Christmas in-person meeting - 2 talks and Christmas tea.
Saturday 7th December at 2pm – 4.30pm
Swarthmore Education Centre, 2-7 Woodhouse Square, Leeds LS3 1AD.
Dr Seren Griffiths, Manchester Metropolitan University.
Forged in Conflict: Francis Buckley, the First World War, and British Prehistory
Francis Buckley was extraordinary; an officer responsible for arming grenades, excavating trenches, surveying, sketch-mapping, and military intelligence, his actions were a roll-call of the First World War’s bloodiest battles. The psychological toll was significant. War remade the man and created the archaeologist. Under fire, Buckley recorded prehistoric lithics on the Somme, a rich archaeological landscape, and a deadly battlefield. After the war, “tramping” the Yorkshire moors, Buckley applied military skills to excavate and record a key, but still understudied lithic collection. This paper explores Francis Buckley’s war, its implications for the history of archaeological thought, and reasserts his under-acknowledged legacy.
Professor Tom Moore, Department of Archaeology, Durham University.
Lines in the landscape: Scot’s Dike and the role of monumental earthworks in Britain
Monumental linear earthworks are found across Britain and Ireland, defining communities, channelling movement and inscribing the landscape. Our understanding of the roles of these features remains dominated by interpretive frameworks grounded in antiquarian traditions. Despite their prevalence, apart from notable exceptions such as Offa’s dyke, recent discussions have been relatively quiet on their significance for understanding social and landscape organisation. Our recent Leverhulme funded Monumentality and Landscape (MAL) project (with Prof. Andrew Reynolds at UCL) has sought to redress this by reassessing these monuments. It records over 700 such earthworks across Britain and while dating of most remains poor, the evidence points to peaks of construction in the first millennium BC and mid-first millennium AD with potential differences in their form and roles. Using evidence from the MAL project and focusing on the preliminary results of investigations at Scot’s Dike in North Yorkshire, this paper will explore the important role of monumental linears in defining territories and shaping movement through landscapes. It will be argued that these monuments represent the display of changing forms of power, from the Late Bronze Age to early medieval period.
See attached flyer.
Also Prehistoric Yorkshire 62 printed copy available for members to collect.
Copyright for images
Buckley’s illustration of trenches on the western front, copyright Manchester Museum.
Scot’s Dyke excavations 2022, copyright Tom Moore, Durham University