NEWSLETTER 134 February 2014 2013

Registered Charity No. 105565 NEWSLETTER 134 February 2014 Registered2013 Charity No. 1055654 The Trewhiddle Hoard. Displayed in The British Museum and replica in Royal Cornwall Museum, Photo published courtesy of the British Museum. At the AGM and in a recent Newsletter I asked members to nominate their favourite museum objects. I thought I would take the editor’s privilege to start the ball rolling with this collection of Anglo/Saxon secular and religious objects, which were found with an unknown number of coins by tin -streamers in 1774, seventeen feet below the surface under a pile of stones. Coins and some articles were lost before Phillip Rashleigh of Menabilly collected what remained of the hoard. The chalice may have been intact when it was found but many fragments have now disappeared. The remaining coins date the hoard to AD 868. The silver scourge is made of tube-knitted wire with plaits and knots terminating in a blue and white veined glass bead from which four tongues, knotted at their ends, spread. The decorated pin has a hollow head. The strap ends and belt slides are silver, but the buckle is cast in bronze. It is not known what the silver carved ornament mounts were attached to. While most of the objects are of Anglo-Saxon design there was a Celtic brooch. The chalice is the only A/S silver chalice found in Britain. It has a gilded inside and rivet holes below the rim indicate an applied rim or decorated band. The bowl and stem were riveted together. The scourge too is unique in Anglo-Saxon collections. It has been suggested that the hoard had been hidden from marauding Vikings. It appeals to me not only for its beauty, but because so many of the objects excite the imagination, especially the scourge. Remember the villain in “The Da Vinci Code” who wore a hair shirt and scourged himself? A silver scourge surely belonged to no ordinary cleric. How did the Celtic brooch get into the collection? How did the chalice get broken? Did the miners quarrel over the hoard and how were the coins distributed amongst themselves? How did Rashleigh get to hear of the hoard? There are some stories to be told. Mapping the Sun at the Hurlers. Iain Rowe The Caradon Hill Area Heritage Project would like to thank the landowners, site managers, graziers and local commoners for their A groundbreaking community archaeology project on Bodmin Moor help and permissions, without which this event could never have taken was carried out in September. Mapping the Sun has been facilitated place. and managed by The Caradon Hill Area Heritage Project (CHAHP), which receives funding from the Heritage Lottery Project, DEFRA, Dr John P Salvatore: The newly discovered Roman Cornwall Council and other local partners. This phase of the project has been deemed a great success, with the excavation and associated Military Supply base and Iron Age Settlement at St workshops being visited by well over 1,000 people. Loye’s College, Exeter (Truro, 17 October 2013) Twelve local school group visits were also facilitated and managed The story of the Roman occupation of Devon and Cornwall is slowly during the week long project by CHAHP. The children learning about unfolding, not steadily but in fits and starts, and has a very long way to life in the Bronze Age and actually visited the remains of the go before it is comprehensive. Although this is especially true in roundhouses where the builders of the Hurlers may have lived, as well Cornwall (where Steve Hartgroves is now leading a CAS project to as Rillaton Barrow, former home of the famous gold cup. Myths and investigate Roman activity), it applies to a lesser extent in Devon. Our Legends, Astronomy and Archaeology workshops were also laid on for first lecture for the winter was by Dr John Salvatore who skilfully them. guided his audience through the intriguing excavations at St Loye’s near Exeter and explained how the findings have improved the A series of guided walks during the week were well attended, as were understanding of how the Roman military operated in that area. Since the flint knapping, small finds and woad dyeing workshops on the open Roman Isca (Exeter) was the headquarters of the Roman province that Saturday. The excavation team was mainly made of volunteers, most included Cornwall these discoveries may have a wider significance. of which were local, and had no archaeological training beforehand. In the summer and winter of 2010, Exeter Archaeology undertook a Apart from the successful community aspect of the project, important full-scale, open-area excavation of the former St Loye’s College on discoveries have been made and a unique granite pavement, Topsham Road, Exeter. It soon became clear that this was a multi- excavated initially in the 1930s and under threat from erosion, has period site, with signs of Iron Age enclosures and, most intriguingly, been re-excavated, surveyed and resealed. During the excavation a part of a rectangular enclosure bearing similarities to Elginhaugh fort in Bronze Age cutting tool was found as well as other flakes of flint. We Lothian, as well as to that at Tiverton, which has been investigated by will have to wait, possibly up to three months, for the pollen sampling our President, Val Maxfield. The enclosure seemed to have been analysis to come back, which should enable us to date the building of abandoned rapidly and its ditches filled with Roman-period materials, this unique monument, which is unknown in any other part of Britain, including glass and pottery. One piece of Samian ware was stamped possibly the world. ‘NESTOR’, a potter known to be active between A.D. 55 and 65. Some items would only have been available to the Roman military, which seemed to support the theory that this was a fortification of sorts. Yet doubts persisted. It seemed odd to have a fortification between the legionary fort at Isca itself and the defended Roman port at Topsham, especially with nearby fortlets at Ide and Stoke Hill. Moreover the layout was not quite right: it was not as regular as might have been expected; no barracks could be identified; nor were there any interval towers on the boundary; and there was no inner perimeter road (Via Segularis). The evidence hinted at some sort of military function but it lacked essential defensive features. Two discoveries edged the investigators towards a different view. Post-trenches and a series of post-pits suggested the existence of a tall, aisled building set apart from the others, rather similar to the fabrica (workshop) found in the fort at Isca. The latter had been used for bronze-working, whereas that at St Loye’s seemed more consistent with iron-working, possibly an armoury. The second discovery lent weight to this idea. Fragments of a wooden writing tablet, bearing Roman cursive text, were unearthed. Following restoration, it became possible to make out some of the writing, which read ‘VERO’ ('to Verus') and ‘ARM), possibly an abbreviation of ‘armorum custodi’ (armourer) or armentium (the armoury). While the exact function of the site is not fully established, it does The excavation has been led by members of Cornwall Council’s Historic seem highly likely that St Loye’s was a military depot midway Environment Projects Team, who have overseen the dig, trained the between the fortress at Isca and Topsham. We will probably volunteers and kept the visitors informed. The Roseland Observatory never know what Verus and his associates called it (nor what was on site all week leading workshops and surveying the landscape they thought of the Dumnonians) but this site, so clearly and and astronomical alignments. A local Geologist has also been on site engagingly described by Dr Salvatore) was of great local st adding to a unique mix of experts who will be all adding their findings significance in the 1 century A.D. when Roman control of the to the final report, which is due to be published before Christmas region was established. 2013. Roger Smith Woodcock Corner slate disc explored through Neolithic idealised world view; as much a map of their outlook as of how they wished to work in their landscape. replication. Criss-cross ard marks scratch the surface of parcels of land, stockades pen domesticated animals, axes cut trees and split logs and square framed houses are built. Thomas Goskar told Hill about the remarkable properties of moving light and seeing the object in the flickering light of a flame it became reasonable, given the parallel straight edges on the misnamed ‘disc’, to prop it up against a wall on a ledge or dresser, such as was found at Skara Brae; the dancing light bringing the image to life in shadow play. The complex other side, revealed for the first time by the fresh contrast of slate dust, appeared to be a riot of creativity, uninhibited by the fear of mistakes. The work of a younger person perhaps; but it still kept the grid formula, but springing diagonally from decorated triangles backed onto baselines which Hill interpreted as shorelines with European Bronze Age ships making fabled contacts with the Stone Age inhabitants of The British Isles and hence stimulating a rapid and remarkably homogeneous archaeological phenomenon: Grooved Ware Culture. Graham Hill Stonehenge Rocks! At the Corfield Nankivel lecture this year on 5th November, members were privileged to hear an erudite and stimulating photos Courtesy of Graham Hill. lecture by Professor Timothy Darvill, Bournemouth University, one of Britain’s foremost prehistorians. In March 2013 Graham Hill was asked to copy the remarkable incised Grooved Ware object, found in a pit at the Neolithic Stonehenge is the icon of European prehistory and a World causewayed enclosure at Truro EDC site in 2012.

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