British Archaeological Research Articles

A New Sanctified British Era of Architecture and Supremacy at Rawalpindi, Punjab Pakistan

This article defines the ‘Church Architecture’ with its genera which was introduced by the British government to the Subcontinent. This architecture is a significant part of the cultural heritage and British Archaeology of Pakistan. ‘Church Architecture’ is still a center of attention for the general public and the Christian community in Rawalpindi, Punjab, Pakistan. These “churches” were not only religious buildings of the British era but have always been the political and religious epicenters of British authorities. When the British East India Company was expanding its trading activities all over the subcontinent before 1849, simultaneously, ‘Company’ was trying to achieve the political and religious agenda of the British authorities. With combat skills, this trading company was able to meet the existing Sikh ruling powers on the battlefield, and the ‘Regime Change Operation’ ended, and the ‘British Era’ of architecture and supremacy emerged in Rawalpindi, Punjab Pakistan.

Peggy Piggott and Post-war British Archaeology

Peggy Piggott and Post-war British Archaeology

The Influence of British Archaeological Thought on Colonial Archaeology in Japan: A Case Study of William Gowland's “Notes on the Dolmens and Other Antiquities of Korea”

The Influence of British Archaeological Thought on Colonial Archaeology in Japan: A Case Study of William Gowland's “Notes on the Dolmens and Other Antiquities of Korea”

Archaeology in Scotland after the Second World War: The Glasgow Archaeological Society and John M Davidson

The organisation and co-ordination of local and national archaeological societies in the United Kingdom has been a matter of discussion since the late 19th Century. These efforts resulted in an initially purely English and Welsh grouping – the Congress of Archaeological Societies – formed in July 1889. Glasgow Archaeological Society was the first, and perhaps the only, Scottish Society to join in 1922. In the middle of the Second World War discussion around how archaeological work could best be structured after the War was started and this time the coverage was UK wide involving both Glasgow Archaeological Society and the Society of Antiquaries of Scotland. It led to the end of the Congress and the formation of the Council for British Archaeology and its various sections. This article reports on the nature of Scottish involvement in this work, rediscovering the key role of Glasgow Archaeological Society and its then President, John M Davidson, OBE, FCIS, FSA Scot.

From Dalmatia to the North Sea, and from Stonehenge to Artificial Intelligence

Vincent Gaffney (born in 1958) is a British archaeologist. In his 40-year career he has worked as a contract field archaeologist, museum curator, researcher and university professor at both Birmingham and Bradford. His expertise includes landscape archaeology, marine landscapes, remote sensing, GIS, computer visualization and communication. He has been awarded several prizes for his outstanding research achievements, among them the British Archaeological Award for the Best Book (2010) and European Archaeological Heritage Prize of the European Association of Archaeologists (2013), as well as an MBE in 2018, making him a Member of the Most Excellent Order of the British Empire. His close collaboration with Slovene and Croatian archaeology dates from the mid-1980s and is still continuing.

The War Years in Thebes: Ernest Mackay’s Work in Theban Tombs

The Mackay archive (now part of the larger manuscript collection of Alan H. Gardiner) kept at the Griffith Institute, University of Oxford, comprises excavation reports, photographs, and personal correspondence of Ernest Mackay, the British archaeologist who worked in the Theban necropolis from 1913–1916 on behalf of Robert Mond. Mackay’s notes fill in the gaps in the history of the exploration of Theban tombs, as well as add some additional information on the obscure years of the First World War in the Theban necropolis. The archive also sheds some light on the hitherto unknown beginning of the archaeological career of Dorothy Mackay. [Formula: see text]

The Inca: Lost Civilizations

The Inca: Lost Civilizations

:Hunde in der römischen Antike: Rassen/Typen - Zucht - Haltung und Verwendung

:<i>Hunde in der römischen Antike: Rassen/Typen - Zucht - Haltung und Verwendung</i>

Communities of Hope: Sharing Economies and the Production of Material Worlds.

How do we learn to share? As contemporary Western folks, what do we share, under what conditions, and with whom? Through two personal "material stories," our paper explores how archaeologists can think beyond capitalism when interpreting material worlds. We consider the dynamics (and limits) of sharing economies as an emerging form of collective production. Starting from the blunt force "consolidation" of a leading British archaeology department, we trace the subsequent fissures and spaces of opportunity created by this disruptive moment of neoliberal closure. We tell stories about the collective production of a replica lithic assemblage, and the construction of a community chicken hutch, to explore the intricacies of everyday sharing as an intentional means of resource creation. Through these two disparate case studies, we aim to not only demonstrate the complex social networks and object meanings generated by sharing (versus capitalist) economies, but also consider wider implications (both benefits and conflicts) generated through collective resource production.

Dorothy Mackay: A Forgotten Female Pioneer in Archaeology

In 2022, the author of this paper came across four letters regarding epigraphic documentation of some elite tombs in the Theban necropolis, Egypt, written by Dorothy Mackay and addressed to Alan H. Gardiner, at the archive of the Griffith Institute, University of Oxford. The author of the letters was the wife of Ernest Mackay (1880–1943), a British archaeologist best known for his later work on the Indus Valley Civilisation, who was excavating on the Theban west bank between 1913 and 1916. However, as further investigation revealed, Dorothy, until recently an obscure figure, was an accomplished scholar in her own right, who worked together with her husband, acted as a curator of two museums, and published extensively in times when it was far from easy for women to obtain an education, let alone conduct research. Despite that, the only recent sources discussing Dorothy and her scholarly accomplishments lack some vital details on her life. The aim of this contribution is to provide some further information and context on Dorothy Mackay and her research in the first half of the twentieth century.

Petrie at Hawara: Pioneering Debatable Standards?

Flinders Petrie’s first two seasons in Hawara, between 1888 and 1889, and their subsequent exhibitions in London, were arguably pivotal for the career of the British archaeologist. They also provide a wealth of documentation in his own hand to better <em>understand</em> the man. But to better <em>critique</em> him, this paper aims to reassess Petrie’s mindset, field work, and results in Hawara, first by the standards he began to craft for himself in the field, before briefly taking a modern perspective to complete the critical picture. To evaluate Petrie’s work by his own ambition, what could be more appropriate than to take him at his word? In the seminal <em>Methods &amp; Aims in Archaeology</em> of 1904, he would neatly set out his vision and the practicalities for the discipline. This assessment proffers to proceed along the original processual chapters of the book to examine how Petrie’s practices in Hawara in 1888–1889 already pioneer the theory he would consolidate 15 years later, while incorporating the latest research views. The main sources for this review are, by order of relevance, threefold: first, his original hand-written documentation from two so-called ‘Journals’ collected from letters, eight excavation ‘Notebooks’ and three ‘Day Diaries’; second, his publications for both seasons; and third, his autobiographical pieces. It appears that the ‘Father of Egyptian Archaeology’ did not entirely live up to his nascent ambition, leaving a contentious legacy to this day. The urge of the ‘salvage man’, trapped in contradictions, produced good results for the time but may also have led him astray in terms of aims and methods.

A review on rock paintings of India: Technique, pigment and conservation

Rock painting spans thousands of years of creative efforts and is as diverse as India's cultural practices, literature, and tradition. In India, there are over 1000 rock shelter sites with paintings. Amateurs discovered the majority of these sites. Archibald Carlleyle (1897), a British archaeologist, made the first systematic documentation in the mid-nineteenth century. Since the discovery in 1958 of a large collection of rock paintings found by Wakanakar at Bhimbetka in Madhya Pradesh, extensive research projects have been devised speculating on local and regional chronologies and styles. This paper provides a brief overview of Indian rock paintings, assisting readers in comprehending the history and distribution of rock paintings in different regions of India and its painting techniques and materials, pigments and binders, cause of deterioration, and management and conservation.

Belonging and Belongings: Portable Artefacts and Identity in the Civitas of the Iceni. By N. Harlow. BAR British series 664: Archaeology of Roman Britain Volume 4. British Archaeological Reports, Oxford, 2021. Pp. 269, illus. Price £63. isbn 9781407357010.

Belonging and Belongings: Portable Artefacts and Identity in the Civitas of the Iceni. By N. Harlow. BAR British series 664: Archaeology of Roman Britain Volume 4. British Archaeological Reports, Oxford, 2021. Pp. 269, illus. Price £63. isbn 9781407357010.

Empires of Antiquities: Modernity and the Rediscovery of the Ancient Near East, 1914–1950

Empires of Antiquities: Modernity and the Rediscovery of the Ancient Near East, 1914–1950

Árnyék a Selyemúton

The world-famous Hungarian–British archaeologist Aurel Stein was just visiting the Tarim basin on his second major expedition to the Inner Asian section of the Silk Road in 1907, when he became a witness to a rare astronomical phenomenon, a total solar eclipse. He also captured his impressions in his work entitled Ruins of Desert Cathay, also published in Hungarian. At the same moment, Sergei Mikhailovich Prokudin-Gorsky, a pioneer in color photography, as a member of a Russian scientific expedition was trying to take the world’s first color photograph of a total solar eclipse on a snowcapped hillside in Russian Turkestan (today Uzbekistan), in the middle of a snowstorm. In a special way, the lives of the Hungarian archaeologist and the Russian photographer of the Silk Road were intertwined for a moment. In my paper I take a look at this special moment from an astronomical, geographical, and historical perspective as well.

Women versus Wheelbarrows: Labor and British Archaeology in Late Ottoman Palestine

Women versus Wheelbarrows:Labor and British Archaeology in Late Ottoman Palestine Sarah Irving (bio) KEYWORDS archaeology, efficiency, gender, labor, Palestine In the summer of 1912, Duncan Mackenzie, director of the Palestine Exploration Fund's (PEF) archaeological excavations, sacked several dozen women who had been working on the dig at Ain Shems, west of Jerusalem. On the large-scale excavations that typified archaeology in Palestine in this period, women were mainly employed to carry the baskets of spoil filled by the men digging and mattocking the earth itself.1 Occasionally, they also sieved soil for small finds, although not, as far as we know, as Ain Shems. But according to Mackenzie, women complicated labor relations on the site: he claimed that they caused small-scale rifts and feuds and formed work cliques with their male relatives, who were reluctant to push their own wives, daughters, sisters or cousins to work harder. Mackenzie's solution was to replace his female employees with wheelbarrows. He started to plot the removal of women laborers in May, when he wrote that "I am going to see whether it may not be possible to find some barrows at Jaffa to take their place,"2 and reported by July 1912 that: Barrows were introduced as an innovation to take the place of female labour and it was found that one able bodied youth with barrow was able to accomplish the work of four women. Another advantage was that we could be more independent of local conditions of labour which are often unfavourable in the Valley of Sorek.3 [End Page 427] Click for larger view View full resolution Figure 1. PEF excavation showing female laborers carrying spoil. Image courtesy of the Palestine Exploration Fund. Click for larger view View full resolution Figure 2. Women workers sieving for small finds at Gezer/Tell Jezar. Image courtesy of the Palestine Exploration Fund. [End Page 428] Click for larger view View full resolution Figure 3. PEF excavation, with both women laborers and heavy wooden wheelbarrows. Image courtesy of the Palestine Exploration Fund. A fortnight later he informed his PEF employers that through the switch from women to wheelbarrows he had cut his workforce at Ain Shems from 90 to 30,4 and reiterated the benefits of these measures: namely a cut in the overall wage bill, more efficient labor via reduced social interaction and increased movement of spoil, and—repeated in several letters, which suggests it was of most importance to Mackenzie—independence from fluctuations in the labor supply to which this excavation seems to have been especially prone. The history of archaeology has been, and to some extent still is, dominated by studies of dead white men, often combined with religious mysticism or tales of adventure. But the records of excavations taking place in late Ottoman Palestine also have the potential to yield valuable insights into a notoriously difficult-to-study subject: the lives of rural village women. As shown by Mackenzie's comments, these archives need to be read against the grain, filtered through an awareness of orientalism, racism and misogyny. But with these caveats in mind, such records can yield material which disrupts both the orientalist imagery of rural scenes straight from the Bible, and the idealized and [End Page 429] timeless peasant women of Palestinian nationalist iconography.5 The archives concerned vary in nature; sometimes information can be gleaned from published material, when excavation directors such as Mackenzie or his predecessors Frederick Jones Bliss and R.A.S. Macalister describe the environment on their digs prior to detailing the finds. More information is often to be found in letters describing daily life on site: Bliss, born in Lebanon to American missionaries, spoke fluent regional Arabic and took an active, if paternalistic, interest in the lives of his workers, whilst his successors wrote more about problems with their employees and the wages allocated to them (adult men were at the top of the pay scale; women and children often received only half as much). Only Bliss mentions the names of significant numbers of workers. The records from the Harvard Semitic Museum excavation at Sebastia, near Nablus, meanwhile, include less narrative description of life on-site but do...

Review: Contested Heritage: Relations between Contemporary Pagan Groups and the Archaeological and Heritage Professions in Britain in the Early 21st Century, by Will Rathouse

For most modern Pagans, the religions of pre-Christian Europe are regarded as ancestral and thus of key spiritual importance. As a result, many Pagans have expressed great interest in the archaeological evidence for these past societies as well as the ways in which this evidence is interpreted, displayed, and managed. In various cases, this has resulted in conflict between archaeologists and heritage managers on the one hand, and modern Pagans and members of allied subcultures on the other.Over the past twenty years, quite a bit of work on the relationship between these two interest groups (at least in Britain) has been published, most importantly Jenny Blain and Robert Wallis’ 2007 book on paganism and archeology, Sacred Sites, Contested Rites/Rights. In the latest contribution to this growing body of literature, Will Rathouse provides a summary of some of the core areas of contention, especially over public access to sites like Stonehenge, the excavation of significant prehistoric discoveries, such as Seahenge, and the retention and display of pre-Christian human remains. Restricting his focus to England and Wales, he looks in particular at the views of modern Pagan Druids. Drawing on his own experience as both an archaeologist and a practicing Pagan, Rathouse also offers his thoughts regarding how a more productive relationship can be cultivated between different interest groups, stressing the importance of “continuous engagement and respectful discourse between all interested parties” (128).Contested Heritage derives from Rathouse’s Ph.D. dissertation completed at the University of Wales Trinity Saint David in 2015, and its origins as a thesis feel apparent in the structure and style of the book. Although Rathouse engaged in ethnographic work as part of his project, he draws little upon it in this monograph, which instead focuses largely on summarizing and synthesizing pre-existing literature, both primary and secondary. In many areas, Contested Heritage covers ground already explored in Blain and Wallis’ book, although Rathouse also includes discussion of certain issues they did not, such as the Crossbones Graveyard in South London. The book contains nearly forty color images, although some have been reproduced poorly. Various spelling and grammar errors indicate the need for a more thorough copyedit by the publisher.Contested Heritage is primarily aimed at those working in archaeology or the heritage sector, as opposed to scholars of modern Paganism or new religious movements. Indeed, scholars of religion may be frustrated that it makes only limited use of the academic literature on modern Paganism. At no point does it cite anything from The Pomegranate, the only peer-reviewed journal devoted to the study of modern Pagan religions, for instance, and there are a range of studies of modern Pagan interactions with British archaeology that are similarly not cited. This is a drawback, although those scholars with a particular interest in modern Pagan relationships with archaeology and heritage may still find the book of interest.

The Clayton Collection: An Archaeological Appraisal of a 19th Century Collection of Roman Artefacts from Hadrian's Wall. By F.C. McIntosh. British Archaeological Reports British Series 646; Archaeology of Roman Britain 1. Archaeopress, Oxford, 2019. Pp. xiv + 192, illus. Price £38. isbn 9781407321479.

The Clayton Collection: An Archaeological Appraisal of a 19th Century Collection of Roman Artefacts from Hadrian's Wall. By F.C. McIntosh. British Archaeological Reports British Series 646; Archaeology of Roman Britain 1. Archaeopress, Oxford, 2019. Pp. xiv + 192, illus. Price £38. isbn 9781407321479. - Volume 52

A Cathedral with Disconnected Chapels? Reassessing the Cognitive Capacities of Neanderthals in Light of Recent Archaeological Discoveries

Abstract The reconstruction of hominins’ cognitive evolution has always been a crucial but challenging task. Researchers from various disciplines have tried to approach this issue, among which British archaeologist Steven Mithen’s cathedral model is regarded as one of the earliest and most creative attempts. In this model, he proposed that the Neanderthal’s mind is like a cathedral with disconnected chapels. Specifically, Neanderthals possessed advanced social, natural history, technical, and even linguistic intelligence modules, but the first three modules are isolated from each other, meaning they cannot effectively use the knowledge from one domain to address the issue of another domain. This article challenges his reconstruction of Neanderthals’ cognitive capacities by presenting multiple forms of archaeological evidence bearing on various kinds of cross-domain thinking that has arisen over the past two decades.

New Books across the Disciplines

New Books across the Disciplines