The story of Seahenge, the Bronze Age timber circle discovered at low tide off the Norfolk coast, was the most dramatic and certainly the most controversial event of 1999. Following the discovery it was excavated completely and all the timbers were removed to be studied on dry land.
Was this really necessary? Many’Druids’ felt it was not. Here the investigators Mark Brennand and Maisie Pryor explain how it was that the timbers had been preserved for so long; why they were being so rapidly destroyed and the reasons for the secrecy that delayed the excavations.
Good archaeology is often like good wine, it improves with keeping. We commissioned an article on the Elliptical Building at Chester when it was originally being destroyed in 1967, but the report has been somewhat delayed. But what was this large building in the middle of the Roman fort?
It appears to have been a building not unlike the present day ‘Dome’, large, vague and totally useless. David Mason has winkled out a story that will change the history of the Roman conquest of Britain.
The summer of 1999 saw the reassessment of another of our major monuments, Avebury. In the 18th century William Stukeley reported that it was approached by not one avenue but two. Did the Beckhampton Avenue really exist?
At Wanborough in Surrey a second Roman temple has been discovered adjacent to the Roman temple excavated in the 1980s. DavidWilliams explains the sequence of this important discovery.
We conclude with two shorter notes. Firstly we look at how a gravel company is helping to preserve crucial evidence of a cursus monument at Aston-on-Trent. Finally we report on a recent Time Team excavation of a Roman temple at Greenwich which we argue had major implications for the status of Roman.London.