Archaeologia Aeliana Series 4

Hadrian's Wall and the Antonine Wall were never occupied simultaneously; HW Ib was c 158-180s; AW IIl 185-207/8. A double frontier is unthinkable The literary and epigraphic evidence does not justify the assumption of a Brigantian revolt in the 150s, the identification of the AW as the wall crossed in the 180s and the assumption of a 197 disaster. Steer's case for connecting poor workmanship with auxiliary building inscriptions of the time of Pius and for assuming the Hamians could not have been the AW II garrison of Bar Hill is examined and rejected. The comparison of pottery from HW turrets and milecastles, HW forts, the AW and Corbridge shows very little overlap between HW and AW, and the end of HW Ib apparently earlier than AW II, Corbridge VC and Halton deposits. The evidence of samian and mortarium stamps and the proportion of black-burnished two are of particular importance. This with the literary and epigraphic evidence suggests a destruction of HW in the 180s, a destruction of Halton, Corbridge and the AW in 207/8 and a rebuilding of HW under Caracalla. BD

NZ 269729. In SE Northumberland and on the NE coastal plain generally, a large and growing number of rectilinear ditched enclosures are known as crop marks on air-photographs (see abstract 69/497). Excavation of one of these sites at Burradon revealed an enclosed settlement consisting of round timber-built huts of various structural phases, whose foundation may be related to sherds in the Earliest Iron Age tradition. Superimposed upon this earlier enclosure was a homestead of one large, round, timber-built house, also lying within a rectangular enclosure. This was probably occupied during the 2nd century AD. Wider implications for the settlement of the coastal areas of the Tyne-Forth Province during the Iron Age are also discussed. Au

There is no firm evidence for the identification of the so-called Acca's cross with the cross which, according to the 12th century Hexham interpolation in Symeon's Historia Regum, stood at the head of the bishop's grave. There are, indeed, serious doubts about the genuineness of the interpolator's information. Even if there was a cross over Acca's grave there are no reasons for linking this with the present monument by arguments based upon the find spots of the fragments, the inscription or the decoration. The inscription has been largely illegible since its discovery in 1858. It seems to have begun with some version of the title Alpha et Omega. The second line began with SC, and in what were probably lines 17 and 18 there are indications of a phrase which can be identified with one in the Nicene Creed. R N B

NY 974837. The village was deliberately depopulated c 1720, for reasons which are not clear. Rather more than half the village has now been excavated, and this paper includes a report on all the excavation so far undertaken, as well as on the documentary evidence for West Whelpington as a living village and as an almost empty township. The evidence indicates that the village was certainly flourishing by the 12th century; it may have been settled several centuries earlier. During the period of the Scottish Wars (c 1300-1550) the wealth (and possibly the size) of the village declined. West Whelpington produces particularly useful evidence for peasant life in the 17th century. Au

Republication of a harpoon picked up on the foreshore in 1852. There is no further information about the find-circumstances but it seems likely to have been washed up from submerged peat deposits The Whitburn harpoon is of deer antler, not bone as previously thought; it is 87mm long and has three sharp barbs on one side, two on the other, with an oval perforation which has been notched by the attachment line in the butt-end. Marks of tooling have disappeared, but the grooves which defined the barbs and perforation were cut from both sides of the weapon. A close parallel from the MacArthur cave at Oban emphasises the isolation of the Whitburn specimen from the general distribution of Obanian barbed points of SW Scotland. The siting of the find-spots suggests a coastal economy which cannot yet be certainly related to that of the microlith-users further inland.