Monday 24 November 2008

MUSEUMS, METAL DETECTORISTS AND BRITAIN'S RICH ARCHAEOLOGICAL HERITAGE

A stunning golden torc dating from the Iron Age, a hoard of over 3,600 Roman coins and a tiny Anglo Saxon roundel depicting the Hand of God were just some of the items on show at the British Museum last week for the launch of the Portable Antiquities Scheme (PAS) Treasure Annual Report.

The report lists thousands of archaeological finds made and reported by members of the public and includes all of the discoveries that passed through the Treasure Process in 2005 and 2006 from an impressive 1,257 finds in total – each of them contributing to our understanding of the past.

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Monday 17 November 2008

Roman settlement unearthed near Penrith

A Roman settlement has been unearthed near Penrith by workman preparing the ground for a sewage pipe.

The civilian vicus, which is thought to date back to the first century AD, was discovered on agricultural land in Brougham close to the A66.

Experts have declared the site is of national significance.

Archeologists uncovered the remains of two timber buildings, cobbled lanes, three stone buildings and a rare Grubenhauser – a sunken feature building from the early medieval period.

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Tuesday 11 November 2008

Anglo-Saxon Kent Electronic Database (ASKED)

ASKED, the Anglo-Saxon Kent Electronic Database was built collaboratively by Stuart Brookes and Sue Harrington to facilitate our respective PhD researches at UCL Institute of Archaeology, from 1998-2000. A pared down version of its content is presented here, in order for it to act as the pilot database for a much larger corpus of material currently being gathered under the aegis of the 'Beyond the Tribal Hidage Project' - a Leverhulme funded research project undertaken at UCL Institute of Archaeology by director Martin Welch and research assistant Sue Harrington. It is intended that this new dataset will be deposited with the Archaeology Data Service in late 2009, retaining the same format as this version of ASKED.

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