Lecture Series 2021/2022

Lecture Series 2021/2022

Here are the details of the lectures we held in 2021/2022

Wednesday 13^th April 2022, 7.30pm

The 2022 Holleyman Lecture

Fighting Julius Caesar: the North Bersted burial

Speaker: Andrew Fitzpatrick (University of Leicester)

Does an Iron Age burial found near Chichester bring us face-to-face with a man who fought against Caesar?

When Julius Caesar invaded Britain in 55 BC one of the reasons he gave was that the Britons had helped the Gauls in their struggle against him in his Battle for Gaul.

The mourners of a man whose grave was discovered at North Bersted laid him to rest with the honours of a Gaulish warrior. The burial dates to the 1st century BC and stable isotope analyses suggest that the man grew up in Gaul. Amongst the panoply of weapons buried with him was a helmet with a unique crest shaped like a bird. Some coins of the Bellovaci people in Normandy show a man with a bird-shaped headdress.

Caesar related how a revolt against him was led by the Bellovaci and when it failed, their leaders fled to Britain. Does the burial at North Bersted bring us face-to-face with a man who fought Caesar?

Wednesday 16^th March 2022, 7.30pm

Making Flour the German Way: Imported lava querns and millstones in Roman Britain and Sussex

Speaker: Lindsay Banfield (University of Reading)

Processing grain is an activity fundamental to agrarian societies, and often imbued not just with economic but also social and ritual significance. Imported lava was one of the most popular choices for querns and millstones in Roman Britain, but their use in Britain has never been systematically studied. This paper will consider this neglected body of material to enhance our understanding of Romano-British food production, of the rural economy and of the social, cultural, and religious identities of the people who used them.

Data on 2,707 lava milling tools has been collated from 1,165 Romano-British sites. This large dataset has been used to explore typology, distribution, use, reuse, and discard of lava across the province in a theoretically informed study of quern biography. More detailed examination has been completed on the querns and millstones from Fishbourne, the Chichester district, and the defended rural settlement at Bridge Farm in Barcombe Mills, allowing for a nuanced investigation into the relationship that Chichester had with its hinterland and more distant settlements in the Weald. Results have shown that Lodsworth Greensand was the predominant source for milling tools in this region, but that lava was also used in the more affluent urban areas and villas. It seems likely that lava was more suitable for producing larger sized millstones than locally sourced stone. The introduction of more centralised forms of grain processing may have necessitated the import of lava to fulfil this need. The presence of lava at Bridge Farm presents some interesting questions that can only be answered with further data from Roman sites in the Weald.

Wednesday 16^th February 2022, 7.30pm

Understanding the Ribchester helmet

Speaker: Dr Jaime Kaminski (Sussex Archaeological Society)

In 1796 a 13-year-old boy playing on wasteland behind his father’s house in Ribchester, Lancashire, discovered an assemblage of over 30 Roman artefacts, including a decorated brass helmet. Now housed in the British Museum, the Ribchester helmet is one of the most iconic objects from Roman Britain. Although partially corroded, the helmet is a fine example of a first-century AD cavalry sports helmet. This presentation will review the production and deposition of the helmet and its associated assemblage. It will consider how the interpretation of the helmet has evolved since its discovery. It will also examine the helmet’s multi-faceted iconography and reinterpret the long-neglected imagery on the helmet bowl. Finally, the evidence will be brought together to build a picture of the lives of elite equestrian troops in the hinterland of the northern frontier.

Wednesday 24th November 2021, 7.30pm

The Sally Christian Archaeology Lecture

More than axes: A re-analysis of the Early Neolithic flint mines of Sussex

Speaker: Dr Jon Baczkowski (University of Southampton)

This presentation will focus on the results on Jon's PhD project, titled the Early Neolithic flint mines of Sussex and their wider environs, undertaken at the University of Southampton and completed in 2021. Included will be the results of geophysical surveys of two flint mines, Harrow Hill and Long Down, the field surveys of working floors associated with two mines, new radiocarbon dates both from mines and non-mining sites and finally analysis of nearly 40,000 pieces of flint work and five Early Neolithic pottery assemblages. Overall, the research offers a re-consideration of flint mining and the wider Early Neolithic of Sussex, which resulted in the publication of six papers. It is proposed that flint mines were pivotal monuments to the creation, development and spread of nascent Early Neolithic practices and cultural identities from the very start of the period in southern England. The research develops the study of flint mining beyond the immediate mine workings and into the wider landscape of Sussex, thus increasing knowledge on the communities who extracted flint from deep beneath the ground from the start of the Neolithic, one of the most important periods in the prehistory of the British Isles.

Wednesday 13th October 2021, 7.30pm

An overview of evidence for Roman woodworking from SE England

including a little on the material from Bridge Farm and Edburton, both in Sussex

Speaker: Dr Damian Goodburn (Museum of London Archaeology)

The talk will cover a broad spectrum of archaeological evidence for various forms of Roman period woodworking derived from excavations of waterlogged sites in South-East England, mostly from the Greater London Area. It will also briefly cover aspects of two recent woodwork finds from Sussex. It will take a ‘from the tree to the finished woodwork’ approach, presenting evidence for the range of woodland used, through felling and timber processing methods, to jointing and fastening woodwork. Examples from a range of types of woodwork will be shown including, buildings, waterfronts, boat building, cart building, barrel making and writing tablet manufacture.

Previous Years' Lectures

You can still view our Lecture Series 2020/2021