Anglo-Saxon Stafford. Archaeological Investigations 1954-2004. Field Reports On-line
Martin Carver, 2010. https://doi.org/10.5284/1000117. How to cite using this DOI
Data copyright © Prof Martin Carver unless otherwise stated
This work is licensed under the ADS Terms of Use and Access.
Primary contact
Prof
Martin
Carver
Department of Archaeology
University of York
King's Manor
Exhibition Square
York
YO1 7EP
England
Resource identifiers
- ADS Collection: 912
- DOI:https://doi.org/10.5284/1000117
- How to cite using this DOI
Overview
Project Summary
The county town of Stafford is today (2009) a small conurbation, containing the medieval buildings of St Mary's, St Chad's and the High House within a few metres of each other at the town centre. The first excavations in pursuit of the early town were carried out by Adrian Oswald, keeper at Birmingham City Museum, who claimed to have found the post-holes of a late Saxon chapel, and a wooden cross buried in a pit, within the foundations of the Medieval chapel of St Bertelin. The campaign reported here began in 1974, when a member of the local archaeological society, Ashley Carter, found a quantity of "Roman" pottery in excavations at Clarke Street in advance of an anticipated ring road. In 1975 Martin Carver (of Birmingham University Field Archaeology Unit) identified the pottery as late Saxon by comparison with the pot containing a late Saxon coin hoard previously found in Chester. That same year he excavated the Clarke Street site (ST15), unearthing copious quantities of the newly identified bright orange late Saxon pottery that had been dumped in a marsh. In a watching brief in 1977 Carver discovered a kiln at Tipping Street south (ST17), which justified his calling the new pottery Stafford Ware. In 1979, in a collaborative project with Stafford Borough and County and the Department of the Environment, Carver carried out an urban evaluation, digging an eventual 28 trenches with students of the Birmingham University practical course (aka the "year out") whence he constructed an urban archaeological data base and a model of the deposit for the town.
Overhead view of excavations at ST15 Clarke Street
In 1980-85, Stafford Borough made available for excavation three large sites in the town centre, prior to their development (known as St Mary's Grove, Tipping Street north and Bath Street). These excavations were directed by Jon and Charlotte Cane, with Mark Taylor and Roy Barnes as site supervisors. With Clarke Street, this made four "windows" across the historic town. The excavation supervisors were drawn from Birmingham University Field Archaeology Unit (BUFAU, now Birmingham Archaeology) who were given a temporary residence in abandoned property in St Mary's Grove. The workforce was largely composed of young persons on job creation schemes, the Manpower Services Commission (MSC) and Youth Opportunities Programme (YOP), both of which provided untrained local labour (16-20 years old) with some cash support. Together with students of the Birmingham "year out" these young people undertook a great deal of digging, recording and the sorting of finds, both on the main area excavations and elsewhere in the town. Several studies were produced: by Jill Walker (1976) and Jenny Glazebrook (1983) on overviews of the town, by Sarah Bazalgette on the evaluation trenches, by John Darlington on the metallurgy of iron objects (1985) and by Lawrence Bowkett on Stafford's hinterland. The team also put on two exhibitions of the archaeology of the town, the first in the disused police social club at Bath Street and the second in the High House, both conceived and organised by Charlotte Cane.
In 1983 Carver began work at Sutton Hoo, entrusting the completion of the publication programme to Jon and Charlotte Cane. Due to a number of unforeseen circumstances, both supervisors moved on and the publication programme stopped. In the late 1990s at the request of BUFAU, Carver repossessed the archive and took responsibility for publication. Four bids for post-excavation funding failed, and the project has been advanced mainly through the good offices of the Department of Archaeology at York. In 2008, Carver completed the compilation of the Stafford archive including the revision of the interpretation of all major excavations, and English Heritage subsequently offered to support the cost of putting the completed archive online, through the Archaeology Data Service.
The outcome is this ONLINE ARCHIVE hosted by ADS. This archive contains the Field Reports for the Stafford campaign, comprising the edited surviving evidence for the evaluation and the major excavations together with studies of the artefacts, bones and plant remains. The original Field Records are held by the Potteries Museum at Stoke on Trent. The edited Field Reports include new analyses and reinterpretation by M Carver and take into account work undertaken since 1985, particularly by Debbie Ford (on pottery) and John Darlington (excavations at Stafford castle and town). However, the research undertaken in 1985-90 on the artefacts, animal bone, human bone and plant remains has not been extensively revised or updated, apart from new specialist reports on objects from the "blacksmiths' pit" (F234 in Int 32): by Steve Ashby on the Medieval comb and Cecily Spall on the metalwork. The Stafford results are considered in their national and international context in the Research Report, the monograph Birth of a Borough by Martin Carver (Boydell Press), which may be regarded as the synthesis that accompanies and draws on this archive.
Contents of the Stafford Online Archive
The archive is split into its 11 Fieldwork reports (FR1-11), with each report comprising text files and Illustrations (scanned images and line drawings). Please note that a definitve list can be found in the file FR_1.2_Contents.
Please cite the material in this archive as:
Carver M O H 2009 Stafford Field Reports 1975-1990 (ADS), followed by the file signifier [eg FR 2.3, ST22]
FR 1 Project History
1.1 Project Summary
1.2 Contents of the online archive
1.3 History, 1975-2007
1.4 Participation
1.5 Publications and Client Reports
FR 2 Evaluation and Design
2.1 Contents
2.2 Principles
2.3 Urban Archaeological Data Base (Catalogue of Archaeological data)
2.3.1 List of archaeological Interventions
2.3.2 Summaries of archaeological interventions
2.3.3 Archaeological contacts and observations
2.3.4 Historic buildings
2.3.5 Documented Places
2.3.6 Gazetteer of Medieval Streets
2.4 Deposit model
2.4.1 Comment on Deposit by Jon Cane
2.5 Research Agendas
2.6 Social Context
2.6.1 Public Archaeology in Stafford by Charlotte Cane
2.7 Design
FR 3 ST 01 Excavations at St Bertelin's Chapel by Adrian Oswald. A re-examination
3.1 Summary
3.2 Argument for re-interpretation
3.3 Assemblage
3.4 List of Features and Contexts
FR 4 ST 15 Excavations at Clarke Street, 1975
4.1 Summary
4.2 Report by Martin Carver 1975, edited J Cane, re-edited M O H Carver
4.3 List of Features, Contexts, Assemblages
4.4 Seriation analysis
FR 5 ST 29 Excavations at St Mary's Grove, 1980-84
5.1 Table of Contents
5.2 Excavations at St Mary's Grove. Report by Jon Cane
5.3 Excavations at St Mary's Grove. Revised report by M O H Carver
5.4 Contexts, Features and assemblages
5.4.1 By Period
5.4.2 In numerical order
5.5 Seriation
FR 6 ST 32 Excavations at Tipping Street, 1982-83
6.1 Summary and Contents
6.2 Notes by the excavator, Mark Taylor
6.3 Report by Jon Cane based on Mark Taylor's notes
6.4 Revised report by M O H Carver 2007
6.5 List of defined Contexts, Features and Structures
6.6 Seriation analysis
FR 7 ST 34 Excavations at Bath Street, 1981-82
7.1 Summary and Contents
7.2 Report by Jon Cane, Roy Barnes and Jenny Glazebrook
7.3 Revised report by M O H Carver 2007
7.4 List of Features, Contexts and assemblages
7.5 Seriation analysis
FR 8 Artefacts
8. 1 Table of Contents
8.2 Pottery Typology
8.2.1 Roman pottery
8.2.2 Stafford Ware
8.2.3 Medieval Pottery
8.3 Wood and Charcoal
8.4 Bone and Stone
8.5 Cu Alloy
8.5.1 Coins
8.6 Iron
8.6.1 Assemblage from Pit F234
8.7 Chronology
8.7.1 Dendrochronology
8.7.2 Radiocarbon dating
FR 9 Bone
9.1 Human Bone by Alison Cameron
9.2 Animal Bone by James Rackham, Madeleine Hummler and Rebecca Nicholson
FR 10 Plant Remains
10.1 Plant macrofossils by Lisa Moffett
10.2 Pollen sequence from the King's Pool by James Grieg
FR 11 The Stafford Hinterland
An essay by Lawrence Bowkett+ [an essay on the site of Stafford from the Iron Age to the early Medieval period, written for the Stafford project by Lawrence Bowkett, now deceased.
