Antiquity 42

The study of urban archaeology, particularly of the way individual towns have developed, poses a critical problem. Until relatively recently town archaeology, such as it was, concentrated almost exclusively on the Roman period. The very quantity of medieval documentation daunted many archaeologists, while historians were reluctant to handle archaeological evidence. Indeed, it is not easy to correlate the two kinds of evidence, and teamwork is essential. The geographical approach has contributed by showing how maps can be constructed for each phase of a town's history from the best available sources, using natural background, documents, standing monuments and archaeological finds. Limited excavation has been used to tackle specific problems, and the rapid pace of redevelopment has increased the supply of government grants and inspired the formation of excavation committees in several towns. Nonetheless, only at Winchester is the development of a complete area being studied in all its phases, in a way common on the Continent. The problem is urgent: fifty major medieval towns are due for massive redevelopment.

The term model can be helpful in archaeology when used with precision and with an understanding of its effect upon the production of theory. In the physical sciences, a model is a concrete realisation of a theory which is used, for instance, in predicting molecular behaviour. It can also refer to a mechanism or pattern to which mathematical formulae can be applied, and it is sometimes used in this way by archaeologists. More commonly in archaeology, however, it refers to the logical framework within which the archaeologist thinks, and this is a valid usage exemplified in Piggott's models of the past, the ecological model, the diffusionist model, and so on. A model may help to explain phenomena, but it may also exert more influence than the factual evidence unless the assumptions underlying it are recognised; for instance, many of Childe's generation were profoundly influenced by the model of cultural change due to the migration of peoples.

There is little evidence of direct links between British earthen long barrows and E European (TRB) cultures. The difficulty of tracing sources for our earliest Neolithic pottery has forced archaeologists to seek less equivocal clues in excavated field monuments; and evidence from Fussell's Lodge and Wayland's Smithy, together with reinterpretation of much older excavations, appeared to confirm a tradition of Eastern-derived timber mortuary houses beneath earthen long barrows. However, at Fussell's Lodge the disposition of the bones in relation to the axial pits does not altogether support the theory of a collapsed gabled structure, and the evidence from 18th-19th cent excavations is mostly too imprecise to admit of similar interpretation. Undoubted mortuary houses are rare, and some recently excavated long barrows (see 68/168) have shown no evidence for them. The closest Continental parallel, the Konens Høj mortuary house, had no long mound and only one burial.

The "invasion hypothesis" currently under attack in British archaeology is merely one aspect of an ancient and world-wide "theory of successive populations" which ascribes any abrupt cultural change to the arrival of new peoples. Although many workers have now abandoned this theory, it still remains entrenched. To illustrate how firmly and yet how misleadingly this theory has controlled archaeological interpretation, the history of Nubian archaeology since 1907 is closely examined, with further examples drawn from other parts of the world. Pottery, burial rites and linguistic evidence are all shown to be poor indicators of cultural change or stability; natives can invent things and invaders can adopt local customs. Yet much is commonly inferred from such evidence. Even stratigraphic evidence, for example of "violent" destruction, is highly ambiguous. Indeed, with little enough evidence on which to balance probabilities, the archaeologist's own predispositions can badly distort his selection and weighing of evidence (and hence his interpretations). In prehistory, the lack of ultimate proof renders it the more vital to use only solid evidence, honestly handled.

Relatively accurate building dates can be determined from medieval oak timbers if radiocarbon measurements are made on heartwood (rather than sapwood) and then corrected by a) applying the Stuiver-Suess relationship and b) adding the number of growth rings between the sample and the bark. Examples are quoted for 15th cent Berkshire cruck cottages. JM

Archaeology in is danger of becoming so ruled by its technological and scientific servants that its proper goal of reconstructing the human past is being overlooked. The ingenious new equipment of archaeology attracts to itself a major share of not only money but intellectual effort; the result is that, while historical writing of the quality formerly seen is nowhere emergent, enormous quantities of undigested facts, graphs and tables litter our ever more expensive reports. The time needed to compile these analyses keeps other workers too long uninformed; the excavator may not even live to complete his scientifically showy report. As for controversies in interpretation, pages of correspondence solve nothing that time and new discoveries will not. Meantime, art criticism and studies of religion are neglected because they cannot be tabulated; even the remote stages of the Palaeolithic might be made to reveal more than statistics. A proper balance between science and history, a blend of old and new ideals, must be found if we are to maintain popular interest in archaeology and attract recruits with historical imagination. See also Digging up numbers, Nature, 220(5171), 1968, 957.

A hermaphrodite figure carved in ashwood was retrieved from underneath the Neolithic trackway known as the Bell track in the N Somerset levels. Its significance is difficult to assess; driven in upside down among the timbers of an early track, and covered by a more substantially-timbered track which has been 14C-dated to 2890 BC + 100, it may have been a votive designed to ensure the successful building of the new track. It seems less likely to have been a toy, and it shows little or no signs of wear. Until the find spot can be more fully excavated, the term "god-dolly" seems best able to convey the special nature of this figurine, so far unique in the Neolithic period. See Illus London News, 30th Nov 1968, 32-3 for further plates.

A 14C date of 2120 + 100 BC has recently been obtained from charcoal recovered about forty years ago from a settlement site at Townhead, Rothesay, Isle of Bute. Associated "Rothesay" ware with well-developed rims recalls the Abingdon pottery of S Britain. The total absence of Beaker wares from the site supports the 14C date. Pottery in the same Late Neo style found recently at a chambered tomb in Bute indicates the use, even if at a very late stage, of these tombs by Rothesay settlers.

Dean William Buckland's Romano-British find of 1823, correctly placed in the Palaeolithic by the re-excavation of 1912, has now been dated by 14C assay of collagen samples taken from the longbones. The result, 16,510 + 340 BC, shows this to be much the oldest human skeletal material so far dated on internal carbon. Archaeological considerations and technical aspects of the 14C assay will be published elsewhere.