Was King Arthur really at Tintagel? According to English Heritage an 11 Arthur 11 stone has been discovered there, which turns out to be a slate with a crude graffito with a name beginning with’ Art… ‘. The publicity was very successful and achieved a lot of coverage in the press. But this was part of a major excavation: what else was discovered, and what does it really mean?
Did the Celts believe in witches? Just off the Ml, at Brackmills in Northamptonshire, a middle aged woman was found thrown face downwards in an Iron Age pit, tightly trussed both arms and legs, and with a lead torc round her neck: was this to weigh her down so that her spirit could not rise to haunt us? This fear of sorcery is well known in other cultures: was it also prevalent in Iron Age Britain too?
If you were a Briton living in the Roman Cotswolds and you decided to move to a Roman wayside settlement, what sort of house would you build? At Birdlip the road from Gloucester to Cirencester – the Roman Ermin Street – is being turned into a dual carriageway and the excavations in advance of the new road throw a somewhat disconcerting new light on what really went on in Roman Britain.
At Shrewsbury in the nineteenth century, a mysterious inner city wall was discovered and the local antiquarians debated furiously whether it was an early inner city defence. Now a survey by English Heritage – part of its Urban Archaeological Database project – has put it into context and emphasises the richness of Shrewsbury’s medieval and later past.
And there’s lots more… there’s an account of the building of Carrickfergus Castle in Northern Ireland, while on the Book pages we salute one of the most readable archaeological detective stories ever written, we welcome a rising star in the archaeological publishing world, and for those who like statistics, we look at a book on The American Archaeologist where you can find out just how much they earn …