Embedded Files
Lecture Series
Below are the details of our lectures delivered for the academic year 2023/2024
Lecture series 2023/2024
Wednesday 1st May 2024, 7.30pm: USAS LECTURE
Title: Disarticulated Iron Age & Roman human remains within the town of Silchester
Speaker: Professor Mike Fulford (University of Reading)
The antiquarian excavators of Silchester noted the occasional find of human bone as well as a few complete or partial skeletons. Apart from recording their general location within the town there is little or no further information about context. Excavations since the 1980s have added further examples of disarticulated human bone as well as one or two complete or partial skeletons and have provided a stratigraphic context for them. Sixteen radiocarbon dates have been obtained from modern finds and from all five remaining bones in Reading Museum, 21 in total. The talk will review the contexts, character and dating of the remains against the background of similar urban finds from Roman Britain.
Wednesday 10th April 2024, 7.30pm : USAS LECTURE
THE USAS HOLLEYMAN ONLINE ARCHAEOLOGY LECTURE 2024
Title: Re-making Rapa Nui (Easter Island): archaeology’s Polynesian narrative
Speaker: Professor Sue Hamilton (University College London)
Rapa Nui is a tiny, remote, Polynesian island. It is famed for the 1000+ giant statues made by its first inhabitants c. AD 1200, and for theories about the end of this tradition. Rapa Nui's past has been used and misused as a cautionary tale for social collapse triggered by environmental denigration. By contrast, there has been little exploration of how, following arrival on an uninhabited island, the architectural and conceptual landscape created by its ancient communities came into being and successfully matured. The re-making of Rapa Nui is an interpretative analysis of the island's prehistoric archaeology as an island entity. The lecture presents a socially and ideologically articulated cultural landscape structured by the meanings of things as much as being a response and adaption to environmental impacts. It contrasts western narratives of the island's archaeology, with evaluations influenced by Rapanui and Polynesian perspectives. It highlights the dynamic contribution of Rapa Nui's ancient past to the re-making of today's Rapa Nui, as one of the most iconic places in the world for heritage tourism.
GEORGE ALFRED HOLLEYMAN (1910-2004)
George Holleyman, who owned a well-known antiquarian bookshop in Duke Street, Brighton, was a respected amateur archaeologist. George’s extensive fieldwork in Sussex is recorded in his many publications (1934-1976). He joined the Sussex Archaeological Society in 1946, serving on its Council from 1948-1984, after which he was a vice-president from 1987.
Wednesday 20th March 2024: USAS ONLINE LECTURE
CRETE: The Myth of the Minotaur and the archaeology of the Minoans
Speaker: Sarah Green
Wednesday 20th March 2024: USAS online Lecture, 7.30pm
Crete is best known in Greek Mythology as the home of King Minos, his wife Pasiphae, their daughters Ariadne and Phaedra and Pasiphae's child, the Minotaur. According to the myth, the half-bull, half-man was housed in a labyrinth and killed by the hero Theseus. But who were the Minoans and how did their civilisation, which has been described as the earliest of its kind in Europe, develop into a strong maritime entity which traded throughout the Aegean, notably on mainland Greece, and with Egypt?
This lecture will look at the archaeological evidence we have for the Aegean Bronze Age civilization on the island of Crete, which flourished from about 2600 to 1100 BC and was rediscovered at the beginning of the 20th century through the work of British archaeologist Arthur Evans.
Wednesday 21st February 2024: USAS ONLINE LECTURE
Early prehistoric occupation at Wogan Cavern: Why the site is so special
Recent excavations at Wogan Cavern (Pembroke) have revealed impressive evidence for several early prehistoric occupations. Although only a small volume of deposits has so far been excavated it is already clearly a site of national and international significance. In this talk the recent work and discoveries are outlined, and the site’s importance is explained with reference to current gaps in our knowledge of the last Ice Age in Britain.
Speaker: Dr Rob Dinnis
Please note that this lecture was NOT recorded.
Wednesday 17th January 2024: USAS LECTURE
Flint Story – how human lives were transformed by flint during early prehistory
Speaker: Diana Jones
A year ago, I quietly self-published Flint Story, my first book. Motivated by the holistic, landscape outlook used in my studies, I resolved to write a broad narrative about how human lives were transformed by flint during early prehistory. This talk traces my five-year pursuit to document its crucial role in an accessible way, which often led me to focus on key evidence from continental Europe and beyond.
Flint Story's thirty chapters explore geology and tools, mines and fire, antiquarians, collectors and experimenters. It also highlights the phenomenal range of practical and symbolic objects fashioned with flint, inspired by nature’s creatures and processes. As well as touching on some of these themes, I'll describe my own journey through self-publishing, as a means of encouraging local researchers and fieldworkers to give voice to personal reflections often missing from the archaeological record.
Wednesday 22nd November 2023: USAS LECTURE
Roman Imperial Sculptures in Sussex (and beyond): New Research
(THE SALLY CHRISTIAN ARCHAEOLOGY LECTURE 2023)
Speaker: Dr Miles Russell (University of Bournemouth)
Laser scanning damaged Romano-British sculpture, much of it misidentified, misunderstood, or simply buried deep in museum stores, has shown that there was originally a very large number of statues in Roman Britain, most of which depicted emperors or members of the imperial family. Sussex, in particular, is exceptionally rich in Roman sculpture, many finds being made within the area of Chichester to Worthing. By re-evaluating and identifying characters in this archive, it is possible to better understand how the Roman State promoted itself and how the people in distant provinces, such as Britannia, ultimately reacted.
Wednesday 18th October 2023, 7.30pm
Rudyard Kipling and Roman Britain
“And see you, after rain, the trace of mound and ditch and wall? O that was a Legion’s camping-place when Caesar sailed from Gaul”.
Speaker: Dr David Walsh (University of Newcastle)
Widely known for his poems and novels such as The Jungle Books and Kim, Rudyard Kipling was one of the most influential writers of the late 19th to early 20th centuries. Consequently, the publication of Puck of Pook's Hill in 1906, which contained several short stories describing the life of Parnesius, a Romano-British centurion posted to Hadrian's Wall, had a considerable impact on how the general public imagined life in Roman Britain. It also served as a cautionary tale about how empires can decline, something which Kipling and many others were concerned about as Britain's own imperial status was increasingly threatened. This talk will discuss how Kipling's ideas about Roman Britain developed, what lessons he sought to impart through these stories, and how his narratives continued to influence both archaeologists and later authors throughout the 20th century.
Wednesday 20th September 2023, 7.30pm
From industry to agriculture: new Roman and Anglo-Saxon discoveries on the Bexhill–Hasting Link Road
Speaker: Dr Martyn Allen (Senior Project Manager, Oxford Archaeology)
During excavations on the Bexhill–Hasting Link Road in 2013, Oxford Archaeology discovered an extensive Romano-British iron bloomery and an Anglo-Saxon agricultural settlement. The iron bloomery contained no less than 14 smelting furnaces and bloom-smithing hearths, two ore-roasting pits, and the partial remains of a small smithy. These features were accompanied by an accumulation of iron slag that was only partially revealed but extended over an area in excess of 20m by 45m and reached a depth of more than 2m. Early estimates suggest that the bloomery contained more than 10,000 tonnes of slag, and potentially produced over 40 tonnes of bar iron over a period of about 200 years.
Following the abandonment of the bloomery in the 3rd century AD, the site witnessed no significant activity until the early/middle Anglo-Saxon period when an extensive farmstead was established. This settlement consisted of a long hall, a sunken-featured building and three large cereal-drying ovens. Extensive ditched boundaries and trackways extended across the site, marking out its position within the landscape and defined how it operated. This talk will present further details from the analysis of these impressive sites and will seek to place the results within the wider context of south-east England during the Roman and Anglo-Saxon periods
Previous Years' Lectures
You can still view the details of our previous online lectures
Google Sites
Report abuse