Nominations for Council, President and Treasurer

These lovely things are among items recently subjected to temporary export bans imposed by Culture Minister Matt Hancock. The most recent statistics on the export of objects of cultural interest were published last December. Between May 2015 and April 2016, there were 10,5851 applications for export licences for 71,731 items. Twenty one cases were referred to the Secretary of State for deferral, of which nine, with a total value of £7 million, resulted in acquisitions for the UK. Among them were a pair of Charles II Silver Andirons (£649,200), a Baird Phonovision disc and ephemera (£78,750), and an Anglo-Saxon gilt-bronze strip brooch (£10,152).
 
On the left, above, is one of only four vases known to have been made by Josiah Wedgwood himself, on the opening day of his Etruria factory on 13 June 1769 (enamel painter William Hopkins Craft is thought to have executed the tricky bits). In a press release, Philippa Glanville FSA, a member of the Reviewing Committee, said, ‘This beautiful First Day vase has a monumental quality which belies its relatively small size. Burnished to a delicate sheen, it glows as an embodiment of the pride of Wedgwood and Bentley in their collective achievement, a key day and event in the British technical and commercial revolution of the 18th century.’ The decision on the licence application for the vase will be deferred until 14 March (extendable until 14 July) to allow a buyer to raise £482,500 (plus VAT of £16,500). Two of the other vases are owned by the Victoria and Albert Museum (V&A) and displayed in the Wedgwood Museum in Staffordshire; the third is on long-term loan to the British Museum.
 
The other items, including the flask on the right, were imported by Robert Clive (Clive of India, 1725–1774). The huqqa set (above) is an extremely rare survival, as the objects were often broken down; set with white sapphires and rubies, it was part of an original collection at the imperial court in Delhi. It is believed that Clive, who was Governor and Commander-In-Chief of India under British rule, was presented with the flask after the Battle of Plassey. Silver inside and gold out, it is decorated in jade, emeralds and rubies and is unique. The decision on the licence application for the flask will be deferred until 17 May (extendable until 17 November) to allow a buyer to raise £6,000,000 (plus £1,200,000 VAT). The decision on the huqqa set will be deferred until 17 April (extendable until 17 July); the price is £240,000 (plus £48,000 VAT).
 
These pieces face an export ban for the second time. As Martin Bailey notes in the Art Newspaper, the culture minister of Qatar bought them from Clive of India’s descendants at Christie’s in 2004. The V&A and the National Trust set out to acquire them, but the Qataris withdrew the licence applications and kept their shopping in the UK, blocking rival purchases. The incident led to calls for a change in the rules. At the time, the objects were valued at less than half the price any buyers will now have to raise.

• On 6 February the National Gallery said its attempt to buy Pontormo’s Portrait of a Young Man in a Red Cap (1530) for £30.7 million had been thwarted by Brexit. The painting had been bought in 2015 by Tom Hill, an American hedge fund manager, having been in the family of the Earl of Caledon since 1825. The then Culture Minister Ed Vaizey placed a temporary export bar on it, giving a spirited defence of its national significance. The Art Newspaper says that Hill now argues that the dramatic fall in the value of sterling means he would lose $10 million, which he wants the Gallery to pay, though, writes Martin Bailey, this is not required by the terms of the export system.
 

Tam Dalyell, who died on 26 January, was not a Fellow, though he might have been. An outspoken and popular Labour Member of Parliament, he is remembered in politics especially for his criticism of the lethal sinking of the Argentinian cruiser General Belgrano in the Falklands war of 1982, and for lending his constituency’s name to ‘the West Lothian question’, over the fact that Scottish MPs can vote for English legislation, but not vice versa. His boundless energy and curiosity drew him into many areas of concern to Fellows.
 
In 2002 he wrote ‘A politician’s perspective of archaeology’ for Antiquity (76, 1050–54). ‘Typical Politician’s Question!’ he opened. “‘Does archaeology have a relevance in this modern world?’ To which I respond with an emphatic ‘Yes’.” ‘I have the strong anecdotal impression,’ he wrote, ‘that employers have come to regard archaeology graduates as among their most desirable employees. Why? Because the study of archaeology creates a “Can-do” attitude of mind, on top of a discipline that demands reasoning and deduction.’
 
He stood up in Parliament for cultural heritage in war zones. ‘What is the truth or otherwise,’ he asked the Culture Secretary in 2003, ‘of reports that the 6,000-year-old ziggurat at Ur has been sprayed with paint? Is not the uncomfortable truth that, whereas British forces have been very disciplined, American forces have often behaved like yobs?’
 
He wrote long, personal obituaries for the Independent newspaper of people like Magnus Magnusson (broadcaster), Lord Kennet (politician and conservationist), David Learmont (curator at the National Trust for Scotland), Florence MacKenzie (fundraiser for the Scottish Architectural Heritage Trust), Denis Mahon (art historian and lobbyist for free museum entry), Sandy Fenton (Scottish ethnologist) and David Charteris (Chairman of the National Trust for Scotland), and many more. David Breeze FSA, former Chief Inspector of Ancient Monuments, Scotland, shares some of his memories of the man with Salon:
 
‘Some years ago, on a Sunday morning I received a phone call from Tam Dalyell. This was disconcerting as I was a civil servant and Tam an MP. David, he barked, what are you going to do about the new mast to be erected on Cairnpapple Hill next to the prehistoric cairn? I admitted that there was nothing that I could do as the proposed mast lay outside the protected area, but I told him to consider the advice of Wayland Kennet: to save an archaeological site, you must buy it, legislate to protect it or shame people into not destroying it. By the next morning, Tam had assembled half-a-dozen of the great and good of Scottish archaeology to stop the bulldozers. The mast was not built, and the phone companies agreed to share the existing mast.
 
‘Tam had a keen interest in archaeology and history, nurtured through the friendship of his family with archaeological luminaries such as Gordon Childe FSA and Stuart Piggott FSA, and pursued through carefully worded parliamentary questions. In the 1990s the Institute of Field Archaeologists invited representatives of the political parties to set out their views on archaeology in advance of a general election. Tam spoke on behalf of the Labour Party. He soon had the audience eating out of his hand with stories of his early memories of Childe and Piggott. His support for archaeology was also demonstrated through his Parliamentary Questions in the House of Commons, often put down after his attendance on an Ancient Monuments Board for Scotland tour – his wife Kathleen was a member of the Board and spouses were allowed to join the tours at their own expense. On one Board tour, I ensured that the coach drove past a house named “Belgrano”, to Tam's delight.’
 
The photo shows Dalyell (second from left) with Alison Sheridan FSA, J D Hill FSA, Julian D Richards FSA, David Breeze and Nina Crummy, at the British Museum in 2001.
 

If there is anything of specific relevance to the work of Fellows in the Government’s new White Paper on Brexit, it might be section 10, ‘Ensuring the United Kingdom remains the best place for science and innovation.’ Among other things this repeats assurances about certain EU students being eligible for loans and home-fee status, and says UK businesses and universities should keep asking for EU funding while they can. ‘As we exit the EU,’ it concludes, ‘we would welcome agreement to continue to collaborate with our European partners on major science, research and technology initiatives.’
 
Ed Vaizey MP, speaking during the debate on the European Union (Notification of Withdrawal) Bill two days before on 31 January, threw a little more light on the Government’s actions to support science. In his opening address, the Secretary of State for Exiting the European Union (David Davis MP) said the Bill means the UK will leave Euratom, a nuclear energy organisation set up in 1957.
 
‘I am so angry with the Government over their position on Euratom,’ said Vaizey. ‘Not a single Minister has contacted me, my hon. Friend the Member for Oxford West and Abingdon (Nicola Blackwood) or my hon. Friend the Member for Henley (John Howell FSA). The Culham research centre, the site of the Joint European Torus, employs hundreds of people and is at the heart of nuclear fusion research. We have all been inundated with countless emails from people who believe they are losing their job. The European Space Agency is in my constituency. If the Government are to make such an announcement in the explanatory notes of a Bill, at least they could alert the relevant MPs beforehand.’
 
The photo above shows the Franks casket, a whalebone box in the British Museum made in the early 700s, and inscribed in a mixture of Old English, Latin, runes and insular script. Tom Tugendhat MP referred to it in his speech on the Bill. It symbolises, he said, ‘exactly what we are. It symbolises the fact that we are a union of peoples and that we are a combination of our past and our future, because it is inscribed in runic and in Latin. It has stories of Romans, of Jews and even of pagan Germans.’
 
• In other areas, there is more positive news. The Cultural Property (Armed Conflicts) Bill will be considered at its Report Stage and Third Reading on 20 February. Long fought for by archaeologists, this Bill seems finally to be approaching the point of receiving royal assent. Several Fellows submitted supportive written evidence, including David Gill FSA, Mark Dunkley FSA, Peter Stone FSA, Mike Heyworth FSA (on behalf of the Council for British Archaeology) and, as signatories to a letter to the then Culture Secretary in a submission from the Heritage Alliance, Peter Hinton FSA, Barry Cunliffe FSA, Nigel Pollard FSA, Peter Clayton FSA, Robert Bewley FSA and Graham Philip FSA. Full details can be seen on the Parliament website. Peter Stone wrote about the issues under the headline, ‘Why ratifying the Hague Convention matters’, in the Art Newspaper last November.
 
• Diana Beattie FSA, Chairman, Heritage of London Trust Operations, writes to say that Baroness Kay Andrews (a former Chair of the former English Heritage), has agreed to sponsor a Probing Amendment in the House of Lords to England’s Neighbourhood Planning Bill. The proposal is to insert a new clause that would force a local planning authority to use its powers to compulsorily buy a listed building or building in a conservation area, if a charitable conservation trust has pledged to cover the costs. ‘I have campaigned for this for many months,’ says Beattie, ‘as I am shocked at the number of historic buildings which are empty and derelict in London on Historic England’s Heritage at Risk Register; whilst local authorities are very reluctant to use their compulsory purchase powers. I am delighted that Baroness Andrews has agreed to sponsor this, and Historic England has agreed to it.’ The Bill was due to continue to be discussed in Committee on 6 February.
 
• John Kampfner, Chief Executive of the Creative Industries Federation, warned the Culture, Media and Sport Committee’s inquiry into the impact of Brexit of risks facing the sector if free movement and access to European arts and culture funding are lost. A non-British workforce fills a skills gap, he said, adding that education practices do not help. ‘It was a bizarre relationship we had with the previous administration’, he said, ‘in that David Cameron and George Osborne completely got the creative industries, and were proclaiming them from the rooftops, and yet the education system that underpins it was not fit for purpose.’ Peter Bazalgette, departing Chair of Arts Council England, was asked if Arts Council England would be able to replace current European culture funding, were the UK to withdraw from such commitments: he said it wouldn’t.
 
• There will be a Short debate in the House of Lords on 9 February about the protection of historical statues and memorials, and the ‘establishment of new memorials that reflect broader UK history.’ 
 

For his critics, given the speed at which Donald Trump is acting, perhaps the scariest thought is what the new US President might be doing in two or three years. A report saying he planned to close the National Endowment for the Arts, the National Endowment for the Humanities and the Corporation for Public Broadcasting has not been confirmed, but the arts world has been wondering what might happen if it was. The Association of Art Museum Directors, the American Alliance of Museums, Americans for the Arts and PEN America, among others, have objected to the idea, says the New York Times, in a piece that considers where the money goes.
 
James Cuno, President and CEO of the J Paul Getty Trust, wrote a short blog headed, ‘The travel ban is just wrong.’ ‘Curiosity, diversity, and tolerance are the core values of the humanities,’ he writes, ‘values that require the free movement of people and ideas.’ The ban ‘may have a profoundly adverse effect on important work the Getty is pursuing in the Middle East, even in the midst of turmoil there, to protect and preserve the world’s cultural heritage. It will have a corrosive effect on scholarly exchange with the United States and on the stature of American cultural and educational institutions.’
 
Kevin Roose writes in Fusion about Jerry Falwell Jr, said to be favoured by Trump to head a higher-education panel, and Betsy DeVos, a billionaire patron of the Christian right nominated for Secretary of Education. Roose shows a photo (detail right) of what he describes as ‘a science textbook I was assigned at [Falwell Jr’s] school in 2007.’ It interprets the biblical flood in historical terms, with a diagram showing how Noah’s ark was constructed (‘People and dinosaurs,’ says a note, ‘are shown to scale’). Vice President Pence is reported to have given a speech on the House floor in 2002, criticising public schools for teaching evolution but not creationism.

Trump backers spoke scornfully about the 1906 Antiquities Act last year, their eyes especially on an alleged misuse of the Act by Barack Obama to indulge ‘environmental groups’ at the expense of ‘forgotten Americans’. Those are the words used by a contributor to the Washington Examiner on 2 January. William Perry Pendley says the Act was created to protect ‘historic landmarks, historic and prehistoric structures,’ but not ‘scenery alone’. That is how Reagan and George H W Bush saw it, he says, but Clinton used the Act to close down mines, and Obama broke federal law to authorise a huge new park. And in a parting gift ‘to Leonardo DiCaprio and other environmental extremists,’ he set up the half million hectare Bears Ears National Monument, Utah.
 
This narrative omits the fact that, according to Nature, George W Bush created underwater monuments under the Act 38 times the area of Clinton’s entire achievement. ‘Most legal scholars,’ says Nature, ‘say that only an act of Congress can reverse a monument designation,’ adding, ‘That might not stop the Trump administration from trying.’
 
On 27 January the Washington Post reported Senator Orrin Hatch saying that Trump was ‘eager’ to undo the Bears Ears protection. The designation came after numerous reports of vandalism, illicit excavation and looting at monuments said to be among the best preserved and archaeologically rich in the US, including ancient Pueblo villages preserved by the dry climate. Five tribes – Hopi, Navajo, Uintah and Ouray Ute, Ute Mountain Ute and Pueblo of Zuni – have joint responsibility for protecting the area. Utah’s politicians largely condemned the designation.
 

In January BBC TV broadcast a three-part series about excavations at the Ness of Brodgar on Orkney. The Neolithic site is no stranger to TV, but with four presenters, led by journalist-archaeologist Neil Oliver and naturalist Chris Packham, and Orkney archaeologist Caroline Wickham-Jones FSA as series consultant, the programmes made interesting viewing.
 
The oft-repeated headline narrative was rather odd, though, suggesting Orkney to be some kind of cultural hotspot that enlightened the rest of Neolithic Britain. Kenneth Brophy FSA complained of this in The Island Review, an online magazine. ‘There was much to interest and admire’ in the films, he writes, ‘and it is a shame that the makers of the programme chose to cast Orkney as a warm-up act for Stonehenge, rather than celebrate the strange and wonderful uniqueness of the archipelago.’
 
That got them talking. ‘Row over BBC’s Secrets of Orkney as top archaeologist claims islands don’t seem “weird” enough and blasts “nonsensical” theory that they were cultural capital of UK 6,000 years ago,’ headlined the Scottish Daily News. Executive producer Rachel Bell told BBC Radio Orkney that ‘People understand that national identities and capitals did not exist as such then, but it provides an anchor for a modern audience to get to grips with complicated subject matter.’ 
 
Britain’s Ancient Capital: Secrets of Orkney can be watched on BBC iPlayer by those with access. Photo shows Mike Parker Pearson FSA (left) with Oliver at Skara Brae.
 

A new Department for Transport report on airport expansion options in south-east England summarises the heritage costs of the Government’s favourite site: the Northwest Runway Scheme at Heathrow, west of London. The land (mainly Green Belt) has on it one Grade I listed building, 22 Grade II* listed buildings, two Scheduled Monuments, two Conservation Areas and 167 ‘non-designated assets’. If the works went ahead, 21 listed buildings would need to be demolished, there would be harm to the setting of 54 listed buildings, and the setting of 166 designated assets in the wider area could be affected; 167 archaeological remains would be lost or damaged, and a further 90 could be affected by changes to their setting.
 
The Grade I building is the remarkable Harmondsworth Great Barn (right). ‘While the … structure will not be demolished,’ reported the Times, ‘the airport’s runway perimeter will be moved to within metres of the site.’ I asked Justine Bayley FSA, Secretary, Friends of the Great Barn at Harmondsworth – who happens also to be the Treasurer for the Stop Heathrow Expansion campaign – what she thought of the putative threat to the building. Being a great old timber-framed structure, perhaps the Barn could be taken apart and re-erected somewhere else? This is her response:
 
‘My personal belief is that the third runway at Heathrow cannot and will not go ahead, as there is increasing evidence stacking up against it. However, if the Government wants the project to go ahead, it will say that black is white and it just might happen. The grounds for the legal challenge that sunk the previous runway proposal are still live issues, and form part of the basis for the current challenge by a consortium of local authorities – including Theresa May’s! It was decided in the High Court last week that the case should not be heard until the Government’s final Airports National Policy Statement has been approved; it will be debated in Parliament towards the end of this year.
 
‘Consultation on the draft statement has just been launched (available online). Fellows or others might wish to respond as individuals, even if the Society itself does not. There are also 20 consultation information events in and around London – though interestingly none of them are in the Heathrow Villages, the area most directly affected – as well as further regional consultation information events for invited stakeholders across the country.
 
‘You ask for my thoughts on moving the Barn. Well, it should be possible to create a realistic replica, as most of the structure is in such good condition, but that would separate it completely from its setting, which is a major reason for its significance. Where would you put it? It's probably too large for the Chiltern Open Air Museum of (smaller) re-erected buildings at Chalfont St Giles, and the landscape there is also quite different. Certainly many of those who live in Harmondsworth look on it as a talisman to protect the village from the “elephant in the room” that is Heathrow Airport.
 
‘Most residents are not against the Airport, just against its expansion; it has grown enormously since it was built as a military airfield towards the end of World War Two, wiping out the hamlet then called Heathrow. Those most threatened by the current proposals live in Longford (which would be wiped off the map) and Harmondsworth (where maybe 10% of the people would be left without the community they are now part of). In both villages there is a palimpsest of buildings from the 15th century onwards, with more of quality in Harmondsworth. Visitors always comment on how quiet and unspoiled it is, although it is close to the present airport. If you've not been to Harmondsworth, then look at the well-illustrated Conservation Area Assessment to get a feel for the place. It does seem a pity to remove a village with a continuous history going back to at least the sixth century, for a runway that may be operational for only a few decades!’
 
The Friends manage the Barn on behalf of English Heritage. In 2017 it will be open to the public, free of charge, on the second and fourth Sundays of each month, April and October 11am–4pm, May to September 10am¬–5pm. Photo English Heritage.

Following my item in the last Salon about old slide collections, David Roffe FSA and John Smith FSA write that Christine Mahany FSA, who died last July, left among her effects a collection of some 4,000 undigitised 35 mm colour slides. ‘We hope an Antiquary might be interested,’ they say. The slides are looking for a new home:
 
‘The collection, resulting from Chris’s travels – professional, conferences and holidays – largely reflects her interests as a medieval archaeologist with a special focus on architecture. It is housed in 212 x 24-slide hanging wallets, which are designed to be stored in standard-sized filing cabinet drawers. There are also a few boxes of unsorted slides. They are arranged by country, England (45 wallets) and Europe, and there is an emphasis on fortification, castles and Romanesque architecture.
 
‘Fortification and castles occupy 84 wallets, 35 of these being devoted to Wales and Switzerland, reflecting Christine’s great friendship with past President of the Society Arnold J Taylor FSA, and his interest in Master St James of St George. The Romanesque, particularly France (36 out of 40 wallets), comprises a good proportion of the rest of the collection. A detailed contents list can be found online.
 
‘The slides are easily transportable and are available free to anyone who can use them and collect them from Stamford, Lincolnshire. It would be appropriate, but not essential, if the collection could be kept together. For more information, contact John Smith at d.jhowe@tiscali.co.uk.’
 

Peter Woodman FSA, archaeologist and leading authority on the Irish Mesolithic, died in January.
 
An appreciation appears in Fellows Remembered below. The section also contains further notices on the late Sir Brian Young FSA and the late Peter Gibson FSA.


Ian Eaves FSA was appointed MVO (Member of the Royal Victorian Order) in the New Year Honours, for services to the Royal Collection. Eaves was formerly Keeper of Armour at the Royal Armouries at the Tower of London, where he worked for 18 years. Philip Lankester FSA says he edited and made additions to Arms and Armour in the Collection of Her Majesty The Queen (vol 1): European Armour, by the late A V B (Nick) Norman FSA, published last year.

 
Tourists may want to come to Britain in ever growing numbers, but apparently fewer of them now want to see our museums. In the year to March 2016, according to performance indicators published by the Department for Culture Media and Sport, overseas attendance at DCMS-sponsored museums and galleries fell by 2%, accounting for most of the overall 2.8% attendance decline. Nine of the 15 institutions saw their overseas visitor numbers fall, including Tate, the V&A and the National Gallery. By contrast, the British Museum, already wondering how it can cope with the sheer number of people who come through its doors, saw overseas visitor numbers grow, contributing to an all-time-high attendance of 6.9 million. Figures overall continued to fall in 2016, due to fears of terrorism, hot weather, declining schools’ attendance (they don't teach culture anymore) or exhibition programming, depending on who you listen to.
 
Secrets of the High Woods: Revealing Hidden Landscapes, edited by John Manley FSA, is an attractive presentation about a three-year project of the same name, which investigated 305 hectares of the South Downs National Park. Airborne laser scanning (lidar) was a key tool in revealing extensive prehistoric field systems under woodland (as Barry Cunliffe FSA says in his introduction, no great surprise, but a challenge for future work with great promise). Numerous test excavations are described, well illustrated with happy diggers, and documentary searches explore stories of the earlier 20th century. The essays are mostly personal and anecdotal, but there is authority in local knowledge and understanding, and the enthusiasm conveyed in this impressive book augurs well for more intensive research.
 
Julian Pooley FSA writes with news of a book about copper-plate engraving. Four generations of the Basire family of skilled printmakers, draughtsmen and engravers, spanning 1730–1883, were celebrated for their skill in drawing, on copper and stone, accurate representations of monuments and antiquities. Their pictures can be found throughout Archaeologia, Vetusta Monumenta and many of the most celebrated works of 18th and 19th century topography and antiquarianism (James Basire, 1730–1802, was engraver to the Society of Antiquaries for 20 years). Richard Goddard, a descendent of the Basire family, has published a meticulously researched and beautifully written study of their careers, interests and influence called “Drawing on Copper”: The Basire Family of Copper-Plate Engravers and their Works. It is beautifully illustrated by over 70 plates, says Pooley, and has six chapters assessing the medium of engraving and careers of successive members of the Basire family. Details can be found on the author’s website, where a PDF of the book can be downloaded.

Christine Finn FSA writes to say that her performance of Lead to Air in Averill Park, New York, went well. She typed around 60 feet of single-spaced text on a paper roll, listening to music on headphones while an audience in another building heard the audio played openly. But the 1920s technology slowed her down. ‘The most frustrating thing’, she says, ‘was the typewriter keys kept jamming as I hit them so fast, so harder to get words out than I imagined. I typed pretty constantly, a mix of prose – thoughts and description – and poetry when it arose. The ribbon changing was a challenge. Inky fingers brought back the memory of the newsroom as much as the feel of typing. Towards the end an audience member decided to wrap me in the paper, which was an unexpected artistic intervention. Wouldn't get that in a newsroom!' She would love to do it again in the UK, she says – with a newer machine.

Nigel Saul FSA has written Lordship and Faith: The English Gentry and the Parish Church in the Middle Ages, a subject, says the blurb, hitherto considered only in journal articles. The book aims to use lordly engagement with the parish church as a way of opening up the piety and sociability of the gentry, focusing on that locally crucial group as founders and builders of churches, worshippers in them, holders of church advowsons, and patrons and sponsors of parish communities. Chapters feature the churching of the Anglo-Saxon landscape, the rebuilding of churches after the Conquest, the changing pattern of lay burial in the parish church, gentry involvement in late Medieval churchbuilding, and gentry interest in the parish as an aspect of lordship.
 
Alex Bayliss FSA, a Historic England scientist, has been working with a variety of archaeological teams over the years with the aim of refining a reliable chronology for prehistoric Britain. Her tools are radiocarbon analysis – which has become significantly more precise, cheaper (allowing more samples to be dated with a given budget) and in need of smaller samples than was the case not long ago – and Bayesian statistics. Mesolithic specialists Chantal Conneller, Nicky Milner FSA and Barry Taylor have joined Bayliss in an Early Mesolithic study, available in Internet Archaeology. Their subject is the millennium and a half after the Upper Palaeolithic ended some 11,500 years ago, a time of warming climate, significant vegetational change and rising sea levels, in which hunter-gatherers colonised most of the UK, and since when people have never left. With 305 measurements (200 of them from Star Carr, Yorkshire) they model the histories of three different stone technology assemblages, also looking at lithic technology before and after the era. This is, they say, a necessary first step towards understanding the Mesolithic resettlement of the British Isles.

‘If you had been doing it now,’ says Sir Roy Strong FSA of himself, ‘you would probably have left the coats of arms on.’ The words were quoted by the Sunday Times on 29 January, and the former Director of the National Portrait Gallery was talking about a painting of Thomas More’s family done in 1593. When the work was restored in 1972, five Catholic heraldic shields and two motto scrolls were removed – or possibly, hints John Guy in a new book about Moore, painted over. Picture from the Gallery’s website.

David Bird FSA has edited Agriculture and Industry in South-Eastern Roman Britain. The book arose, he says, from a couple of Surrey Archaeological Society Roman Studies Group conferences, and he added authors ‘to fill out the gaps’. In an ‘up-to-date assessment of our knowledge of the southern hinterland of Roman London and an area that was particularly open to influences from the Continent,’ studies cover rural settlement, and the production and exploitation of crops, querns and millstones, animals, salt, leather, bone and similar materials, iron and iron, non-ferrous metalwork, pottery, and tiles for Roman London. Contributors include these Fellows: Justine Bayley FSA, Edward Biddulph FSA, Paul Booth FSA, Michael Fulford FSA, Chris Green FSA, Jeremy Hodgkinson FSA, Jackie Keily FSA, Mark Maltby FSA, Quita Mould FSA, David Rudling FSA and Louise Rayner FSA.

FutureLearn launched a free online course on 6 February run by the Trafficking Culture international research consortium and hosted by the University of Glasgow. Antiquities Trafficking and Art Crime runs for three weeks, with weekly online videos and lectures. The course can be joined at any point during its run.
 
Small Dictionaries and Curiosity: Lexicography and Fieldwork in Post-Mediaeval Europe, by John Considine FSA, tells a new story of the first European wordlists of minority and unofficial languages and dialects, from the end of the Middle Ages to the early 19th century. The lists were collected by people curious about languages they heard around them. About 90 are described in the book, from single-page jottings to printed books. They document more than 40 language varieties, from a Basque-Icelandic pidgin of the North Atlantic to the Kalmyk language of the lower Volga. Considine explores, says the blurb, the kinds of curiosity and imagination by which makers of dictionaries and wordlists were moved: the lover of all languages hearing new voices in an inn; the speaker of a dying language recording his linguistic memories; the patriot deploying his lexicographical findings in the service of an emerging nation. Considine is Professor in the Department of English at the University of Alberta, Edmonton.
 
Pre-colonial sixth–14th century AD terracottas from Koma Land, Ghana, contain cavities which may have been for liquids, and have been linked to traditional African libation. In an article in the Journal of Archaeological Science (2017, 10–18) Heather Robinson, Timothy Insoll FSA, Benjamin Kankpeyeng, Keri Brown FSA and Terence Brown FSA describe how they used generic polymerase chain reactions to amplify plant and fungal DNA to identify libation residues in 14 archaeologically excavated terracotta items. They found three different types of plant: plantain/banana, pine (suggesting the boiling of tree bark) and grasses (perhaps from cereal paste). They also identified Coniochaeta yeast in the mouth of a horse-and-rider figurine, suggesting that it was burnt before burial; the yeast is an early coloniser after wood fires.
 
Oxfordshire Record Society’s Volume 70 is the Diary of William Wood, edited by Mark Spurrell FSA with a comprehensive introduction describing the main characters and putting the work into context. Wood’s Radley College Diary 1855–1861 features the only surviving substantial record from the period when William Sewell, the Founder of Radley College, was warden, a formative period in the College's history. Wood was an accomplished diarist. In his old age, he described the years as ‘A long and anxious yet happy time of struggle at Radley, where, assisted by a party of friends zealous for the school, we tried to check Sewell’s eccentricities and carry out for the best his original and excellent ideas of what a school should be; while he (alas!), first alone, and then under the unhappy direction of his brother, was plunging deeper and deeper into financial difficulties.’ The story ends with Mr Hubbard rescuing the College, and refounding it as a public school.

Peter Woodman FSA died on 24 January aged 73. He was elected a Fellow of the Society in January 1982. Emeritus Professor of Archaeology, University College Cork and formerly Assistant Keeper of Antiquities, Ulster Museum, Woodman was, as the Irish Times headlined its obituary on 4 February, the leading archaeologist on the Irish Mesolithic period (8000–4500BC), and a beloved and inspirational teacher.
 
Alison Sheridan FSA has written this tribute for Salon:
 
‘With the death of Peter Woodman, a few days after he suffered a massive stroke, the world of Irish Mesolithic studies has lost a giant. Born in Holywood, County Down, Peter’s interest in archaeology was sparked during his schooldays at St MacNissi’s College in the Glens of Antrim and he went on to study Archaeology at Queen’s University Belfast during the 1960s. For many years thereafter he was Assistant Keeper of Antiquities at the then-named Ulster Museum, before moving to University College Cork as Professor of Archaeology in 1982, a post he held until his retirement in 2006. His life then took a new turn – and he adopted a new identity as “Papa Pete”! – when he became a teacher of Ultimate Tai Chi in Cork, but he continued to work on the Irish Mesolithic, producing his magnum opus – Ireland’s First Settlers: Time and the Mesolithic – in 2015.
 
‘I met him during my research on the Neolithic collections in the Ulster Museum in the late 1970s and early 80s, where he was Assistant Keeper of Antiquities under Laurence Flanagan; he was completing his excavations at Mount Sandel (1973‒77), which remains Ireland’s oldest settlement site. He was a fount of knowledge and amusing anecdotes, and working on his team in his Glens of Antrim project was never dull. He was kind, witty, and generous with his time.
 
‘His contribution to Irish Mesolithic studies is enormous. Having synthesised what was known of this period in his PhD (published 1978), he went on to revolutionise our understanding with a series of research and fieldwork projects over the following decades. His excavations at the Late Mesolithic camp at Ferriter’s Cove in Co Kerry produced the earliest evidence for the presence of domesticated cattle in Ireland, and sparked a long-lasting debate about the Neolithisation of Ireland. His discovery that red deer seem to have been a Neolithic introduction, absent from the faunal repertoire of Mesolithic Ireland, raises the question of the status and significance of this animal to early farming communities.
 
‘His work set early prehistoric Irish studies firmly on the European map, highlighting the stark differences between Mesolithic (particularly Late Mesolithic) lifeways and material culture in Ireland as compared with those of Britain and beyond (except, arguably, the Isle of Man) – differences that no doubt relate to the narrow resource base on the island. His contribution extended beyond the Mesolithic to encompass the lithic artefacts of Neolithic to Bronze Age Ireland and the history of antiquarian activities in Ireland, as exemplified in his invaluable publication, The Archaeology of a Collection: the Keiller-Knowles Collection of the National Museum of Ireland (2006). His contribution to archaeology was recognised with the awarding of the Prehistoric Society’s Europa Prize in 2009, an event accompanied by the presentation of a surprise Festschrift, From Bann Flakes to Bushmills, edited by Nyree Finlay, Sinéad McCartan FSA, Nicky Milner FSA and Caroline Wickham-Jones FSA (2009).
 
‘Peter’s commitment to teaching and communicating the archaeology that he loved so much is reflected in an interview about Mountsandel that was recorded for Coleraine Borough Council and Causeway Museum Service for a recent Heritage Lottery-funded Project.’
 
Jim Mallory, a contemporary of Woodman’s and an Emeritus Professor at Queen's University, Belfast, wrote a tribute for the university’s Facebook page. ‘He was not born with [Mesolithic] microliths either in the hand or on the brain,’ he writes. ‘At Carnlough, for example, after the students had washed and bagged a tonne of flint waste and departed for the local pub, Peter and I would load many of the bags onto a Land Rover, drive back into the field and rebury the flints to prevent the Ulster Museum from disappearing under a mountain of flint of uncertain provenience. At Oughtymore, a shell midden on Magilligan Strand, Peter and I had just cleaned the section, reached for a drawing board, and watched the entire face of the sandhill collapse. The section had to be drawn from our ever diminishing memories as we sat in a pub, sipping hot Irishes, straining to recall what we had just excavated. And the less said the better about his exercise in experimental archaeology where we attempted to hunt hare at night with ranging rods for spears.’
 
‘Peter had a perpetual intellectual curiosity, was always generous with his time and could be very persuasive – before he left for Cork he lured me into devoting the next four years of my life to excavating Donegore Hill. He was not just a good scholar but a good friend, and his sudden and wholly unexpected passing will leave a real gap, both in Irish archaeology and in the lives of all those who knew him.’
 
Ireland’s First Settlers is a remarkable book. It is informed, wise and questioning about the Irish Mesolithic, as one would expect, but it is also a compelling story of how its author came to his ideas on the prehistoric past, and about his changing profession (for good and for bad), written in the aftermath of the collapse of the Celtic Tiger. Woodman always aimed to do more than catalogue antique artefacts.

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The Times and the Guardian have published obituaries of Sir Brian Young FSA, who died in November. They lead on his prominent career as a broadcasting regulator who oversaw the formation of Channel 4, and, says the Times, the man who defended a live interview with the Sex Pistols which caused some viewer to object to their ‘unpleasant lifestyle’. He gained a first-class degree in Classics at King’s College, Cambridge. ‘He was unostentatious almost to the point of self-parody,’ writes Dennis Barker in the Guardian. ‘When he left his Independent Broadcasting Authority office after 12 years, it was furnished virtually the same as when he had walked into it 12 years previously, except that the chairs, including his own, were so worn and rickety that colleagues avoided them, fearing injury.’
 
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Sarah Brown FSA, Director of York Glaziers Trust, has written a long tribute to the late Peter Gibson FSA, first superintendent of the York Glaziers Trust, who died in November last year. This is an extract:
 
‘Peter lived all his life in the shadow of York Minster,’ she writes, ‘the building he served for over 70 years, as altar boy, apprentice glazier and then as leader of a team of craftsmen entrusted with the care of the Minster’s world-famous stained glass. He saw the Trust grow from a team of only two at its inception in 1967 to seven by the time it celebrated its 14th birthday, and as it prepares to celebrate its 50th anniversary, the team has doubled in strength and grown in international reputation.
 
‘Peter Gibson was a citizen of York first and foremost. He lived all his life in the modest home in Precentors Court into which his parents moved soon after their marriage. While the family worshipped at the parish church of St Michael le Belfrey, Peter became an altar server at the nearby Minster. Writing in 1989 of the Dean, Eric Milner-White, Peter recalled that his first meeting with him had been during his early morning paper round when he was asked to deliver the Church Times to the deanery: “Ah,” said the Dean, “the Monday boy serves the Dean on a Friday”, and proceeded to give Peter a short lecture on historic lamp-posts. Shortly afterwards, the Dean conducted a tour of the Minster’s windows, showed him around the glaziers’ workshop, lent him some books on stained glass, and then suggested that he try out as an apprentice member of the glazing team.
 
‘Peter joined the Minster glaziers at a momentous time. Eighty windows had been removed into safe storage for the duration of the war, and in 1945 as he entered into his seven-year apprenticeship, the Dean launched the task of returning the windows from their hiding places, cleaning and restoring them to the building.
 
‘Over the last 50 years stained glass from nearly 500 locations from all over the UK have come to the Deangate workshops, which, extended and equipped with the assistance of the Pilgrim Trust, were put to the greatest test after the terrible Minster fire in 1984. Looking back in 2007 Peter recalled: “Without doubt these events were the most traumatic experience of my working life. I have never been able to read accounts of other great fires, such as that which gutted the choir of Canterbury Cathedral in 1174, without feeling a sudden rush of memory, the noise, the smoke the smell of 9 July 1984, all over again.”
 
‘Peter was a public communicator and popular advocate for stained glass. In 1949 a travelling scholarship to the cathedrals and workshops of France had enabled him to make the first of many visits to see glass abroad He nurtured a particular passion for the stained glass of William Morris and his circle. He gave thousands of lectures, using his skills as a photographer to excellent effect. He had an especially loyal following in the USA, where he was made a life member of the Stained Glass Association of America.
 
‘Peter remained a very private person. He worshiped all his life at St Michael le Belfrey. He continued to lecture and educate, giving up to 100 presentations a year after retirement and contributing to the training of Minster guides. He had a roguish sense of humour, often calling himself the Minster’s window cleaner.’
 
Brown’s full text can be read here.

English Heritage proposals to develop visitor facilities at the Medieval Clifford’s Tower have generated a mini Stonehenge-tunnel saga in York. A petition to the City Council to ‘Stop English Heritage Making Clifford's Tower Look Like Disneyland!’ gathered 3,703 signatures last year; the promoter added an outsize MacDonald’s logo to a picture of the site, in case anyone missed the point. Richard Green FSA writes with an update on events:
 
‘At an Executive meeting on 26 January, the City Council endorsed the building of the proposed visitor centre by agreeing to sell, on long lease, to English Heritage/Historic England a strip of land at the foot of the motte. The context for the Council’s endorsement was approval in principle of a proposed Castle Gateway scheme – improving the area around Clifford’s Tower, taking in the Castle Museum buildings and the Court House, which has been visually blighted for decades through the use of a large part of it as a public car park.
 
‘Meanwhile the campaign against the visitor centre has been spearheaded by Councillor Johnny Hayes, in seeking a judicial review of the planning process on the part of English Heritage and the City of York Council. He has obtained permission for such a review to be undertaken, probably at Leeds Crown Court in early May. The transfer of ownership of the piece of land referred to above is on hold until the outcome is known. Through a crowdfunding website, over £10,000 has already been raised and further pledges of financial support are welcome.”
 
The visitor centre ‘would be like a boil growing on the side of what is a unique urban setting,’ Russell Wright, local resident and former Research Fellow at the Institute for Advanced Architectural Studies, told the Guardian.
 
Jeremy Ashbee FSA, Head Properties Curator, at English Heritage, was quoted by the Times as saying, ‘Something has to be done.’ A visit ‘leaves a lot to be desired’, he said, and the ‘facilities are inadequate, poorly accessible and inappropriate for a site of this importance.’
 
Ashbee then wrote a letter to the paper, pointing out that the report left ‘important points unsaid. Far from being driven by money, English Heritage has a core duty to conserve and present buildings and monuments as testaments to the past and ways for modern people to understand and enjoy it. The historic stonework of Clifford’s Tower will be conserved for future generations; it will be possible for people to enter medieval spaces inaccessible for three centuries; and the arduous climb up the grass mound will become much easier. We chose to set the new building into the base of the mound because that part of the monument was only created in the 1930s … and it will provide facilities … exactly where people need them. Above all, it will be possible to tell the stories of the castle and its people in ways that are presently impossible.’

The Times published a letter from Simon Jenkins FSA on 4 February, supporting the proposed changes. ‘The concept of a ruin as something to be frozen in time and space,’ he says, ‘is a 20th-century scholastic cult. It has no authenticity in history, conservation or aesthetics.’ Among several other letters (Eric Westropp wonders what his ancestor, a Sergeant at Arms of King James I, would have made of a visitor centre), one from Tim Tatton-Brown FSA recommends archaeological excavation following removal of the car park.
 
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Christopher Wilson FSA corrects me for misspelling the name of London Mayor Sadiq Khan in the last Salon, and David Jacques FSA writes that I omitted to say that Peter Rowley-Conwy FSA was among signatories to a letter to the Times objecting to the Stonehenge tunnel. Apologies. In the tunnel piece, I reported that Simon Jenkins FSA wrote about the road in the Spectator. Duncan Wilson FSA, Chief Executive of Historic England, responded in a letter to the magazine, describing Jenkins’ idea of turning the present A303 into a one-way dual lane, with a new road to the south going the other way, as a distraction ‘in a shoal of red herrings’.
 
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Trevor Rowley FSA writes from Oxfordshire with news about Dyke Hills, part of a unique sequence of archaeological remains around Dorchester-on-Thames, dating from the Neolithic to the Second World War. A threat to the site in the 19th century, says Rowley, led to the appointment of General Pitt Rivers as the first Inspector of Ancient Monuments; Dyke Hills featured in the first list of designated monuments.
 
Rowley reports that the site’s new owner is stopping access, and, he says, illegally erecting fences on the scheduled area. The Oxford Mail says lawyer Andrew Reid, a former UKIP treasurer, bought the land in 2016; ‘spiked fences started shooting up across the fields in October.’ Villagers are challenging the fences. Reid says he is protecting livestock.