History and Archaeology
http://hdl.handle.net/10034/622976
2024-03-28T22:05:40ZGlaziers' Hollow, Delamere Forest, Cheshire: investigation and survey of a late medieval glassworking site
http://hdl.handle.net/10034/628565
Glaziers' Hollow, Delamere Forest, Cheshire: investigation and survey of a late medieval glassworking site
Gondek, Meggen; Ainsworth, Stewart
In 2023, a gradiometer survey was conducted over two small areas of a medieval glassworking site known as Glaziers’ Hollow in Delamere Forest primarily to help identify the precise location of excavations conducted there in 1935 and 1947. This survey forms part of a larger project aimed at furthering the understanding of this scheduled monument in response to its current presence on the Historic England Heritage at Risk register. Over two days in June and another two days in November, a small team conducted the gradiometry survey alongside a suite of other non-invasive survey techniques. Results showed a focused cluster of magnetic anomalies that corresponded closely to previously unrecorded earthworks visible on the ground, as well as more modern disturbances and anomalies likely to be the location of the historic excavations. The signature of the readings is somewhat inconclusive as to the specific identification of a glassworking furnace or furnaces, but do suggest glassworking and associated activity close by, although results may be influenced by the amount of disturbance and potential overburden at the site.
Archaeological survey and geophysical survey report.
2024-03-27T00:00:00ZDiscussion: Hunter-Gatherers in the Landscape
http://hdl.handle.net/10034/628382
Discussion: Hunter-Gatherers in the Landscape
Taylor, Barry; Conneller, Chantal; Lane, Paul; Schadla-Hall, Tim
The work of the Seamer Carr project and the VPRT has created an unparalleled record of the human occupation of a North European, early prehistoric landscape. The test-pitting surveys and open-area excavations have recorded evidence for human activity that ranges in scale from discrete hunting events to the long-term, repeated occupation of particular landscape locations. Added to this, systematic augering of large parts of the basin, accompanied by palaeoenvironmental studies at key sites, has produced a detailed account of the environmental context within which these episodes of human activity took place. The purpose of this chapter is to provide an interpretive summary and synthesis of this data, beginning with an overview of the archaeological record of hunting and gathering/foraging around the shores of the former Lake Flixton and the islands near its centre, and what this can tell us about the changing nature of hunter-gatherer settlement, resource utilisation, logistics and material traditions between the Final Palaeolithic and the Late Mesolithic. The second part of the chapter brings together the archaeological and palaeoenvironmental data to explore the changing relationships between humans and their environment.
This book chapter is not available on ChesterRep
Art on the March
http://hdl.handle.net/10034/628358
Art on the March
Williams, Howard
Commentary
2023-10-30T00:00:00ZRethinking Offa’s Dyke as a Hydraulic Frontier Work
http://hdl.handle.net/10034/628357
Rethinking Offa’s Dyke as a Hydraulic Frontier Work
Williams, Howard
Building upon a fresh interpretation of Wat’s Dyke as a component of an early medieval hydraulic frontier zone rather than primarily serving as a symbol of power, a fixed territorial border or a military stop-line (Williams 2021), here, I refine and apply this approach to its longer and better-known neighbour: Offa’s Dyke. This linear earthwork’s placement, alignments and landscape context are evaluated afresh using a simple but original comparative mapping methodology. First, on the local level, I show that Offa’s Dyke was carefully and strategically positioned to connect, overlook and block a range of watercourses and wetlands at key transverse and parallel crossing points, thus observing and choreographing mobility on multiple axes. Second, I address the regional scale, showing how Offa’s Dyke interacted with, and controlled, biaxial movement through and between water catchments parallel and transverse to the monument’s principal alignments. Both these arguments inform how the Dyke might have operated on the supra-regional scale, ‘from sea to sea’ and also ‘across the sea’, by controlling the estuarine and maritime zones of the Dee Estuary in the north and the Wye/Severn confluence to the south. Integrating military, territorial, socio-economic and ideological functionality and significance, Offa’s Dyke, like its shorter neighbour Wat’s Dyke (in an as-yet uncertain relationship), configured mobilities over land and water via its hydraulic dimensions and interactions. Together, the monuments can be reconsidered as elements of a multi-functional hydraulic frontier zone constructed by one or more rulers of the middle Anglo-Saxon kingdom of Mercia and operative both in times of peace and conflict.
2023-10-30T00:00:00Z