Worked flint tool and its modern equivalent, a utility knife.
Our image today is of a worked flint flake, with its modern equivalent a utility knife.
Over spans of thousands of years, human history is mainly reconstructed from the discovery of similar flint tools, or the other variations on the scale and sophistication of objects that represent the flint-workers art.
Each of these tools represents intentional alteration and manipulation of the properties of flint, or other stones available in other parts of the world, to create cutting edges in the material that can be utilised for many purposes. Archaeologists have generated models of both the creative skills that went into each tool and the functions and social circumstances they were used in, individually or as part of a tool kit that can be recognised and classified in the archaeological record.
To a great extent prehistoric humans are known only by recognising the dexterity and technological repertoire of their tools, through analysing or recreating the actions that went into creating each one. Cultural and social organisation in these periods is projected from the way that tools are grouped into sets and distributed over space and time.
Each flint, like the one in the image, preserves the action of a single unknown maker at a single point in time. The study of these actions, and the products of each of the makers, collectively preserves an echo of the whole way of life of an ancient society.
You might think that this pair of Grade II Iisted brick and flint cottages with their Flemish style gables are tucked away in the Kent countryside. These lovely buildings are in fact hidden away behind the shops of Queen Street in Ramsgate. Accessed through a narrow passage called Queens Court they are a hidden gem of the townscape and a window through which we can see something of 17th century Ramsgate.
Teaching skeleton number two in his travelling carton
We’ve just taken delivery of our second teaching skeleton at Virtual Museum, in time to create a new archaeological activity for Archaeology for You on the 12th of July.
Talking human skeletons with our teaching skeleton
Although we already have one excellent disarticulated skeleton for osteological instruction in our Bones and Burials activity, we’ve now got one to practise digging and planning with.
Excavating and recording human burials is one of the most complicated and painstaking tasks archaeologists undertake in the field and we would like to explain how it is done.
So our new teaching skeleton will be pressed into service as the example for excavation, while our other skeleton will let us explain which bone is connected to which.
Painted wall plaster from Abbey Farm Villa, Minster-in-Thanet
We have over 7,500 pieces of painted wall and ceiling plaster from the site ranging in size from a few centimetres to roughly the size of an A4 page.
As the technique used here was fresco, where the paint was applied directly to fresh plaster, we know that the artist who painted these designs must have been on the Isle of Thanet carrying out the work. This makes them one of the earliest artists in the area.
Visit the Virtual Museum to see some of the other pieces of plaster from the site.
Fragment of Romano-British mosaic from Minster in Thanet
The image for our VM_365 project today is of a fragment of Roman Mosaic with part of a guilloche pattern that was found in the excavation of a Roman Villa at Minster in Thanet.
One of the most impressive Roman buildings to have been discovered on the Isle of Thanet to date and almost certainly on of the most important places in the area in the Roman period.
Mosaic fragment in its storage container
Several of these small fragments of Mosaic from the excavation are in storage, but there were no floors of any size surviving in the excavated remains of the villa. The pieces we have survived because they had been broken up and had fallen into a deep chamber within the northern apse of the building.
This architectural model is one of our attempts to show what the building was like in one of its major periods of use.
It is useful to try to reconstruct the shape and size of the Villa building with its main range, wings and detached bath house building, which was served by its own piped water supply.
With only the ground plan visible from the robbed remains of walls it is difficult to know exactly what the structure of the building was like, but with the few mosaic fragments we have, we can at least assume that like other buildings of the period it had several of these grand decorative surfaces. The full history of the building and the details of exactly who may have lived in and around it will probably remain unknown.
Re-creating the lifestyles of the past is one of the ways that we study the objects discovered by archaeological investigation. Objects and personal items that have been found together in well dated layers on archaeological sites have been carefully recorded and studied to build a picture of all the things that were used or worn at a specific time.
Using the evidence recovered from excavations, authentic objects and costumes from a particular time in history can be reconstructed. By recreating the costumes, household items and clothing of the past and using them to re-enact processes and encounters that were experienced in the past, archaeologists gain an insight into life as it was lived.
Changes in the styles and functions of the objects let us trace changes in fashion and style, but also point out sharp breaks and changes in ways of life, which are important to our understanding of history.
De Bello Canzio are a re-enactment group that explore the changing world of the Cantiaci, the people Julius Caesar records as living in Kent in the Iron Age. One of the significant changes to the life of the Cantiaci came when the Roman armies invaded and occupied the Island of Britain in 43 AD.
Many of familiar patterns of dress and objects that were used by the Cantiaci before the Roman invasion lived on for a time, but the range of costumes, equipment and household items changed significantly after the Roman invasion.
Through their displays and costumes De Bello Canzio bring a glimpse of the life of the Iron Age and Roman Cantiaci to the re-living ancient life area at Archaeology for You.
Today’s picture is of archaeological ceramics specialist Nigel Macpherson-Grant working in our store, sorting through boxes of prehistoric pottery from past sites. Nigel is creating an exemplary collection of Thanet’s ceramic material which we will use in the Virtual Museum for teaching, display and handling collections. You will be able to see and handle some of it at Archaeology for You on 12th July.
The two sherds of pottery shown above were in one of the boxes Nigel was looking at. They date to the Early to Middle Iron Age, between 550-400 BC and are known as rusticated coarsewares, because of the treatment of their surfaces. They were found in the Fort Hill area of Margate.
As archaeologists we often have a camera handy to record those unexpected moments when something new emerges from the ground, or from our collection of artefacts. Whether its capturing an image outdoors on a site, or in one of the darker recesses of the museum storage boxes or having the opportunity to take a fresh look at something we take for granted, we will post an in image in our project each day.
Choosing the image we post each day will be a chance to stretch our imagination in illustrating the world of archaeology and our important local heritage. Over the course of the year we may develop themes with a series of pictures, or just take a one off chance to explore a subject.
We have some ideas in mind already of images we want to show, others will come to us as the project goes on. Some of our images may be taken quickly, capturing a valuable moment as the opportunity arises and some will use the rich resources of images we have in our archives. Whatever the circumstances the project will present something interesting, fun and thought provoking each day.
Check in through our Twitter and FaceBook pages, or here on our journal where you will find more notes or detailed background to the images.
We would love to have your feedback and comments on the images over the duration of VM_365, we start today!
The first image we would like you to see is the new VM_365 logo which will accompany the images over the year. Like it?
Archaeological activities for all ages for the National Festival of Archaeology
Archaeology for You is the Trust’s annual event to celebrate the National Festival of Archaeology, which is organised each year by the Council for British Archaeology. Once again in 2014 Archaeology for You will be held in the Gardens of the Powell-Cotton Museum, on Saturday the 12th of July from 10am to 5pm.
If you ever wonder how archaeologists can say what they do about the past, you can find out at Archaeology for You. There are many hands on activities demonstrating the principles and methods of archaeological investigation, exploring digging methods, site recording and the process of reading the evidence of the finds from a site, giving you the basics of archaeological investigation.
De Bello Canzio stand at A4U 2013
To bring to life the people of the past re-enactors from De Bello Canzio, a group specialising in Iron Age and Roman life, will show how archaeological evidence is used to explore costumes, tools, weapons to reconstruct the way of life of the Iron Age and Roman people.
There are no age limits to learning at Archaeology for You, there’s something for everyone in each of the activities from the youngest to the oldest.
The Trust for Thanet Archaeology is an education charity, with the mission to explore and explain archaeology. At Archaeology for You we bring together our experience as professional archaeologists with our education role, to demonstrate how archaeologists explore the world around them and use the evidence they gather to create historical stories by using archaeological techniques to investigate things and places.
Teachers exploring archaeology at school will find many ideas and resources at Archaeology for You that can be used in the classroom to help children understand how archaeologists investigate the world and reveal history from things and places.
Rome’s Army and its famous elite Legions are one of the best known aspects of the Republic and Empire that had such an influence on our history. The Legions were units of well trained, well armoured and well-disciplined fighting men, who helped to create and to defend the Republic and Empire of Rome over many centuries. The Complete Roman Legions, by Nigel Pollard and Joanne Berry, published by Thames and Hudson, provides an excellent introduction to the current state of our knowledge of the Roman Legions.
The introduction to the book gives an excellent explanation of what the Legions were and how they developed over time. While the Legions were not the only soldiers employed in the Roman armies, they were the best organised and equipped, enjoying considerable privileges as elite professional soldiers. After introducing the history of the Legions from the earliest Republic and their expansion as an instrument of politics and civil war, the book gives a narrative history of each Legion, based on historical and archaeological evidence.
Reading the long series of descriptions of the origin, bases and major battles of each Legion, it is difficult not to be impressed by the scale and complexity of the organisation of the Roman Army. One of many interesting aspects revealed by the book is the career path of Legionary Centurions, who appear to have been recruited from a higher social class than ordinary soldiers and were regularly transferred to serve in different and unrelated Legions as a junior officer class with a high status and considerable authority in military and civilian life. The last two chapters of the book give a brief account of the changes to the organisation of the Legions in the later Roman period and their often obscure later histories, involving surprising continuities, occasional disappearances and in most cases an unrecorded end after some centuries of existence.
Perhaps the most interesting aspect of this book are the sub texts that raise questions that are left unanswered even by such a carefully laid out and well-illustrated work as this is. There is little in the book about the day to day organisation and communication between the Legions and the political and military authorities of the Empire. The involvement of the Legions in civil wars in support of one or another aspirant to the Imperial power must have challenged loyalties and ultimately the coherence of the military system. In setting out such a comprehensive list of the known facts about the Legions of Rome, the book ultimately lays bare the limits of our knowledge of the full history of the Legions as part of the story of Rome. Of the Roman Legions in the 4th and 5th century very little appears to be known, or represented in historical texts and archaeological evidence. One of the real problems for this late Antique period is tracing the transition to the new forms of political and social structures that emerge from the Roman Empire in the Early Roman period. The absence of evidence for the decline of one of the dominant institutions of the Roman period is clearly a major issue in this historical problem. Perhaps one answer lies in the strength of the evidence for the organisation of the Legions in the period from the 1st to the late 3rd century when the iconography and history of the Roman Legion is most familiar to us from contemporary culture.
The forts, weapons and armour of Legionary are all well attested in contemporary evidence, most strikingly illustrated in the carved tombstones of Legionaries that record both career histories but also express genuine affection from family members who are often also serving soldiers and from comrades. The establishment of many of the Legions in permanent fortified bases, which became towns and cities as generations of Legionaries served, settled and even provided the next phase of recruits to their home unit over spans of centuries. The narratives for each Legion in this book suggest that the sheer longevity and organisational sophistication of the Army meant that the units as a component of the community, the root and driving force of community formation not an alien force imposed on it. This is surely a fruitful line of enquiry into the whole structure and functioning of the Roman Empire, which has often been viewed as a coherent super-state, whose armies have been seen as mobile and capably of being disposed to any region or struggle that occurred within its boundaries. The Army also appears in conventional narratives to be rootless and fickle, lending its support here and there to one usurper or another without any sense of what this meant in practice to their organisation, supply and recruitment in the long term.
From this book we can see that the Legions evolved into a network of strong regional forces who lent detachments of their men to the causes they supported but remained rooted in their home bases where they derived their strength and a local and increasingly hereditary supply of recruits. Eventually the close integration of the Legionary system into the evolving Empire required a re-organisation to provide precisely the sort of mobile and rootless forces that the fragmenting Empire and its warlords required and the old system was superseded, living on only in the occasional continuity of unit names, given to much smaller and radically differently organised forces. These existed among units with titles that reflect the ad-hoc recruitment for the partisan support of various usurpers, break away Empires and units recruited from the leaking borders of the Empire.
The Complete Roman Legions – inside the book
The book is in a large format (review is of the hard back version) with 224 pages and contains tabulated information inserted within the text as well as excellent block sections with supplementary information and it has many good colour illustrations (212 illustration, 204 in colour). There is a useful glossary, a comprehensive guide to further detailed reading and it is well indexed.
This is a well-produced volume which is essential as a basic guide to the structure and historical development of the Legions of Rome which would suit a general reader as well as a specialist looking for a handbook to the data and sources for regions which are perhaps less familiar. As a general guide to the Roman Legions it would be an essential book for anyone studying the period, or with a general interest in this significant aspect of a Roman past we all share.
