Trix

"I saw great Cobbett riding,
The horseman of the shires;
And his face was red with judgement
And a light of Luddite fires"

Not the only lines which are there rent-free... but ones which keep coming up recently.

Meh, for us it's not really Christmas until I've hacked the first Torc... ;)

I think a few of us should band together outside as a free (unaffiliated) company and storm the event, crash our way in...

It would be very in keeping with the general theme.

By 'won over', do you actually mean 'eventually worn down...'?

...both you and, we never asked
For any of this...

Oh man...

It's not the years - it's the mileage.

I'm looking forward to seeing your Playmobil-sized version :)

The Arkeologisk Skriftserie I? (as in the one which Judith just mentioned?). Yup, I've got a copy.

We can stage some sort of book-swap handover in York near Christmas if you want 😅

There's something quite brilliant in celebrating a man who ended his life at the bottom of the sea by raising his effigy that high in the air...

Neville Shute was stationed there for a while, as was Barnes Wallis. My Grandfather could remember the airships over Hull when he was a boy, but there's pretty much nothing at the site now. For an archaeologist, it's a sobering reminder of how quickly things can bloom and vanish: it lasted 16 years!

RNAS Howden - Wikipedia

I was part of an archaeological survey of the Howden Airship Station, 10+ years ago - found myself becoming utterly fascinated with the site, and the (abandoned) technology it represented. There were 80 airships there at one point, supported by over 1000 staff and crew! It must have been incredible.

Sounds very similar to @judithjesch.bsky.social's 'long broad Viking Age' - it's an idea I'd wholeheartedly agree with!

Looking forward to heading the episode :)

Detail of Sueno's Stone, Forres Pictish cross slab as drawn by John Borland and featured in Geddes 2024, showing a battle scene, headless corpses and a beehive-shaped feature with heads below it

3D model of Sueno's Stone, Forres Pictish cross slab, 9th century, by hfenton on sketchfab https://sketchfab.com/3d-models/suenos-stone-forres-pictish-cross-slab-f6f9183b09b94375bfd669499944a1e4

Just in time for Halloween, a new Pictish vision of hell

In PSAS 153, 2024 @socantscot.bsky.social Jane Geddes argues the weird 'beehive' surrounded by headless corpses on Sueno's Stone, Forres, is the furnace of the damned

Nice shout-out to #CrucibleOfNations as a bonus

doi.org/10.9750/PSAS...

Honestly don't know if there was an album which had more impact on my teenage self than this one...

Metal detecting has completely transformed what we know about it Viking Age England in the past few decades BUT only because the information is accessible! Objects’ significance/value can’t even be determined without that collaborative project of figuring out what it all means in the big picture

...oh, that sounds like it'd be fun! The yearly Viking Festival would be the perfect setting for lots of confusion and the shouting of "foolish mortals!"

A photograph of a child in Viking-Age clothing, in a reconstructed early-medieval village, reading a rather anachronistic copy of 'Loki: A Bad God's Guide to Causing Chaos' by Louie Stowell. Other re-enactor parents have to try to stop their children wearing watches or trainers... oh if only our life were that simple ;)

Our eldest Little Viking at an event at Murton Park, York, last weekend - with his nose buried in a book, as usual. It was his umpteenth re-read of his prised signed copy of the latest Loki by @louiestowell.bsky.social, courtesy of www.papercatbookshop.co.uk

(We posed him a bit to hide his face)

A photograph of an assemblage of early medieval beads, recovered during a day's excavation in North Yorkshire.

As others have said today: nothing beats a good bead!

I thought we'd take a pause from Viking camps and instead look at a North Yorks assemblage which I helped lift last year - and which Rebecca Griffiths @yorym-flo.bsky.social posted about last week. I watched these beauties come out the ground...

Absolutely! A combination of best-practice detecting and a chance for North Yorks Portable Antiquity Scheme and Historic Environment Records to pitch in together, too. Also felt like a good time to show how much work the PAS goes to in producing these brilliant reports for all our #FindsFirdays...

Thanks again to Rebecca for taking on the finds - and for doing the real legwork in cleaning and recording them all while I got to swan around digging holes. The effort and dedication of overworked FLOs and FLAs is terribly unappreciated.

Her full PAS report is linked here, and well worth the read:

Yours truly, tired but happy, packing up finds at the end of a remarkable day's rescue digging. Early medieval burials can be some of the most exciting things to dig, but they also stand in high contrast to most other days on site...

So a fantastic day on site, and a textbook example of good-practice detecting in a location where we can say that the finds were definitely in danger - although I'm sorry for my volunteer, spoiled forever by this being their first day in archaeology! Future watching briefs will pale by comparison...

A cruciform brooch under excavation: the colour change between the browner ploughsoil and reddish subsoil is obvious, showing how this was millimetres away from being disturbed by agricultural activity.

Two brooches under excavation, with the side of an annular brooch standing on edge and proud of the surrounding earth.

We also had cruciform brooches in place, as well as the second annular brooch to pair with the plough furrow find. You can just see this brooch standing on edge in one of the photos below, showing how the burial must've 'slipped' sideways - which preserved the finds, just out of reach of the plough.

A large blue glass 'melon' bead, just excavated and about to go into a finds bag.

A collection of discoidal amber beads, arranged on a kneeling mat to photograph and count them before bagging.

Again, the burial and cut were pretty much gone - but the remainder of the grave-goods were millimetres under the plough line. The tractor was due back at the weekend, so it felt like my old days in rescue archaeology 😅 This was our real beads findspot - 49 glass ones and at least 21 amber.

A fragmented early medieval annular brooch, showing fresh breaks where it has been caught by recent ploughing.

A still-articulated pair of wrist clasps, once part of female-gendered 'Anglian' dress, found at the base of a plough furrow.

Further down the slope, another detector response had produced a broken annular brooch and a still-articulated wrist clasp: the brooch was in a furrow base, but the clasp right at the bottom of the ploughing. Here, the detectorist hadn't dug at all, but had marked the spot for us. Perfect!

A small glass bead in the palm of my hand, photographed after being lifted from near the brooch.

The collection of glass beads found around the Great Square Headed brooch.

There were precious few traces of the burial this belonged to: no osseous material to speak of, and only the faintest shadow of a grave cut. Caught in the nick of time! We found 3 glass beads and a probable amber bead next to the brooch, but that was all. In some ways, quite an understated burial...

A Great Square Headed brooch mostly covered by earth, left in place after being identified by detecting.

The reverse of the same brooch after lifting, showing the intact pin assembly on the back.

...the detectorist quickly realised that one response wasn't scattered, but was from a single undisturbed object. They stopped exposing the target and called it in to PAS that day - which meant that we were able to expose and lift this Great Square-Headed Brooch practically intact, pin and all.

A site photograph showing several boxes of broken early medieval finds, all of which have been recovered from plough furrows.

A fragmented, gilded 'florid' Style I cluciform brooch, found scattered along a plough furrow and showing clear fresh breaks.

The location is on a hilltop, and was only recently taken back under the plough - so the artefacts were entering the ploughzone, with some already affected. Several brooches were found along furrows, where they'd clearly been struck and scattered: the damage on these is obvious. However...

You can find Rebecca's post through the link below. As she says, these were all found through detecting, with my involvement coming through the North Yorks HER. The detectorist left finds in situ, so myself and a volunteer had a day on site lifting them and investigating the area. A GOOD day 😊

A photograph of an assemblage of early medieval beads, recovered during a day's excavation in North Yorkshire.

As others have said today: nothing beats a good bead!

I thought we'd take a pause from Viking camps and instead look at a North Yorks assemblage which I helped lift last year - and which Rebecca Griffiths @yorym-flo.bsky.social posted about last week. I watched these beauties come out the ground...