, a scheme was devised to preserve this boat in situ. This included a monitoring programme to ensure that reducing conditions were maintained. This solution was agreed by the mineral planning authority Derbyshire County Council, with input and advice from English Heritage.

Monitoring lasted ten years, during which time gravel deposits surrounding the boat were extracted. The boat was protected from dewatering during this time by a clay cut-off, installed around the area containing the boat before extraction begun. After extraction the adjacent areas were backfilled with on-site soils and inert waste.

Data indicate that a reducing environment has been largely sustained during this period. Following careful and considered discussion, the monitoring programme ceased as there was unlikely to be further impacts to site hydrology, making additional data collection redundant.     

Forthcoming meetings and conferences of general interest

The nineteenth-century British historian Lucy Aikin's ambitious four-part poem Epistles on Women (1810) marks both her first important contribution to women's historiography and a compelling example of Enlightenment feminist historiography. To some extent, Aikin is building on the work of male Enlightenment historians who had evaluated the status of women in different times and places and correlated it to social progress. However, she not only restricts her focus exclusively to women, but also makes a concerted effort to resolve some of the tensions apparent in previous accounts of the relationship between women and social progress. Especially striking is her mediation of two distinct historical models of femininity, which I have called the republican and commercial models of femininity, the outlines of both of which we can trace in the work of male Enlightenment historians. By suggesting that through proper education women might combine the best aspects of each model, Aikin strategically advances the project of controversial feminists like Catherine Macaulay and Mary Wollstonecraft, who had taken inspiration from the republican model of femininity in their demands for improvements to female education.     

Orientalism at Work? Dundee's Response to Competition from Calcutta,circa 1870–1914

From the late nineteenth century the Dundee jute industry faced intensifying competition from Calcutta. This article examines the responses in Dundee to this competition, focusing upon the ways Dundonians understood Calcutta and India, and how these understandings shaped the debate on possible lines of action. It argues that the diversity of approaches to the threat, inter-linked with the complexities of local politics, led to a concentration of effort on seeking to establish and then strengthen Indian factory legislation. The severity of competition from another empire country posed acute dilemmas for pro-imperial politics in the city: how could such a politics be sustained if the local economy was being so harmed by Calcutta's invasion of Dundee's markets, yet a protective response was ruled out by the realities of imperial policy?     

The Decline of the Empire and the Economic 'Decline' of Britain

In the 1950s and 1960s, decolonization coincided with the ‘goldenage’ of British capitalism, with record rises in popularliving standards. Economic historians have understandably usedthis coincidence to suggest that by this period the BritishEmpire was no longer offering substantial economic benefitsto the mass of the metropolitan population. Yet there were linksbetween economic performance and the decline of the Empire.First, despite the good performance, profoundly pessimistic‘declinist’ accounts of British society and theeconomy abounded in the early 1960s, and these had a major impacton policy formation. A key underpinning for such accounts wasthe ‘culture of decline’ intimately linked withthe loss of imperial status. Secondly, while it has become acommonplace of discussion of post-war Britain to assume thatreversing ‘decline’ and modernizing the economyrequired a re-orientation of policy away from the Empire andCommonwealth towards Europe, such a reorientation was not aconstant feature of modernization strategies. Indeed, a centralfeature of the initial period of Wilsonian ‘modernization’after 1964 was its attempt to use closer links with the Commonwealthto achieve this objective.     

Beyond cooperation: towards an Oceanic community

Oceania, through the Pacific Islands Forum, is re-examining its processes and institutions in an attempt to become more effective as a region. Pacific leaders have adopted a ‘Pacific Plan’ that is designed to detail how the region will improve its governance, develop economically, ensure democratic values and deepen its commitment to human rights. The Plan argues that more and deeper cooperation is necessary to achieve these outcomes. But the region's states already cooperate closely in many spheres and there is no evidence that more cooperation will achieve anything but more cooperation. What is needed is the development of an explicit regional community within which the members (both states and citizens) can achieve their full potential unconstrained by the many structural and cultural barriers that exist with even the closest cooperative arrangements.     

EU Regional Policy After 2006: Will Scotland Notice the Difference?

In order to accommodate the recent enlargements of the European Union (EU) there has been considerable changes to the operation of EU regional policy which means that Scotland along with other regions in the EU-15 will receive considerably less money from the Structural Funds in the future. This article discusses the extent to which the reduction in EU funding for economic development will impact on the Scottish economy. The issue is explored by considering the contribution, which Structural Funds have made in the past to economic development in Western Scotland, which has received the lion's share of the money allocated to Scotland. It is suggested that whilst the amount of economic development in Scotland will not be significantly reduced as a result of the decline in EU funds the types of projects and organizations receiving funding will alter because of changes made to the way in which the funds are administered in Scotland.     

Tracing the Busy Gap Rogues

Busy Gap is one of the earliest attested place names located along the line of the central sector of Hadrian’s Wall in Northumberland, yet in Newcastle during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries it was a term of abuse, applied collectively to those who came from upland Tynedale and was synonymous with the Border Reivers. Archaeological and historical sources indicate that throughout the Middle Ages the place was located in a zone of seasonal settlement, characterized by groups of shielings probably associated with townships located in the valley of the South Tyne. The question is how to understand the role of Busy Gap, a place identified with a triangular earthwork on the north side of the Roman Wall. This paper will consider the results of recent archaeological investigations carried out by the author on the site and will investigate the place and its setting within the archaeological and historical context of early-modern Northumberland.