British Archaeological Reports

TL 325312. Report on a seven-week rescue excavation directed by Philip Rahtz in 1965. Work was hampered by a high water-table but trenching revealed multi-period house platforms and hollow ways. Open-area excavation of the parish church site revealed use from c 1220 to c 1450 in three phases, the last involving a 6ft extension eastwards of the original 39ft x 14 building. The cemetery was ordered in rows and may have had family enclosures. The construction of the church destroyed earlier peasant crofts (of c 1100) and the old village plan was eventually ignored. After c 1450 only drainage ditches and agricultural levelling were apparent.

Papers from the London symposium, 1973. John Collis' first paper (pp 1-11) postulates a downgrading in the status and value of potin coins in 1st century BC. His second (173-83 + 273) seeks a way to make coin interpretations more useful to archaeologists, offering seriation as the most promising approach, but stressing the need for much more careful excavation of coins and asking for more data on chance losses. A S Robertson (12-36) gives a full treatment of the numismatic, archaeological and historical significance of RB coin hoards. John Casey (37-51) clarifies the economic and political factors, so often overlooked, which govern the rate of site losses. Peter Curnow (52-63) stresses the importance of inter-site comparisons when studying small sites, because coin-loss patterns may be either similar or complementary and each must be understood in its context. Richard Reece's first paper (64-77) on coins of Britain, France and Italy introduces a new method of simple clustering which throws up anomalies in coin-loss patterns both within regions and across regional boundaries; these anomalies can then be further investigated. His second paper (78-94) analyses the patterns shown by samples of three different types of RB hoard. George Boon (95-171) discusses and accounts for counterfeiting in RB, both endemic (casts, struck copies, plated coins) and epidemic. J P C Kent (184-200) discusses general problems of interpretation, e.g. the infinite variety of hoard structure, illustrated by examples from Roman to modern times. S E Rigold (201-5) considers AS coins in burials, while D M Metcalf (206-23) interprets 7th and 8th century coin distributions in terms of severe fluctuations in the availability of currency, and relates this to international trade. M Dolley (224-33) pleads for a new approach to publishing excavated coins, relates some cautionary tales, and asks for much closer cooperation generally between archaeologist and numismatist. Marion Archibald (234-71) contributes a detailed paper on English medieva coins as dating evidence, stressing the problems of providing close dates for archaeological use.

Fifteen papers come from a multidisciplinary symposium. C C Taylor (pp 5-15) emphasises the shifting patterns of settlement, the antiquity of even the AS estate boundaries, and the gradual development of the fields from RB times towards the medieval system. David Brown (16-19) focuses on the discontinuities in 5th-century evidence, especially as between soldier and settler. The Mucking evidence (settlement and cemeteries) is discussed by M U and W T Jones (20-35) who see the site as a "transit camp", a dispersed settlement based on subsistence agriculture, with an early 5th-century military link and no RB connections. David Miles (36-41) demonstrates the growing evidence for a fully-settled landscape around Abingdon in both RB and Saxon times. In the Dorchester settlements, studied by T Rowley (42-50) Roman ways did not survive into 6th century. At New Wintles, Eynsham, studied by M Gray (51-5), the low-level husbandry of the scattered Saxon homesteads with sunken floors reminds us that generalisations in this period are impossible. Across the N Sea in Lower Saxony, W H Zimmermann (56-73) examines the 1st to 5th century farm-settlement at Flögeln. Keith Wade (74-7) provides an interim report on the Bonhunt settlement (Essex) and also (87-92) calls for more rational sampling strategies in the examination of AS sites. David Hill (102-7) notes the need to reassess the relationships and relative dating of Offa's and Wat's Dykes (see also abstract 75/3108). The documentary, especially charter, evidence for AS settlement is taken by P H Sawyer (108-19) to suggest that rural resources were already fully exploited by 7th-8th centuries and that the AS period saw the fragmentation of ancient multiple estates. The natural flora and fauna of the Old English forests are considered by D P Kirby (120-30). J Godfrey (131-8) traces the development from the early minsters to the later village churches and examines possible links in plan between lord's hall and parson's church. The work of the West Stow Environmental Archaeology Group in reconstructing Saxon houses and ways of life is set out in 78-86. Margaret Gelling (93-101) argues that more distributional work on place-name studies would assist chronological elucidation.

Study and corpus of 192 circular garnet-inlaid brooches, mostly from Kent cemeteries. The introduction places the brooches in their cultural (insular) setting, and the technology of manufacture is discussed as well as the classification, chronology and distribution. The component parts of the brooches are reduced to numerical terms for easy handling of the information; as a result of the study Leeds' 1926 classification has been extended and developed.

Detailed study of the buildings, growth and development of a small market town in SE Gloucestershire. "The survey set out to examine every building in Cirencester, to give it a date within known limits, and to assign it to a style in which it would be grouped with other similar buildings." An introductory outline of the town's growth from Roman times is illustrated with a series of maps, and building materials and social aspects are also treated. The survey took 480 man-hours on a budget of £300.

"Intended to be a practical workhorse to the archaeologist in the field" and hence primarily concerned with dating, typology, trade, source collections and bibliography. Pipemakers are listed by town. See also abstract 75/3456.