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LETTERS • NEWS • SPECIAL REPORT • COMMENT • CONTEXT Anglo-Saxon cemetery found in Buckinghamshire Excavations in Wendover, Buckinghamshire, carried out ahead of the construction of HS2, have revealed an Anglo-Saxon cemetery containing 141 inhumations and five cremations in 138 graves (RIGHT) – one of the largest early medieval burial grounds ever uncovered in Britain. The fieldwork was completed in 2021 by Infra JV, working on behalf of HS2’s enabling works contractor Fusion JV. The archaeologists knew the site had been in use over a long period of time, and indeed they found evidence of Neolithic, Bronze Age, Iron Age, and Roman activity over the course of their investigations. It was the scale and nature of the early medieval finds that surprised the team the most, though: almost three-quarters of the burials contained grave goods, including more than 2,000 beads, 86 brooches, 40 buckles, 51 knives, 15 spearheads, seven shield bosses, and even a personal hygiene kit complete with an ear-wax remover and tweezers. These items have been dated to between the 5th and 6th centuries AD, and their presence suggests that the cemetery was used by a wealthy early medieval community. One female skeleton, perhaps the cemetery’s highest-status individual, was found with a large selection of high-quality grave goods, including a complete and ornately decorated bowl made of pale green glass. This object, thought to have been produced around the turn of the 5th century AD, has been interpreted as a possible Roman-era heirloom. Other items associated with this burial included copper-alloy rings, a silver zoomorphic ring, brooches, discs, iron belt fittings, and ivory objects. Dr Rachel Wood, Lead Archaeologist for Fusion JV, said: ‘It is not a site I would ever have anticipated finding – to have found one of these burials would have been astonishing, so to have found so many is quite unbelievable. The proximity of the date of this cemetery to the end of the Roman period is particularly exciting, especially as it is a period we know comparatively little about.’ A number of the graves also contained vessels similar to cremation urns, but as the majority of burials were inhumations these items seem to have been included as accessories. Post-excavation analysis of the finds, which include objects that may have been imported from abroad, will continue over the next few years. Ltd HS2 : © I M AG E Burials uncovered at Leicester Cathedral Excavations in the gardens at the eastern end of Leicester Cathedral (BELOW RIGHT), carried out by University of Leicester Archaeological Services (ULAS) in advance of redevelopment work at the Old Song School, have resumed following the excavation of over 100 burials last winter. Formerly part of the churchyard of St Martin’s parish church (raised to cathedral status in 1927), the site will see the construction of a new heritage centre, funded by a £4.5 million grant from the National Lottery Heritage Fund as part of Leicester Cathedral Revealed, a wide-ranging restoration project. ‘It’s an interesting one for us because it is in the conservation area of the city, so we don’t often get to look in this part of town,’ John Thomas, Deputy Director of ULAS, told CA. So far, the team has unearthed 124 burials, dated – from nameplates – to between 1738 and 1855. ‘Middle-class business owners seems to be what we are getting at the minute,’ said athew orris, a ro ect fficer at AS who is leading the excavations. Four individuals have been identified, including a blacksmith, a glazier, and one Anne Barratt – a ‘gentlewoman’ from a wealthy family of hosiers, he said. Work is only just starting, though, and John said that current estimates suggest around 800 burials could still be left to excavate. ‘Stratigraphically, we’re probably going back into the 17th century at this point as well,’ Mathew said, ‘but then we’re expecting burials could potentially go back in date to the late Anglo-Saxon period.’ ULAS is collaborating with colleagues from the university’s School of Archaeology and Ancient History, as part of a wider project looking at tobacco use between the 15th and 18th centuries. Osteologist Dr Sarah Inskip, a UKRI Future Leaders Fellow who will lead this study, said: ‘The ability to assess individuals from one location over such a long time period will allow us to see how the lives of Leicester people changed with major social upheaval and transitions, such as epidemic disease, the arrival of new global commodities such as tobacco, and industrialisation.’ All individuals will be carefully reburied following completion of the research work. : ULAS I M AG E 10 Current Archaeology AUGUST 2022
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Glasgow’s 1988 ‘Garden Festival’ rediscovered A rchaeologists investigating the Glasgow Garden Festival, which transformed the city’s declining dockyard area into a green space full of exciting attractions over the summer of 1988, have uncovered traces of the event in a public park. excavation of the connected lake (BELOW). The latter revealed the lake’s underlay, the horizons of decorative pebbles, and seven small-denomination coins, as well as pieces of blue and white ceramic, which may have come from a tiled area or mural, Kenny said. The festival, which contributed to the evolution of Glasgow’s post-industrial identity, was held across a 120-acre site on the south bank of the Clyde. It welcomed some 4.3 million visitors over 152 days, and featured themed gardens, performances, artworks, a replica Roman bathhouse, a miniature railway, the much-loved ‘CocaCola’ roller coaster, and much more besides. The former site has since been redeveloped, but some landscaping and water features can still be seen in Festival Park, where archaeologists have recently completed a series of small-scale surveys and excavations, carried out as part of a collaboration between the ‘After the Garden Festival…’ project and the University of Glasgow, and supported by the Glasgow City Heritage Trust. These investigations, led by Dr Kenny Brophy, a senior lecturer in archaeology at the university, included a plane table survey of the Festival’s waterfall and Geophysical survey of the park’s green spaces, moreover, detected a linear anomaly on the route of the mini railway, and a larger anomaly at the site of the replica bathhouse. No trace of the festival’s lakeside restaurant or minidistillery were found, however, which confirms that the event hosted some very temporary structures, many of which were later repurposed, Kenny said. ‘After the Garden Festival…’ – a collaboration between Kenny, Gordon Barr (Project Partner), and Lex Lamb (the Project Lead) – is now trying to track down any surviving structural features from the Festival. ‘We’ve got a database of about 250 things on our website [www.glasgowgardenfestival.org], which we’re asking the public to contribute images of – either in situ at the Glasgow Festival or where they are now,’ Kenny said. (The team has recently been informed of the survival of the festival’s Japanese pagoda, now in a garden centre in Falkirk.) : Kenny Brophy I M AG E ISSUE 389 Advances ience Stuart, Sc id by Dav illustration scans by Heather Hurst and : I M AG E NEWS World news Maya calendar fragments from Guatemala Two fragments of a mural revealed during excavations at San Bartolo, a Maya site in Petén, Guatemala, may be the earliest evidence yet of the Maya ritual calendar, according to new research published in the journal Science Advances (https://doi.org/10.1126/sciadv.abl9290). The fragments of painted plaster were found beneath the site’s pyramid, known as ‘Las Pinturas’, which was rebuilt seven times between 400 BC and AD 100. They have been securely dated to the pyramid’s third phase (c.300-200 BC), which consisted of a radial pyramid, a ballcourt, and a long raised platform. al line been I 11111::: ,een deer . deer. he fragments fit together to form the aya number seven two dots over a horizontal line (though the left dot has been lost), above the head of a deer. This symbol represents ‘7 Deer’, a date in the 260-day Maya ritual calendar, which used combinations of 13 numbers and 20 signs to represent distinct dates. Motya’s sacred pool An artificial basin on the hoenician island city of otya modern San antaleo Island, off Sicily , previously identified as a Punic harbour, has been reinterpreted as a sacred pool. .. The 52.5m-long and 37m-wide basin was interpreted as a kothon an artificial inner harbour in the early s, but excavations in the 2000s instead found a temple dedicated to the Phoenician god Ba’al. A decade of investigations since 2006 then revealed the basin to be a freshwater pool, fed by three natural springs, and two more temples were located, alongside further features of a circular monumental sanctuary in use from c.500 to 397/396 BC. - The research, which interprets the centrally located pool as a reflective surface designed to track the movement of the stars, was published in Antiquity (https://doi. org/10.15184/aqy.2022.8). Mesolithic mummies in Portugal? Hunter-gatherer communities in Portugal may have been practising mummification , years ago, according to new research published in the European Journal of Archaeology (https://doi.org/10.1017/eaa.2022.3). The researchers studied newly rediscovered photographs of skeletal remains excavated at the Mesolithic burial sites of Poças de São Bento and Arapouco, using archaeothanatological techniques to analyse the human remains by observing the spatial distribution of the bones in the context of knowledge about how human bodies decompose after death. At least one of the burials displayed an unusual degree of fle ion in the position of the body, as well as an absence of disarticulation among the bones even around the fingers and toes, where this would normally be expected), leading the team to suggest that some of the individuals may have been deliberately mummified. C U R R E N T WORLD ARCHAEO Current Archaeology 11

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LETTERS • NEWS • SPECIAL REPORT • COMMENT • CONTEXT

Anglo-Saxon cemetery found in Buckinghamshire

Excavations in Wendover, Buckinghamshire, carried out ahead of the construction of HS2, have revealed an Anglo-Saxon cemetery containing 141 inhumations and five cremations in 138 graves (RIGHT) – one of the largest early medieval burial grounds ever uncovered in Britain.

The fieldwork was completed in 2021 by Infra JV, working on behalf of HS2’s enabling works contractor Fusion JV. The archaeologists knew the site had been in use over a long period of time, and indeed they found evidence of Neolithic, Bronze Age, Iron Age, and Roman activity over the course of their investigations. It was the scale and nature of the early medieval finds that surprised the team the most, though: almost three-quarters of the burials contained grave goods,

including more than 2,000 beads, 86 brooches, 40 buckles, 51 knives, 15 spearheads, seven shield bosses, and even a personal hygiene kit complete with an ear-wax remover and tweezers. These items have been dated to between the 5th and 6th centuries AD, and their presence suggests that the cemetery was used by a wealthy early medieval community. One female skeleton, perhaps the cemetery’s highest-status individual, was found with a large selection of high-quality grave goods, including a complete and ornately decorated bowl made of pale green glass. This object, thought to have been produced around the turn of the 5th century AD, has been interpreted as a possible Roman-era heirloom. Other items associated with this burial included copper-alloy rings, a silver zoomorphic ring, brooches, discs, iron belt fittings, and ivory objects.

Dr Rachel Wood, Lead Archaeologist for Fusion JV, said: ‘It is not a site I would ever have anticipated finding – to have found one of these burials would have been astonishing, so to have found so many is quite unbelievable. The proximity of the date of this cemetery to the end of the Roman period is particularly exciting, especially as it is a period we know comparatively little about.’

A number of the graves also contained vessels similar to cremation urns, but as the majority of burials were inhumations these items seem to have been included as accessories. Post-excavation analysis of the finds, which include objects that may have been imported from abroad, will continue over the next few years.

Ltd

HS2

: ©

I M AG E

Burials uncovered at Leicester Cathedral

Excavations in the gardens at the eastern end of Leicester Cathedral (BELOW RIGHT), carried out by University of Leicester Archaeological Services (ULAS) in advance of redevelopment work at the Old Song School, have resumed following the excavation of over 100 burials last winter.

Formerly part of the churchyard of St Martin’s parish church (raised to cathedral status in 1927), the site will see the construction of a new heritage centre, funded by a £4.5 million grant from the National Lottery Heritage Fund as part of Leicester Cathedral Revealed, a wide-ranging restoration project.

‘It’s an interesting one for us because it is in the conservation area of the city, so we don’t often get to look in this part of town,’ John Thomas, Deputy Director of ULAS, told CA.

So far, the team has unearthed 124 burials, dated – from nameplates – to between 1738 and 1855. ‘Middle-class business owners seems to be what we are getting at the minute,’ said athew orris, a ro ect fficer at AS who is leading the excavations. Four individuals have been identified, including a blacksmith,

a glazier, and one Anne Barratt – a ‘gentlewoman’ from a wealthy family of hosiers, he said. Work is only just starting, though, and John said that current estimates suggest around 800 burials could still be left to excavate.

‘Stratigraphically, we’re probably going back into the 17th century at this point as well,’ Mathew said, ‘but then we’re expecting burials could potentially go back in date to the late Anglo-Saxon period.’

ULAS is collaborating with colleagues from the university’s School of Archaeology and Ancient History, as part of a wider project looking at tobacco use between the 15th and 18th centuries. Osteologist Dr Sarah Inskip, a UKRI Future Leaders Fellow who will lead this study, said: ‘The ability to assess individuals from one location over such a long time period will allow us to see how the lives of Leicester people changed with major social upheaval and transitions, such as epidemic disease, the arrival of new global commodities such as tobacco, and industrialisation.’

All individuals will be carefully reburied following completion of the research work.

: ULAS

I M AG E

10

Current Archaeology

AUGUST 2022

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