Saturday 19th January 2019 BAS Lecture:<\/p>\n
Adventures in Experimental Archaeology <\/strong><\/p>\n by Dr Jennifer Foster (UoR)<\/em><\/p>\n Jennifer opened her talk by posing the question: what is experimental archaeology? It is a way of answering research questions and testing hypotheses by experiment. She described several<\/span> such<\/span> experiments, some of which were carried out by undergraduates in the Harris Gardens at the University of Reading.<\/span><\/p>\n Can we chop down a tree with a stone axe? It<\/span> has been shown that a small tree can be felled in 15 minutes and <\/span>that <\/span>three men <\/span>can<\/span> clear 500m in four hours, giving a clearance ra<\/span>t<\/span>e of 0.2ha\/man\/week. This is the sort of information that cannot be obtained from a study of artefacts alone. The discovery of Mesolithic footprints in the mud of the Severn estuary at <\/span>Goldcliff<\/span> presented another opportunity to exper<\/span>i<\/span>men<\/span>t<\/span>. Severn mud was brough<\/span>t<\/span> to Reading, where it was found possible to <\/span>distinguish<\/span> male and female footprints from the age of eight from <\/span>their <\/span>stride and footprint size. A<\/span>s another example, a<\/span>Neolithic building excavated at <\/span>Marden<\/span> Henge<\/span> in Wiltshire<\/span>was<\/span> associated with piles of fire-cracked sarsen stones. The excavator, Jim Leary, thought the building may have been used as a sweat lodge and a half-size replica was built in an attempt to see if this was feasibl<\/span><\/a>e. The wattle-walled structure was roofed and heated stones doused with cold water. Repeated <\/span>dous<\/span>ing<\/span>s<\/span> produced stea<\/span>m<\/span> for up to 20 minutes and created a stifling atmosphere that may have prov<\/span>id<\/span>ed a ritual element to the activity.<\/span><\/p>\n The use of he<\/span>a<\/span>ted stones as pot-boilers to cook food is commonly assumed but could have left an unpleasant mineral sludge in the bottom of the stew<\/span> pot. <\/span>Jennifer and her students set about to determine whether Neol<\/span>i<\/span>thic pots could have been heated directly over a bonfire. \u00a0Clay pots made by the coiling method were first fired in a bonfire with a 98% success rate. The inside of a pot was then rubbed with pig fat or butter (traces of both have been identified in Neolithic pots by lipid analysis) to make it waterproof. The experimental pot was found to cook veget<\/span>a<\/span>bles (and nettle soup) very well indeed<\/span>and could be reused several times<\/span>. In another cooking experiment a whole salmon, wrapped in damp cabbage leaves tied with string, was successfully cooked in the ashes of a fire pit.<\/span><\/p>\n On a different scale entirely, several experimental earthworks have bee<\/span>n<\/span> constructed to study the effects of natural erosion over time. The Overton <\/span>D<\/span>own earthwork in Wiltshire was built in 1960 and excavated 32 years later; another was built at Wareham in Dorset in 1980 and excavated after 17 and 33 years; an<\/span>d<\/span> in 1984 Peter Reynolds designed an octagonal earthwork at<\/span> W<\/span>roughton<\/span> near Swindon, which exposed the banks to the elements from different compass directions. The outcome has been to show that banks a<\/span>n<\/span>d ditches stabilise quite quickly within about 25 years: and that earthworms from the ori<\/span>g<\/span>inal ground surface migrate up into the bank and play havoc with the stratigra<\/span>p<\/span>hy.<\/span><\/p>\n On a final note, the excavation of an experimental Iron Age roundhouse built at St <\/span>Fagans<\/span> in South Wales produced a remarkable series of artefacts: a tongue stud, biros, spectacles and balls of wool. But interestingly these were all fou<\/span>n<\/span>d around th<\/span>e<\/span> periphery of the house, just <\/span>a<\/span>s Iron Age artefacts are in real excavated roundhouses.<\/span><\/p>\n Report by Janet Sharpe<\/span><\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Saturday 19th January 2019 BAS Lecture: Adventures in Experimental Archaeology by Dr Jennifer Foster (UoR) Jennifer opened her talk by posing the question: what is experimental archaeology? It is a way of answering research questions and testing hypotheses by experiment. She described several such experiments, some of which were carried out by undergraduates in the … Continue reading Adventures in Experimental Archaeology<\/span>