Experimental Archaeology - The First Iron Age Roundhouse at Castell Henllys, Wales, 1981

March 21, 2017 Eleanor Scott

Me, trowelling, looking for Iron Age postholes - Easter 1981 at Castell Henllys, Pembs

It was early 1981. I was going to be 21 in July, and was in my 3rd year of an Archaeology Degree at Newcastle University. Unexpectedly, I was hospitalised for six weeks. With the help of the hospital, and the Isle of Man Government who were funding me, and the Archaeology Department, it was agreed that I could start my final year again the following year. By March I was fine, and spoke to one of the Department's research fellows Harold Mytum about digging opportunities. He accepted me onto his small team for the first excavations at the Iron Age and Romano-British hillfort and settlement at Castell Henllys, Pembrokeshire, Wales, and I dug there over Easter, and returned there for the Summer season of digging - and for the first experimental reconstruction of an Iron Age roundhouse on this site.

Yomper

March 1, 2017 Eleanor Scott

It seems that there's little in Portsmouth - including military history that's recent enough still to be raw - that doesn't end up being political slash-and-burn. The Yomper Statue outside the Royal Marines Museum in Portsmouth, who gazes out to sea over Eastney Beach, is hot news. The Yomper memorialises the role of the marines during the Falklands Conflict in 1982 and was unveiled by Thatcher ten years later.

In their traditional campaigning style, the Portsmouth Lib Dems are trying to own it as a 'local issue', and to blame other political parties for the plan to move the iconic figure from the soon-to-close Royal Marines Museum location to the nearby Historical Dockyard where it will be a companion to the Mary Rose, Victory and Warrior - a site which draws hundreds of thousands of visitors every year.

But it is absolutely clear and obvious that this is a decision that lies with the Royal Marines Museum and the MoD - not the local Tories. The thought that the Tories would want, or enable, the removal from Eastney of the Yomper and the commemorative plaque which inscribes Thatcher's name onto the seafront turf is laughable.

In 1982 I was 22 years old and I lived in Newcastle; and I watched the news broadcast live to the nation where Brian Hanrahan said of the planes, 'I counted them all out and I counted them all back'.

Beadlam Roman Villa - Unpicking An Archaeological Site

February 24, 2017 Eleanor Scott

Beadlam Roman Villa [Plan adapted from Britannia i 1970 p.278 Fig.5]. Credit: http://roman-britain.co.uk/places/beadlam.htm — Beadlam Roman Villa [Plan adapted from Britannia i 1970 p.278 Fig.5]. Credit: http://roman-britain.co.uk/places/beadlam.htm

Back in the 1990s the then Inspector of Ancient Monuments David Sherlock decided to take me to visit the site of Beadlam Roman Villa in North Yorkshire, and asked me to write about it. I'd published a couple of bits of my PhD thesis on RB villas, and English Heritage had an interest in David Neal's write-up of the 1966-1978 Beadlam excavations. David Sherlock thought I might have some 'new light' to cast on these old stones.

Standing there in the field on that grey day, staring at lines of consolidated wall footings poking through grass, I wasn't really feeling it. But back in the Department Library in Newcastle, as I studied once again the plans and the information available, a lot of ideas did come quickly, and the inspiration was a blocked doorway. That changed everything. I've always been fascinated by Roman villas, what they were, what they meant, and how British people lived in them.

Greenham Common Peace Camp - Women's History and Competing Masculinities

January 7, 2017 Eleanor Scott

I look at my photographs of Greenham Common from the early 1980s and I see more now than I saw then. I see the women again, certainly: defiant, rainbow-colourful and vibrant; and I see the sharp razor wire perimeter and the police presence; but I also see competing masculinities that I hadn't thought about before.

Masada, A Bedouin, A Landscape

December 16, 2016 Eleanor Scott

**In 1949, Masada became an Israeli national symbol of Jewish resistance in the face of oppression.**

I first visited Masada in 1984, arriving as most visitors did by the modern Israeli-built road on its eastern side which follows the edge of the Dead Sea. Access to the top of the Masada stronghold was only via either the cable car up from the eastern side or the steep footpath. The Roman army who under General Silva vanquished the Jewish zealots at Masada came in from the western side and built their famous ramp and mounted their final assault over this western edge.

By 1990, when this photograph was taken, it was extremely unusual for travelers to be in a position to see and photograph Masada's western side from the Judaean Desert. It's an inhospitable landscape, and close to the border with what was then called the Occupied West Bank (now Palestinian Territories). It's a national park and for obvious reasons protected - which means casual visitors and tourists are discouraged from anything other than organised tours along main routes - which even today takes them inevitably along the main road along the Dead Sea and to the eastern side of Masada and the convenience of a cable car ride.

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