The Slave Trade: beginning the end

Next Sunday, and sadly at a ludicrously early time in the evening’s schedule, Channel 4 will be showing an episode of Time Team we filmed last summer in South Wales. In the 19^th Century the area around Swansea was the centre of the world’s copper industry and gained the strange-sounding name ‘Copperopolis’. (That name, together with everything about the Welsh copper industry is in a superb book by Steven Hughes, Copperopolis, Landscapes of the Early Industrial Period in Wales, Royal Commission on Ancient and Historic Monuments in Wales, 2000.)

In case you’re already looking puzzled, because you thought copper was mostly mined in north Wales and south-west England, the reason why Swansea became the industry’s focus is simple. It’s all about coal. The area produced vast amounts of the right sort of coal needed to smelt the metal out of copper ore, a process that involves frequent re-heating, which uses four times as much coal as ore – hence the location. Then, as now, it was all about costs and economics.

I don’t want to give away what we revealed in the dig, but it’s no secret that the Copperopolis works produced and sold-on trinkets (some were known as ‘manila bracelets’) that were used in the three-way ‘Atlantic triangle’ slave trade of the 18^th Century. Incidentally, I discuss the effects of this trade in The Making of the British Landscape, p. 528. I say ‘three-way’, because manufactured goods were exported from England to Africa, where slaves were exchanged for them, and then the poor unfortunates were packed into ships like sardines and sent across the Atlantic to the West Indies and southern United States where they were sold to plantation owners. The ships then returned to England with cargoes of rum, sugar and of course raw cotton to feed the growing textile industries of Lancashire and the north-west. On paper, and in theory, it was a very lucrative and well thought-out chain of trade, were it not for that loathsome link in the middle.

As Archaeological Director I have to approve the final edited version of the film, known as the fine-cut. Essentially this is the finished film, but without some of the completed graphics and before Tony records the voice-over, which is read instead by the Director, who in this case was Sian Price. Sian understands archaeology thoroughly, which was as well, because technically this was a difficult film to make, and I think she did a very good job. But while we were filming I mentioned that I had a personal reason to dislike the slave trade. I can remember Sian smiling when I told her, because I don’t look even slightly African. In fact I look about as un-African as it’s possible to look.

My great-great-great-great grand-father was a Quaker banker named Samuel Hoare (1751-1825). As a footnote, he was nothing to do with the well-known 18^th and 19^th century Hoare’s Bank – that was another family entirely. No, Sam Hoare was a banker, but he was also a Quaker and in those days people were less inclined to trust their money to any old bank, as they do today. Instead they looked for honesty and probity in the men (and it was men, then) who ran their banks. The likes of Fred the Shred wouldn’t have made it beyond junior office boy in Georgian England. But I digress. That was the reason they trusted Quaker bankers, because Quakers had earned a lasting reputation for honesty: believe it or not, my family were one of the Quaker families who founded Barclays, a bank where I had accounts for fifty years, until, that is, their utter disregard for their ordinary customers, coupled with constant, mindless attempts to sell me unwanted insurance and then, finally, those obscene bonuses, together made me quit them. And after half a century, they didn’t even bother to ask why I’d left… Anyhow, I’m now with the Co-Op Bank and am delighted with both their service and their ethics.

The official name of the Quakers is the Society of Friends, and they maintained close links across the Atlantic, because in the 17^th century many Quakers were deported to the penal colonies of Virginia, for expressing their strong non-conformist views. Indeed, the very first Francis Pryor was going to be sent there with other Quakers in the 1650s, except the captain of the ship (so the story goes) refused to set sail in case God sunk his vessel in a storm, as a penalty for deporting so many righteous people. Like other British Quakers, Sam Hoare was in regular correspondence with American Friends, who were regularly reporting on the treatment of slaves in the U.S. plantations.

We know quite a lot about Sam’s life, thanks to memoirs written by his family and edited together in a splendid, but sadly now very expensive (if, that is, you can get it) book, by yet another Francis Pryor: F.R. Pryor, Memoirs of Samuel Hoare by His Daughter Sarah and his Widow Hannah. Also Some Letters from London During the Gordon Riots (Hedley Brothers, Bishopsgate, London, 1911). Hardly a snappy title…

Partly as a result of their trans-Atlantic correspondence, Sam and five other Quakers set up the first anti-slavery committee in 1783. He was the treasurer and his first and second wives Sarah and Hannah ware Secretaries. Despite the efforts of this committee, known today as The Original Six, nothing was done by the British Establishment, where vested interests were far too powerful. Another big problem was that Quakers couldn’t become government ministers. So in 1787 the Committee re-invented itself as the National Committee with nine Quakers and three Anglicans, including Thomas Clarkson and, later, William Wilberforce. Both were known to be active in the anti-slavery movement, but more importantly, being Anglicans they could both become ministers.

A crayon portrait of Samuel Hoare (1751-1825), the Quaker banker and co-founder of the first anti-slavery Committee (1783), by Josiah Slater (in 1816)

By great good fortune I have inherited some Sam Hoare memorabilia, including a small crayon portrait painted in 1816 by Josiah Slater. If you watch the Time Team film closely you’ll be able to spot it, as a cut-away, during one of my interviews. But if your reactions aren’t quick enough, I’ve reproduced it here.

The Bill to abolish the slave trade was passed in 1807 and in the publicity surrounding the recent Parliamentary celebrations the Quakers seemed to have played a very reduced role. It was all about MPs Clarkson and Wilberforce. The only mention I heard of the Friends was in Thought for the Day on Radio 4 and then it wasn’t a Quaker, but (I think) a C of E vicar! I don’t know who he was, as I was rubbing myself dry after a bath when I happened to catch what he said. But well done Reverend: your reward will have to be in Heaven, as I’d have sent you one of my books if only I knew your name…

A sketch of Samuel Hoare senior’s house in Paradise Row, Stoke Newington, 1911.

We tend to think that religions grew up in big cities and indeed, today the HQ of the Quakers is just round the corner from the Institute of Archaeology, off Gordon Square, in Bloomsbury. But Quakerism flourished out in the provinces, especially around Stroud in the south-west and of course in York and East Anglia, where my family come from. Sam Hoare’s family probably came from Ireland, but his father, Samuel Hoare senior, was a self-made man and a Quaker who lived in Paradise Row, Stoke Newington, now in London’s East End. In those days of course it was a small out-of-town hamlet. I went in search of the house, armed with a photocopy of a sketch made of it for F.R. Pryor’s book in 1911, but sadly it wasn’t there. But I was very impressed with some of the Georgian houses that had survived.

Georgian Houses in Paradise Row, Stoke Newington today.

In a strange way, Paradise Row still has a tranquil, almost rural feel to it. The stream had long since been tidied away and tarmac’d over, but you could see clearly where once it had run.  Sam senior had made a lot of money and his son continued the process, as a banker. He moved closer to the City, although not that close, bearing in mind that he rode to work. He lived in a large Georgian pile known as Heath House, which still dominates Hampstead Heath and overlooks the pond at the top of Hampstead Hill.

In 1802 Sam’s second daughter Hannah married another Hampstead Quaker, Thomas Marlborough Pryor. He was my three-greats grandfather. I don’t know whether it’s anything to do with them, but there’s a block of Victorian flats nearby called The Pryors. I rarely drive past, but when I do I like to honk my horn – just to be annoying.

Lambing starts four days early

This morning I got up as usual around 5.30 and started work on the blog, writing something to appear before next Sunday, when Time Team is showing one of my sites.  At 6.30, as soon as there was enough light, I checked the ewes. All was peace. I returned to my desk. Had breakfast.  After breakfast I fed the ewes. Then, at 11.00, as I was forking through some hay, a young ewe, to judge from her ear-tag number, she’s one of the 2009 crop, walked towards me. There was something about the way she held her head that aroused my suspicions. So as she passed, I looked at her back end. Two front legs were sticking out. I reached into my shirt pocket for my phone to call Maisie, but I’d left it on the breakfast table. Muttering something rude under my breath, I gathered up a couple of hurdles and steered her into a temporary pen. Then I spread some fresh straw and filled her a bucket of water. She munched straw contentedly, as if nothing was protruding from her hind quarters.

I sprinted indoors and bellowed for Maisie who was on the phone to an archaeologist somewhere. She hung up and joined me five minutes later out in the barn. I held the ewe while Maisie gently massaged her vagina to help it dilate. Then I rubbed some of the hormone-rich liquids from her back end around her nose.  This worked and soon she was starting to push and was licking her lips frantically. The hormone also stimulates the let-down reflex that produces milk. Meanwhile Maisie, who unlike me has tiny hands, had managed to work out why there were just legs and no head protruding. Two lambs were tangled together and had jammed. So she pushed one back and gently pulled on the other’s legs, while I poured on liberal quantities of lubricant. Out came a small male lamb.

The first ewe to lamb with the two lambs she will be raising herself.

Then a female, which the ewe immediately set about licking. Soon both lambs were spotless white. Then, almost as an afterthought she podded-out a second male, which we whisked away to the heat lamps and the bottle bar. It’s very unusual indeed for a first-lamber to have triplets and she almost certainly wouldn’t have had enough milk to feed all three, so it’s safest to remove one and raise it on a bottle. Sometimes we manage to adopt a triplet to a ewe who has lost a lamb, but it isn’t always successful. So these days we tend to play safe and raise them on bottles. Later they’ll graduate to a semi-automatic milk bar.

The triplet lamb we are raising by hand.

The first lamb is officially expected next Sunday, which will be precisely 21 weeks (the usual gestation period) after the tups (rams) went in to the ewes, back in early October.  So our first-time lamber is a remarkable mother: three lambs, four days early. They’re not very large, but they’re alive, active and she’s certainly got enough milk for two. Not a bad for a beginner. So now the lambing routine starts and one of us must check the barn every hour from now until the last lamb, which could be as late as Easter Day.  Anyhow, who needs sleep?

Bronze Age Boats and Those Who Dig Them

I’m proud to say I was once a digger. And I think I was quite a good one – OK, good-to-average – but not in the same class as, say, Phil Harding. Today he’s famous as a Time Team person, but it’s less generally known that he’s also just about the best digger of archaeological stuff that I know. Phil could turn his hand to most sites and has done so in his twenty years with the Team. But for many archaeologists there’s a big divide, between wet and dry sites. As someone who’s had to dig both, I don’t accept that one is easier, or harder than the other. They’re both different and with their own special challenges. Dry sites require a good eye for levels and a steady hand; they also demand great sensitivity to colour and textural change. Wetland sites need delicate handling: ancient wood is often very soft and can be damaged beyond repair in the twinkling of an eye. It’s like removing the chocolate sauce off vanilla ice cream: the trick is not to cut into the ice cream.

I’ve been put in mind of saying a big Thank You to archaeological diggers in general, after making several visits to those extraordinary boats at Must Farm, just a stone’s throw away from Flag Fen, near Peterborough. I’ve been visiting the site over a number of years, as my wife, Maisie Taylor, is their wood-working specialist. And I tag along for the ride whenever I can. I’m also interested because Must Farm is just down the road from Flag Fen, and if it wasn’t for the huge banks that constrain the waters of the canalised River Nene, you could probably just make out people standing at either site. They’re that close.

A general view of part of the site at Must Farm. Note the boat, almost fully excavated here, and the bed of the oldest (Bronze Age) stream channel, with water standing in it, to the right.

When we excavated Flag Fen in the ‘80s and ‘90s, I reckoned our team was as good as they get. And I was extremely proud of them.  To be quite honest, in the years that followed I visited a number of other wet sites, with loads of prehistoric wood, and wasn’t always that impressed. Then Mark Knight, and with him teams of diggers from the Cambridge Archaeological Unit, began to work in the Peterborough area, and suddenly standards began rapidly to improve. Mark knew how to encourage and motivate people – and it showed. Like our teams ten years previously, the Cambridge Unit also built up specialist diggers, who understood the local soils, and groundwater conditions. This was an important step, because no two wetland sites are never the same. They can vary hugely over short distances. So Must Farm, the site that forms the subject of this blog, is only half a mile from Flag Fen, but the soils and the preserved wood there are very different.

Must Farm has just been reported in British Archaeology. It’s a sensational site in every possible respect. As it’s there for all to see, I won’t repeat the magazine article, other than to note two things. The first (and less important) is that this very short stretch of Bronze Age British river (imagine a two-minute stroll along a towpath to get an idea of its scale) produced no less than 6 boats and dozens of  intact fish weirs, complete with their traps. ‘Isn’t that unique?’ Someone once asked me. ‘No,’ I replied, ‘far from it. There must have been thousands like it in prehistory – only we haven’t found them yet.’

What we’ve been granted at Must Farm is a rare glimpse of a vanished time. We think of Stonehenge in all its splendour atop Salisbury Plain, meanwhile down in the river valleys below the Plain there must have been hundreds, no thousands, of people earning a living on, or around rivers and chalk streams, by fishing, fowling or just ferrying folks about. In later prehistory the flatter land of the lower river valleys was where daily life happened. It was like Soho compared with Westminster Abbey. What Must Farm is telling us is that in the later Bronze Age (roughly the millennium after 1500 BC), Britain was a developed and civilised place. These people were living together in harmony . Yes, there would have been conflict from time to time, but just like today, most of people’s lives were lived in peace. And in remarkably prosperous peace, at that.

But the most important aspect of the Must Farm boats is the way they were excavated. Frankly, and as someone who knows what he’s talking about, the work was superb. Remember: the wood they were digging isn’t wood as we know it today. All the tough, resilient, lignin has gone, to be replaced by water and crumbly, fragile minerals. If you excavate ‘wood’ of this sort with a lollipop stick you can gouge great holes in it. To excavate so much wood to such a high standard, and in sometimes very unpleasant conditions, takes stamina, concentration and huge discipline. As I walked around the site in the autumn I couldn’t believe what I was seeing. The boats themselves were in perfect condition. One even floated, when it was being lifted. But it was close inspection that revealed just how good the excavation had been.

Maisie showed me the base of one boat, where a change in colour from blackish to reddish brown revealed the transition from the tree’s heartwood to the outer, living, sapwood. Dutifully I took a photo. Back at home I put the picture on a large screen and was astonished at the surface of the boat: there wasn’t a nick or a scratch on it. Superb.

A close up of the lower side of one of the Must Farm Bronze Age boats, showing the transition from heartwood (dark) to sapwood (reddish colour). Note also the superb quality of the wood’s surface, as revealed by the excavator.

In several places the diggers revealed where clay had been deliberately smeared into the joints of patches and repairs, to make them water-tight. In fact these boats had obviously been used and most were probably at the end of their active lives. One so often gets the feeling that ancient boats (such as the huge Iron Age craft from Hasholme, now in Hull Museum), owe their survival to the fact that they were quite new and had been deliberately sunk, maybe as offerings, or as part of funeral rites. I felt the Must Farm boats all had a wonderful ‘lived in’ feel to them. Eventually, no doubt, Maisie’s team will tell me if I was correct.

A close-up of the stern of a Bronze Age boat showing a patch of grey clay that had been smeared over a repair to make it water-tight. Another example of superb digging technique.

In addition to the boats, there were dozens of fish weirs and traps, some of them intact. Now if boats present a challenge to an excavator, fish traps are something else. They’re made from fine wattle, often willow, but sometimes (I can think of an example in Holland) from dogwood or Cornus, a wet-loving shrub. I’ve just been cutting some overgrown Cornus back from the edge of my wood, and I’ve been whipped across the face several times by its very pliant young growth. But after three thousand years, all the strength and elasticity will have gone, and then the remains of the fish trap are as fragile as thin eggshell. How the example I picture here was dug to such a high standard, I’ll never know. I certainly couldn’t have done it myself.

Woven wicker fish traps were positioned down-stream, at the funnel-end of a wattle fish weir. The ancient (Bronze Age) example shown here has collapsed in on itself. A modern basketry trap, still used in the Fens to catch eels, has been placed alongside it for comparison.

So I want to take this opportunity to proclaim:

WELL DONE EVERYONE AT MUST FARM. YOU’RE IN A CLASS OF YOUR OWN.

And that goes too for Kerry Murrell, who has led her team so very well, during a sometimes bitterly cold winter.  We read so much in the press about celebrities, politicians, ex-Prime Ministers, bankers and other dreary, over-paid, egotistical nonentities. How nice it is that some quietly dedicated people have chosen to do something so very worthwhile – and  for almost no money. Thank you Must Farm diggers: you have restored my faith in humanity.

On Sheep and Working Dogs

The garden and barn a few days ago, immediately after the big snowfall. The scaffolding on the barn is part of the erection of solar panels on the roof. From the end of February the barn will be the place where lambing happens.

At last February has arrived, and with it the snow. All around us the guns fell silent as the pheasant shooting season ended on January 31st. My lovely Border Collie was able to come from beneath the wooden settle in our back porch, where she retreats when shooters are nearby. Like every Border Collie I’ve ever known, she’s scared stiff of loud bangs. On Bonfire Night I often have to sit for hours in the porch, with a terrified dog on my lap. I’ve had three working Collies and when I bought my current one, some ten years ago  I asked her breeder her name. Normally sheep dogs are given butch, usually monosyllabic, names that sound good when farmers are having man-to-man conversations in the bar at the local cattle market. Names like: Rip, Cap and Doc. My last one was called Jess. These short names are practical too. They carry a long distance when called out across an open Fen, or down the rolling fells on a clear winter’s morning. So I asked the breeder my new dog’s name. At this, she (the breeder, not the dog) looked, how can I put it, sheepish:

My Border Collie, Twink , contemplating the plot of her next novel.

‘Oh,’ she said very embarrassed, ‘actually we’ve called her…’ She paused, reluctant to say it. ‘We’ve called her Twinkle. It was the children named her. She’s become a bit of a family pet…’

Twinkle!!! I was dumbfounded. I could imagine my carefully nurtured masculine credibility crumble the moment I took her anywhere near the bar at Melton Mowbray Cattle Market. I could picture the scene. Large man in flat cap and wellies:

‘Eh-up Francis, that’s a nice looking bitch you’ve got there?

‘Yes, I’ve just bought her…’

‘Cost you much?’

‘No, not much, I’m training her myself…’

‘She got a good eye?’

‘Oh yes, very strong…’

‘That’s good…’

Possessing the charm of Mrs. Satan herself, my dog offers her head for a quick scratch which the huge farmer can’t resist. As he scratches he murmurs: ‘Good girl, there’s a good girl…

Then he looks up, smiling now:

‘And what d’you call ‘er then?’

‘Err… Twinkle.’

Collapse of stout party. End of life as we know it.

Meanwhile, and back in real life, the breeder could see I had gone pale and was swaying from the knees. Then she took pity on me:

‘But she answers to Twink.’

I could have kissed them both (the breeder, and the bitch). The name Twink was fine. Good, even. It was short and sharp, but also implied femininity. It was also unusual,  and my Twink is a very unusual dog. I’ve known university professors thicker than her. After my wife and daughter, she’s the third woman in my life. I love her desperately and will be desolated when she dies.

It’s also worth noting here that sheepdogs are quite fussy about their names. Rather like discerning people, they don’t like others taking liberties. I loathe it when somebody (usually, dare I say it, some friendly, well-meaning American) calls me Frank.  Similarly my dog answers to Twink, but would give me a disapproving look were I to call her Twonk or Twank. And as for Twanky…  Strangely, though, some dogs are bi-lingual, especially some Welsh Border Collies. My first dog had been trained in Wales, where I bought her. I didn’t know she was bi-lingual until one day in the Flag Fen car park, when she suddenly ran up to one of our trustees, a wonderful Welshman and Peterborough City Councillor, now sadly deceased, named Derek Williams.  Derek was one of the kindest men I have ever known and he single-handedly saved Flag Fen’s future during  a nasty internal political row in the mid-‘80s. Anyhow, Derek had called to her softly in Welsh, which of course she obeyed. He then explained how some farmers can manage to work two dogs simultaneously, calling to one in Welsh and the other in English. That way you can have one dog make its out-run clockwise (the ‘come by’ command, in English), while the other goes anti-clockwise, up the opposite side of the field (the ‘away’ command, in Welsh).  That sort of pincer movement can be very effective. But God alone knows what you do if you use a whistle. Incidentally, I was given one, but nearly swallowed it (which would have choked me). I used to play the saxophone and clarinet reasonably well, but I couldn’t make that blessed whistle so much as squeak. Sad that.

Now most people are aware that sheepdogs can do clever things out in open fields. They can drive handfuls of sheep into pens, just like on telly. But in real life they have to handle large numbers of sheep, and sometimes these include lambs, who just like children, fail to head in the direction their parents intend. Under such circumstances one is doing quite well just to drive the flock from one field into another.

The key attribute any sheepdog must possess is a good strong eye. Basically this means that the dog’s stare affects sheep and makes them uneasy. They can’t relax. You can even detect a strong eye in a Collie puppy.  I can remember when I bought my last dog, his owner took him out into a field to show him off. And he was still young: I’d guess nine months, no more. After we’d finished looking at him and we were discussing price (something which in the farming world can sometimes take time) the young dog lay prone on the ground, barely moving its head. On the other side of the field were twenty or so ewes, and when the young puppy moved his head left, they moved left. It was extraordinary. So I paid what he asked. You don’t haggle when a dog’s eye is as strong as that.

Another job that sheepdogs do that doesn’t appear on television is what we call ‘yard work’. This requires almost as much skill and patience on the dog’s part, as work out in the fields. Last weekend we injected all our in-lamb (‘in-lamb’ in human terms means pregnant) ewes against soil-borne infections, such as braxy and pulpy kidney. The dose also protected against a form of pneumonia, known as Pasturella. It’s difficult to judge precisely when to give this injection, as you mustn’t do it too late, for fear of abortions, but if you’re too early then the new-born lambs won’t benefit as much from the immunity they inherit from their mothers. While we were doing this I also planned to give all the ewes a 20 ml doze of a mineral and copper booster. Copper can be difficult with sheep: too much kills them, but a deficiency leads to a problem in lambing, known as swayback: a form of brain-damage where affected lambs arch their necks and stagger. It’s horrible affliction, and in all but the mildest cases, is incurable.

The in-lamb ewes take their breakfast immediately outside the barn, February, 2012

To give these two medicines Mike Bamforth (an archaeologist who works on ancient wood-working with Maisie) and I built a narrow hurdle corridor in the barn, known as a race. While we were doing this, the sheep were outside in the yard eating their daily breakfast of high protein feed. Then we had to ‘persuade’ them into the race, which we did with Twink’s help. Now I don’t know how she does it, but Twink can detect when the ewes are in-lamb, and she treats them differently: far more gently. In all the years I’ve been keeping sheep, I’ve never lost a lamb due to my dog causing distress.

Every year,  lambing time brings new problems. This season, one side of the barn is covered with the scaffolding needed to erect 63 solar panels on the roof. Living at less than two metres above sea level, global warming is something I feel very strongly about. Anyhow, ubiquitous steel poles aren’t making life any simpler and having cracked his head twice, Mike Bamforth (who’s a couple of inches taller than me) gave the ewes their 20 ml of minerals, wearing a bright yellow hard hat. I didn’t think it fair to take a photo of him in that lid, but it did look very comic.

The other problem this year is a midge-borne disease with a foreign-sounding name: Schmallenberg Virus, or SBV. According to last Saturday’s Eastern Daily Press the disease has been recorded in Norfolk (3 cases) and Suffolk (4 cases). Like the much-dreaded Bluetongue disease, SBV is spread by midges that blow across the North Sea from Europe (it’s as if we in Britain were in a little continent all of our own – let’s call it Greedia to honour the financial sector). I gather from our vet who I met today in Wisbech when collecting incontinence pills for our aged Jack Russell terrier, Jane (Jane Russell – geddit?), that the foreign midges were biting and spreading the virus in late summer/early autumn. He reckoned that later lambers, such as us (and we don’t start till February 26^th) will probably get away with it, as the ewes wouldn’t have been in-lamb so early in the year. A lamb’s gestation period is almost precisely 21 weeks, and our rams went to the ewes in early October. Hopefully, by then the danger had passed. Well at least that’s the theory. All we can do now is sit tight and keep our fingers crossed. SBV kills and deforms lambs, so we’re hoping and praying that we’ve got away with it. As you’ll discover in future posts, lambing can be traumatic enough without such added horrors.

Hunting Disguises: a Fascinating Experiment

The antler frontlet head-piece from Star Car, North Yorkshire (above), with a suggestion (below) as to how it might have been worn in 8500 BC.

As this is only the second post of my blog I thought it would be a good idea if I got straight down to business and discussed some serious archaeology. As some readers may be aware, there has been a good deal of controversy about the way the famous antler frontlet head-pieces from Star Carr (North Yorkshire) were used. These strange items consisted of the upper skulls of red deer, complete with antlers. The inside of the cranial bones had been smoothed away and holes had been drilled for a leather thong that must have tied the head-piece onto the wearer’s head. I suppose today we’d describe them – and several were found at that extraordinary site – as fascinators. I have illustrated how they may have been worn in my extraordinarily comprehensive synthesis of British Prehistory, Britain BC (p. 88).

What makes these strange-looking hats truly remarkable is their date – around 8500 BC. The site where they were found has been described as a hunting camp (which it almost certainly wasn’t) and controversy still rages as to whether they were disguises worn when stalking deer, or whether they might have been part of a shaman’s regalia. My inadvertent experiment proved that both interpretations are probably correct. And I say inadvertent advisedly, because most archaeological experiments only take place after months and months of meticulous planning. Mine happened entirely by accident – and its effectiveness can be judged by the fact that it very nearly killed my wife.

Three Cuckoo Maran eggs on my draining board. Note the white reclining china frog, eating a sponge.

I was put in mind of this experiment this morning, when I came across three eggs that had just been laid by the new hens we’d bought last autumn. The hens and the cockerel that accompanies them everywhere around the farm and garden  are Cuckoo Marans and they lay wonderful, deep brown eggs, which I photographed on our draining board after my wife Maisie kindly washed the thick deposits of hen poo off them. And that reminds me, bird poo will play an important part in my next blog post, which will be about the origins of hedges in the British Neolithic. But we have more serious matters to consider here.

The chickens that laid the three eggs, together with their cockerel.

The link with chickens will become clear shortly, but five years ago, when the experiment took place, I was struggling with the manuscript of The Making of the British Landscape (which followers of this blog will discover I’ll mention at every possible opportunity – at £15 for 812 pages it’s a real bargain). Most authors have to establish a fairly rigid daily routine if they are to meet their publisher’s deadline. In my case I rise early every morning, usually around 5.30, leaving my wife to sleep on for a couple or so hours. Then I take us both up a cup of tea. The first thing I normally do after tip-toeing downstairs is put a kettle on the Aga and make myself an early cup of tea. Being somewhat old-fashioned, I hate the modern habit of making tea in mugs and like to use a proper teapot. It’s important to me: part of being British. Anyhow, once the hot water has been poured into the teapot I cover it with a tea-cosy and leave it on the stove while I go into my office and turn on my laptop, ready to start work. Then, after the kitchen timer has rung for five minutes (and the tea is now properly brewed) I return to the kitchen and carry the covered teapot back to my desk. At that point I remove the cosy and pour myself a large mug of tea. That was my routine five years ago, and it’s still precisely the same today.

A view of bottle kilns at the Gladstone Pottery Museum, Longton, near Stoke-on-Trent, Staffordshire

Now I don’t want to get side-tracked at this crucial point in my story, but blogs have to be informative and we have gone too far without providing readers with a link and an excuse to stop reading about my morning cups of tea. So I’d like to point out that the pint-sized mug I still use every morning was made at the Gladstone Pottery Museum at Longton, just outside Stoke-on-Trent, in Staffordshire. I love that museum. I know it has been said of many places, but it really is a survival from a vanished age. I adore its lack of slickness and the whole-hearted enthusiasm of the people who work there. If I had my way, everyone should be forced to visit it at regular intervals. But I digress.

So to return to the experiment, my office can be chilly at 5.30 AM, and given the fact that there are no onlookers , I think it quite reasonable that I can be allowed to do something a bit eccentric to keep warm. Nobody would object if, for example, I wore two dressing gowns, or wrapped myself in old curtains. Poor fellow, they’d all say, he’s cold and he has to wrap up to keep warm, especially at his age. But that’s not what they’d say if they came into my office and found me wearing a tea-cosy on my head. They’d regard that as hopelessly eccentric. Even comical. But what they would fail to realise as they scoffed, is that the tea-cosy has been warmed by the pot. So it’s like putting on the most deliciously snug thing you can imagine. And off-hand I can’t think what that might be, except that it would be very, very snug: just like a well-warmed tea-cosy.

Again, I don’t suppose that any eyebrows would be raised, even at 5.30 AM, if the tea-cosies in our Fenland farmhouse had been shaped like a bowler hat, a baseball cap or even a policeman’s helmet. In those cases I could have worn them on my head quite openly, indeed at a jaunty angle. Unfortunately, however, our two tea-cosies are accurate representations of animals, largely I suspect because we both like animals and spend most of our lives surrounded by them. One cosy is a chicken, the other a tabby cat.

On the morning in question, I placed the warmed chicken on my head and then turned back to the computer to wrestle with the intricacies of the British landscape. Sometimes, if the writing is going well, I quite forget about what may be sitting on the top of my head and don’t remove it until I catch my reflection in the window, or on the screen. Then I remove it quite quickly – especially once the sun has risen. Nobody likes to look a fool. But on this particular morning, as luck would have it, I hadn’t seen a reflection and was still wearing the chicken when I closed down my laptop and went through to the kitchen to make a cup of tea to take upstairs.

It’s odd how sometimes when things start to go wrong, other seemingly unrelated events can somehow synchronise with them, to turn a minor mishap into a major disaster. And that’s what happened in this instance. Maisie had been having a very restless night. On the previous day the last lamb had been born and it had been a difficult birth. Having been sheep farmers for over twenty-five years, we’re now both reasonably good at dealing with ewes’ obstetrical problems, but this particular birth had been very heavy going. Indeed, Maisie, who is very good at dealing with internal lamb-tangles, had trouble sleeping – directly because of it. I know what it’s like: you see gory images, together with all sorts of imagined horrors, and it soon becomes impossible to drift off. Counting sheep doesn’t help, either. The result of all this was that Maisie hadn’t managed to get any shut-eye at all, until about five AM, which might help explain why she was still rather restless when I sneaked off to work half an hour later.

I can recall that we had already arranged for someone to visit us about something important that morning.  I can’t remember what it was, but my diary showed they were due to turn-up sharp at nine. Had it not been for this appointment I would undoubtedly have left Maisie to sleep for longer. But it could not be. So I decided to wake her as quietly as I could, and offer what I hoped would prove an enlivening cup of tea. Up the stairs I crept. And into the bedroom. I didn’t open the curtains in case the light disturbed her. I placed the tray on her bedside table and then, on an impulse, did something I’d read about as a boy. I blew softly into her ear.

Now I can dimly remember reading in some comic or adventure magazine that the Indians of the American Great Plains believed that it was dangerous to wake someone violently, or else their soul might leave the body in fright. Consequently they would gently blow into a sleeping person’s ear and the waking up process would then be smooth, pleasant and peaceful. I still don’t know where I went wrong: maybe I blew too hard. Or too abruptly. But at all events, Maisie suddenly sat bolt upright, her eyes as large as saucers. I pulled back instinctively, which was also probably a mistake, her terrified eyes were now like fried eggs. Her petrified gaze then encountered the chicken tea-cosy on my head. And at that, the poor woman fell back on the sheets, in deep shock. Instinctively, I immediately removed the cosy and threw it out of sight. In hindsight, this was also probably a mistake, because to her semi-comatose mind the hideous Chicken Beast had instantaneously transformed itself into her husband.

She called me many names in the hours that followed this scene, but I don’t think Francis or Professor Pryor were one of them. So now I have made a firm resolution. I will only wear a tea-cosy on my head if it’s absolutely necessary – and believe me, that will have to be a very special occasion. I wore one – the cat I think it was that time – when recently we watched the Royal Wedding. Somehow it seemed the very least I could do to honour the young couple. But I am also in no doubt; those ancient hunters at Star Carr were dead right:  something unusual, worn on the top of the head, can be a devastatingly effective disguise.

Our chicken tea cosy. The breed represented is not known

Time Team, Series 19, 2012: Gateholm Island, South Wales

It was a Thursday, the fourth day of August, 2011, and I was sitting at breakfast with my wife Maisie.  Maisie is an archaeologist who, like me, specialises in Britain’s prehistoric (i.e. pre-Roman) past; so she understands what I have to do when I head out on a Time Team shoot. As she sipped her coffee she was looking through the Call Sheet of the shoot I’d be leaving for later that day. Every shoot has a Call Sheet which takes Production a long time to produce, so we’re all supposed to read them closely. They give details of Health and Safety hazards, local emergency services, and stuff about the hotel we’d be staying at – not to mention other important things, like where to get a decent pint of beer in the evening. As normal, I’d checked details of train times, the hotel and local pubs, but I have to confess I hadn’t even glanced at the Health and Safety stuff. Silly me.

‘I didn’t think you had much of a head for heights?’ She asked, all innocence.

‘I don’t,’ I replied, chewing on a slice of toast and Maisie’s excellent home-made marmalade.

‘That’s a shame…’

‘Why?’ I asked this without thinking what I was saying – a sort of reflex while I lingered over the last bit of marmalade.

‘Oh,’ she replied, again all innocently ‘it’s just that it says here there’s a sixty metre drop down to sharp rocks and the sea at High Tide…’

Gateholm Island from the mainland. I took this photo a week before we began filming when we recce’d the site.

‘Whaaaat?’ I grabbed the Call Sheet from her. She was right. I’d known full well that the site was an island off the Pembrokeshire coast, but I’d only seen air photos and they never give an accurate impression of surface features, such as the rise and fall of the land. This island was in precipitous rocky country and the only safe way to get across to it was by a zip-wire. Living in the Fens I don’t have very much to do with mountains or rock climbing. In fact weeks can pass and I never have to climb anything higher than the stairs to our bedroom on the first floor. So a sixty metre drop came as a horrible surprise.

Then I read the specification closely. The zip-wire would be erected and operated by professional mountaineers and would cross a gap of about 250 metres between the island and the mainland. We’d have to wear a harness and hard hat. And say our prayers, they should have added.

Phil Harding on the morning of Day 2. Phil’s site was safely on dry land and he didn’t have to use the zip-wire. That’s why he’s so happy.

Anyhow, it’s odd they way you forget about things you don’t want to think about. SO I got in the train at Peterborough and trundled across England, then into Wales and on, and on, to the extreme south-western corner of Pembrokeshire. It was a delightful run. The hotel was excellent and breakfast was delicious. I stuffed myself.

After breakfast I drove down to the site with Tim Taylor, the Series Producer and the man who invented the Time Team format. Tim was on fine form and skylarks were singing as we drove down the narrow lane to the Incident Room in some farm buildings. I had another coffee and chatted amiably to various cameramen, sound recordists and one or two other archaeologists, all of whom seemed completely relaxed. They should have been. None of them were going to be working on the island.

The zip-wire to Gateholm Island can be seen behind Kerry Ely who is checking that we are all safely harnessed-up.

Then I got a lift down to the zip wire, where I met up with Matt Williams and Raksha Dave, the two principal archaeologists I’d be working with. They seemed a bit quieter than usual, but otherwise relaxed. We all climbed into our harnesses and headed down to the launch point, a journey that required us to be roped to a landline, and took us about ten minutes. The zip-wire launch point was horribly exposed and there was a very stiff breeze blowing off the sea. Kerry Ely, another archaeologist, but also the man in charge of all site installations, was waiting for us. He gave a friendly smile, as if to say, what a lovely day to throw oneself off a cliff and out into a howling gale. But then Kerry’s pre-Time Team life was with the Forces and danger never seemed to bother him, even slightly. While we watched, he hitched his harness onto the land-line and almost casually stepped off the edge of the cliff, as if nipping across the street for a packet of fags. Then he vanished from sight, only to reappear fifty metres out, dangling perilously high above the foaming breakers and heading for the island, where two other mountaineers were pulling him in. Then he waved to us in a cheery sort of fashion – with both hands. I gulped. It was terrifying.

‘Who’s going next?’ It was Trevor, the immensely fit professional mountaineer who ran the zip-wire. Raksha, always polite pointed at me.

‘Age before beauty…’ She smiled. I smiled back grimly. I could have killed her.

‘After you, Professor…’ Matt said. Damn him.

I felt like a condemned man having his head shaved before the electric chair, as Trevor carefully checked my harness. I hoped he’d find a bad knot, or even better, something that couldn’t be fixed. But it was not to be. He stepped back. Again, I couldn’t help thinking about the executioner at the electric chair; like him, Trevor didn’t want to get a shock, or be dragged down to oblivion…

‘Are you ready?’ He asked casually, as if he was about to offer me a mug of hot tea.

I managed a weak nod of the head.

I knew I mustn’t look down, but I could hear the breakers crashing against the cliffs far below. I was also aware that Raksha and Matt were looking on. Some degree of cool must be maintained at such moments. At least, I thought, they could say I had hurtled to my death with a smile on my lips, if not with a song in my heart.

So I did it. I stepped out into the void. Suddenly the wind seemed to blow me apart. For an instant I thought I’d come off the blessed wire, but then I detected the pulley’s high-pitched scream directly above me. Thank God, I was still attached. As I plummeted downwards I could feel the harness between my legs getting tighter and tighter. I bitterly regretted eating so much for breakfast. But that pain took my mind off things. I pulled even harder on the rope to relieve the pressure. That sort of worked. But by then my fears were beginning to pass. I’d survived.

Strangely, I now don’t have such a fear of heights. I did that trip another half-dozen times and by the end I even managed a very quick two-handed wave.

(The Time Team in question was broadcast on Channel 4 on Sunday 22nd Jan 2012, at 18.00, and is available on 4OD.)

At the end of day 2 we were treated to a meal of Iron Age food, including rock samphire. I’m used to the sort of samphire which grows in the muds around the shores of the Wash. That stuff is delicious. This stuff, though, tasted of raw seaweed and salt water. Horrible!

Welcome

My Fenland garden in the autumn

I don’t know how you discovered this site, but I’m glad you did. There’s all sorts of stuff here.  I’ve been an archaeologist for over forty years and have excavated several major sites, mostly in the Fens of eastern England. I’ve also tried to bring archaeology to a wider audience, with a number of books, radio and television programmes, of which Time Team is the best known. When not writing or digging, I’m also a sheep farmer and keen gardener. But like most people, I get bees in my bonnet – obsessions, call them what you like. Most of  my worries are about the general disregard for the achievements of people in the past and the failure of politicians, both local and national, to learn the lessons of  history. Hence the title of this blog: In The Long Run. So to sum up, this will be the place to see stuff about archaeology, gardening, farming and rural life, books, broadcasting, history and the occasional intemperate rant. It won’t be very formal, because I don’t ‘do’ formality. But I do hope it’ll be fun.