archaeology
In praise of Kathleen Jamie
The half of me that’s Scots lies buried, and usually dormant. It comes to life when visiting Scotland. But since my parents died, there’s less obvious reason to go, and we’ve not been there for a few years. Sometimes I daydream about moving to live in a newly independent Scotland, released from bonehead, vicious British […]
Maen Madoc
We’re on the south slope of the Fforest Fawr, north of Ystradfellte. It’s quiet and still at ground level, but above us clouds rush past from the north; some are innocent, others threaten rain. At Blaen Llia we leave the narrow road that descends Cwm Llia, and follow on foot the Roman road heading south-west. […]
Offa’s Dyke Path, day 15: Bodfari to Prestatyn
No kindness from the Path in the first section of today’s walk (we’re now reduced to three walkers). From the road, opposite a disused pub, the fingerpost points straight up a steep hill, before we’ve a chance to wake up the limbs. As the guidebook puts it, the Clwydian hills have not yet done with […]
Writing for affect
By accident I happened on four late-night radio voices discussing ‘consent’. Their focus was Samuel Richardson’s 1740 novel-in-letters, Pamela; or, Virtue rewarded, and Martin Crimp’s current stage production at the National Theatre, When we have sufficiently tortured each other, which is based on chunks of Richardson’s lengthy book. Both are tough reads, in the #MeToo […]
The Monmouthshire and Caerleon Antiquarian Association
1 Origins and foundations The first local archaeological society in Wales, the Caerleon Antiquarian Association, was founded on 28th October 1847. It owed its existence largely to the efforts of one man, John Edward Lee (1). Born in Hull in 1808, Lee worked from the age of sixteen in his uncles’ shipping office, but […]
In search of 100 objects
September 2018 has turned out to be a month of personal endings. Three weeks ago, after five and a half years of sporadic legwork, we finished the last mile of the Wales Coast Path. This week saw the publication of two books I’ve been working on for what seems almost as long, Wales in 100 […]
Gerhard Bersu and ‘hostile environments’
As I was wandering round the Manx Museum in Douglas last week – it’s a first-class museum with imaginative displays and zero dumbing-down – a name sprang out of one of the panels in the section on Manx prehistory that took me straight back to my student archaeology days. The name was that of Gerhard […]
The Powysland Club: its origin and early development
1 Foundation The first county archaeological society in Wales was the Caerleon Antiquarian Association, founded in 1847 and renamed the Monmouthshire and Caerleon Antiquarian Association in 1857. It was twenty years before a second local archaeological society in Wales was founded, in 1867. The gap is puzzling, especially when one considers that this period […]
Y Garn Goch
Bûm yna am y tro cyntaf rhywbryd tua diwedd y 1970au. Cofiaf ddilyn y lôn gul, droellog o wastatir afon Tywi, i fyny’r rhiw o bentref Bethlehem, cyn parcio’r car ar droed y llwybr. Cofiaf hefyd y waliau cerrig sychion yn amgylchynu’r ddau fryn, yn ddiamddiffyn i’r gwyntoedd o’r gorllewin – neu’n waeth, gwyntoedd dwyreiniol […]
Magnus Maximus, man and memory
Doing some research recently on the Roman fort and settlement of Segontium I found myself face to face with a Roman emperor, Magnus Maximus. His story is interesting but not unusual. Later memory of him, especially in his guise as Macsen Wledig, is singular. His face stares out of coins he had minted to cement […]
