An Archaeology of the East Midlands: Class 1

An Archaeology of the
East Midlands
Class 1: Introduction
Tutor: Keith Challis
east-midlands-archaeology.blogspot.co.uk

Class Summary
• Admin and Housekeeping
• Personal Introduction
• Course Outline
• What is archaeology?
• Coffee Break
• The Environment of the East Midlands
• Techniques of Archaeological Research 1

Practicalities
• Enrolment paperwork and payment
• Register
• Absence (keith.challis@york.ac.uk) or
Phone/Txt 07921457007
• What to bring
• Handouts (paperless course?)

About Me
• The National Trust
• Research Associate, Department
of Archaeology, University of York
• Research Fellow in Remote
Sensing, University of Birmingham
• Research Officer, York
Archaeological Trust
• Research Associate, University of
Nottingham
• 13 years project management and
commercial archaeological
consultancy at Trent & Peak
Archaeology

My Interests
• Remote Sensing
– Lidar
– Airborne MS/HS imagery
– Satellite applications in
cultural heritage
• Heritage
– Alluvial geoarchaeology
– Medieval landscapes
• GI Science
– Predictive modelling
– Visualisation of landscapes

Learning Outcomes
• Understand in general terms the chronology and material culture of
human activity in the East Midlands.
• Appreciate some of the factors that uniquely characterise the
archaeology and history of the East Midlands.
• Have a broad appreciation of archaeological research techniques
and so be able to critically assess archaeological research and
literature.
• Be familiar with and have an outline grasp of some of the main
techniques of archaeological research.
• Be able to engage critically with archaeological evidence for the
East Midlands so as to achieve a fresh appreciation of the
landscape and history of our region.

Course Outline
1. The Early Environment of the East Midlands.
Techniques of Archaeological Research 1.
2. Prehistory in the Trent Valley and the Peak.
3. From Roman to Saxon, Cultural Transitions
in the Archaeological Record.
4. A Disputed Land: Angles, Saxon and Vikings
in the East Midlands.
5. The Medieval Countryside of the East Midlands.

Course Outline
6. The Medieval Town in the East Midlands.
7. The East Midlands, 1600-1900.
8. Themes in Industrial and Early Modern Archaeology.
9. Heritage, history and identity. How the past contributes to
the Regional identity of the East Midlands

Options
Existing group knowledge and skills…?
Periods…?
Locales…?
Themes and Skills…?

Learning Experience
• Informal Lecture
• Discussion
• Applied skills

Reading and Books
Adkins, R. The Handbook of British
Archaeology
Beckett, J. 1988. The East Midlands
from 1000AD
Greene, K. Archaeology: An
Introduction
Muir, R. 2000. The New Reading the
Landscape.
Stafford, P. 1985. The East Midlands in
the Early Middle Ages

Reading and Books
Course bookshop (Amazon)
http://astore.amazon.co.uk/hoskins-21

Course Web Site
• Lecture Slides
• Downloadable handouts
• Bookshop
• Resources
• Supplementary Material
• Answers
east-midlands-archaeology.
blogspot.co.uk

Section 1: What is
Archaeology?

What is Archaeology?
Defining Archaeology?
your views…

Defining Archaeology
• The study of past peoples, cultures and
societies through their material remains

Defining Archaeology
• the study of human activity in the past,
primarily through the recovery and analysis
of the material culture and environmental
data that they have left behind, which
includes artifacts, architecture, biofacts and
cultural landscapes (the archaeological
record).

Theoretical Approaches to
Archaeology
• Art Historical Traditions
• Material culture and
distribution dominance
• New
(quantitative/modernist)
thinking
• Post modernism and
phenomenology
• ? Pragmatic archaeology

Cultural Historical
• Culture-historical
archaeology is an
archaeological theory
that emphasises
defining historical
societies into distinct
ethnic and cultural
groupings according
to their material
culture.

The New Archaeology
(Processual)
• Concerned with the
processes of cultural
change…
• and the appropriate objective
methods used to study them
• Explanation is scientific
through the construction and
testing of hypotheses and
general observations

Post-Processual Archaeology
• Contextual archaeology sees
material remains as a text to be
decoded
• Reflexivity - Ability to change
methods as you work
• Knowledge stems from the
dialogue between subject
(archaeologist) and object
(remains)
• Rejection of concept of
‘objective reality’

Phenomenology
(the philosophical study of the structures of
subjective experience and consciousness).
“To understand a landscape truly it must be
felt, but to convey some of this feeling to
others it has to be talked about, recounted,
or written and depicted."
Chris Tilley

Pragmatic Archaeology
• The real work [in the study of landscape] is
accomplished by the men and women with the
muddy boots and aching joints who do most of the
work (Muir 2000)
• [The author’s] hobby is exploring England on foot,
a pursuit of inexhaustible interest in which he
reckons to make at least one major “discovery”
each week (Hoskins 1954)

Flavours of Archaeology

Field Archaeology
• OGS Crawford (1886 – 1957)
• Pioneer aerial archaeologist
• Founder of Antiquity
• First archaeological officer for
Ordnance Survey
• Coined the term Field
Archaeology to describe the
practical map, photograph and
field observation technique he
developed (Archaeology in the
Field, 1953)

Landscape Archaeology
• the study of the ways in which
people in the past constructed and
used the environment around them
• WG Hoskins: emphasised
fieldwork, especially walking the
landscape, the primacy of local
knowledge and exploration of
diverse sources (documents, maps,
place-names).
• The successful landscape historian
assembled a narrative that
explained the observable facets of
landscape, explaining what of the
past could be seen in the present.

Geoarchaeology
• a multi-disciplinary approach which
uses the techniques and subject
matter of geography, geology and
other Earth sciences to examine
topics which inform archaeological
knowledge and thought.
• Geoarchaeologists study the natural
physical processes that affect
archaeological sites such as
geomorphology, the formation of sites
through geological processes and the
effects on buried sites and artifacts
post-deposition.

Environmental Archaeology
• The study of the long-term
relationship between humans and
their environments.
• Environmental archaeology is
commonly divided into three
subfields: archaeobotany,
zooarchaeology, and
archaeopedology

Coffee Break

The East Midlands
Regions, Geology and
Topography
• Conventionally Nottinghamshire,
Leicestershire (and Rutland),
Derbyshire, Lincolnshire and
Northamptonshire.
• Straddles the boundary between
the Upland and Lowland zones
of England.

The East Midlands
Solid Geology
East and South
• Triassic clays
• Jurassic Limestone
• Chalk
North and West
• Sandstone
• Millstone Grit
• Limestone

The East Midlands
Glacial History
• Fully Ice covered in the Anglian
Glaciation
• Partially covered in the LGM
• Tundra like environments
• Pro-glacial lakes

The East Midlands
Drift Geology
• Highly complex
• Pleistocene river gravels
• Till/Boulder clay
• Wind blown sand
• Holocene reworking of
gravels

Section 3:
Archaeological Techniques 1
Geoarchaeology in the Trent Valley

What is Geoarchaeology ?

Saxo-Norman basket-weir fish-trap
from Hemington Quarry.
Image courtesy ULAS.
Anchor-stones for fish-traps
from Hemington Quarry. Image
courtesy Chris Salisbury.
Late 11th century timber bridge
across the Trent at Hemington
Quarry. Image courtesy ULAS.
Timbers from an early 17th
century kid-weir at Dovebridge,
built to control increased flow in
the Dove during the Little Ice Age.

Medieval masonry bridge pier at Hemington. Image courtesy ULAS.
Late Neolithic human remains in log-jam at Langford, Notts.
Image courtesy TPAU.
Later prehistoric ditch beneath peaty alluvium at Girton, Notts.
Cropmarks of the late Neolithic cursus monument at Aston on Trent.
Image English Heritage.

The alluvial stratigraphy of the River Trent at Girton, Notts.

MTV at Willington.

Airborne Alternatives to Muddy Boots
Air-photo mosaic and plot of palaeochannels of the Trent. Images courtesy Steve Baker, TPAU.

Airborne Alternatives to Muddy Boots

Geoarchaeology Under the Ground

Self Assessment
Learning Outcomes
• Have a broad appreciation of what archaeology is and is
not.
• Be aware of differing theoretical approaches to
archaeological study.
• Understand differences between types of archaeological
research.
• Grasp the physical outline of the East Midlands
Landscape.
• Appreciate fluvial geoarchaeology.

An Archaeology of the East Midlands: Class 1

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