archaeology
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 […]
An archaeological nightmare
In my experience – and I confess I haven’t lifted a trowel in anger for over forty years – archaeological digs bring nothing but lasting pleasure. For some, though, it’s obviously a different story. Quite recently a friend alerted me to the writings of Sarah Moss. Her speciality, in fiction and in books of travel, […]
Ar y Mynydd Du
Golygfa ddu yw hi, o bob cyfeiriad, does dim dwywaith. O’r A48, er engraifft, wrth ichi yrru o Gaerfyrddin tua Cross Hands, mae’n anodd osgoi edrych draw, am eiliad o leiaf, i’r wal dywyll, fygythiol o fryniau sy’n ymestyn ar y gorwel yn y dwyrain – ymyl gorllewinol y Mynydd Du. ‘Du’ mewn ffordd arall […]
Caratacus, Caradog, Caractacus
If Calgacus might be thought of as the earliest known anti-imperialist Scotland has produced, Wales has some claim on an earlier native leader of resistance to the Roman occupation of Britain, Caratacus. He’s a figure well worth excavating, as an historical character and as a focus of myth-making in the centuries since his time. 1 […]
