Blog

  • Absent or absenting? Archaeology, women and Wikipedia

    Sometimes I think archaeology is a bit like a jigsaw puzzle – one that’s missing half the bits and with no picture on the lid to tell you what it should look like.  As well as worrying about the bits you find, you also have to think about the enormous number – perhaps the majority… Read more

  • Trig Lane trip

    Another FROG trip today, less formal than Greenwich, just three of us catching the early low tide to see what the foreshore by Trig Lane riverstairs was up to. This stretch of the river is quite different to Greenwich – there’s a good account of it on the Thames Discovery Programme website. We spent some… Read more

  • Verulamium visited

    Went today to see the lovely Roman ruins at St Albans, or Verulamium as it was known from C1 AD when the Romans were rampaging about making a nuisance of themselves/in cahoots with the locals (depending on which academics’ arguments/the evidence you find most persuasive). Now I’m spoilt when it comes to ruins, having lived… Read more

  • Wall marks?

    Some real archaeology this weekend – joining fellow ‘frogs’ on the Thames Discovery Programme to survey the ancient timbers at Greenwich. Lots of washing mud off the medieval jetty – and scrubbing the weed from the riverwall…to uncover some curious marks. I’ve heard of ‘masons marks’ and had assumed they were a sort of signature… Read more

  • Over the Lethe and far away

    St Mary-at-Lambeth church now hosts a garden museum which (as I visited today during lunch) I hadn’t time to look at. The grounds were pretty though, and felt like spring – and had some interesting graves in them. There was this huge C18 tomb with an urn with a meander round it and coiled round… Read more

  • Right TRAC?

    Went to the Theoretical Roman Archaeology Conference this weekend (yes, for the wag who asked, there is an actual Roman Archaeology Conference too).  I’ve been to a fair few conferences in the role of hireling/organiser, setting them up, writing delegate briefing, occasionally speaking or chairing, but this is only the second conference I’ve ever attended… Read more