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I. Reflections on The Archaeology of the Cambridge Region1

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  20 December 2011

Cyril Fox
Cyril Fox
Affiliation:
Magdalene College, Director of the National Museum of Wales
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Extract

Nearly a quarter of a century has elapsed since The Archaeology of the Cambridge Region was published by the Cambridge University Press, and a proposal by the Committee of the Journal that I should write down my afterthoughts on that book and such ‘considerations as I might wish to put to students at the present day’ was a compliment an author could not but appreciate, and an opportunity he could not refuse.

Type
Research Article
Information
Cambridge Historical Journal , Volume 9 , Issue 1 , 1947 , pp. 1 - 21
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1947

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References

2 I have especially to thank my friends Dr Grahame Clark, F.S.A., and Mr T. C. Lethbridge, F.S.A., who, reading this appraisal in typescript, corrected and extended my notes on research work done in the Cambridge Region since 1925, and favoured me with their comments on various aspects of The Archaeology of the Cambridge Region. These services, critical or appreciative, enabled me to obtain a clearer view of the book's place in archaeological history, and caused me to modify portions of the text of the appraisal.

3 Geogr[aphical] J[ournal] XL (1912), pp. 184 ffGoogle Scholar.

4 Arch[aeologia] Camb[rensis] LXXI (1916), pp. 101–40Google Scholar.

5 As well as by the Committee of the Field Laboratories which employed me, under the Chairmanship of the late Professor G. F. Nuttall, F.R.S., and by the Master and Fellows of Magdalene, in which College I was admitted a Fellow Commoner.

6 Mr Crawford summarized many of these possibilities in a book Man and His Past which has had great influence; it was published in 1921, when the typescript of The Archaeology of the Cambridge Region was well advanced towards completion.

7 Fowler, Gordon, ‘Fenland Waterways, Past and Present, South Level District‘, Part I, Proc. Comb. Antiq. Soc. XXXIII (1931–1992), pp. 108–28Google Scholar. Ibid. Part II. Proc. Camb. Antiq. Soc. xxxiv (1932-3). PP- 17-33.

8 Godwin, H., ‘The Origin of Roddons’, Geogr.J. XCI (1938), pp. 241–50CrossRefGoogle Scholar. (In this paper references to Major Gordon Fowler's work will be found.)

9 Brit. Assoc, Cambridge Meeting. A Scientific Survey of the Cambridge District (ed. Darby, H. C.. Brit. Assoc. London, 1938Google Scholar.)

10 Skertchley, S. B. J. ‘The Geology of the Fenland’. Mem. Geol. Survey, 1877Google Scholar.

11 Antiq.J. XIII (1933), pp. 266–96Google Scholar; xv (1935), pp. 284-319; xvi (1936), pp. 29-50; xx (1940), pp. 52-71.

12 Godwin, H. and Clifford, M. H., ‘Studies of the Post-Glacial History of British Vegetation. I and II, Fenland Deposits’, Phil. Trans. Roy. Soc. Lond. (B), no. 562, vol. CCXXIX (1938), PP. 323–406CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

13 Wooldridge, S. W. and Linton, D. L., ’The Loam-Terrains of South-east England, and their relation to its Early History’, Antiquity, VII (1933)Google Scholar; I quote from pp. 299 and 309-10.

14 Fox, C., Antiquity, VII (1933), pp. 473–5Google Scholar

15 See my remarks on this subject in Proc. Prehist. Soc. East Anglia, VII (1933), p. 156, and p. 14 of this paperGoogle Scholar.

16 Wooldridge, D. W. in Historical Geography of England before 1800 (ed. Darby, H. C.), chap, in, esp. p. 92Google Scholar.

17 See Grimes, W. F., Antiquity, IX (1935), pp. 429–31 and xix (1945), pp. 169-74Google Scholar; also Report 19, Farm Economics Branch, School of Agriculture, Cambridge University, 1931.

18 Evidence summarized by Fox, , Personality of Britain (4th ed., 1943), pp. 54–5Google Scholar.

19 Clark, Grahame, ‘Farmers and Forests in Neolithic Europe’, Antiquity, XIX (1945), PP. 57–71 esp. pp. 67 ffCrossRefGoogle Scholar.; Garnett, Alice, ‘The Loess Regions of Central Europe in Prehistoric Times’, Geogr.J. CVI (1945), pp. 132–41CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

20 Godwin, H., ‘Age and Origin of the Breckland Heaths of East Anglia’, Nature, Lond., CLIV (1944), P. 6CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

21 The well-known series of Distribution Maps since prepared under Mr O. G. S. Crawford's direction, and published by the Ordnance Survey, of Megalithic Monuments, Salisbury Plain in the Iron Age, Roman Britain, the Dark Ages, etc., are the highest achievement in this field, reaching a standard with which The Archaeology of the Cambridge Region could not pretend to compete.

22 Bröndsted, J., Danmarks Oldtid II, Bronzealderen (1939Google Scholar, 3 maps in folder at end, esp. Zealand).

23 The procedure used for plotting finds of which the only record is the parish is described on p. 9 of The Archaeology of the Cambridge Region.

24 This omission has been in part repaired, in the V[ictoria] C[ounty] H[istory,] Cambridge-shire. See vol. 1 (1938), ‘Early Man’, pp. 247-303, by J. G. D. Clark, Ph.D., F.S.A.; ‘Anglo-Saxon Cambridgeshire’, pp. 305-35, T. C. Lethbridge, M.A., F.S.A.

25 Piggott, Stuart, ‘The Neolithic Pottery of the British Isles’, Arch. J. LXXXVIII (1931), pp. 67–158Google Scholar.

26 Clark, J. G. D., H. & M. E. Godwin and M. H. Clifford, ‘Report on recent excavations at Peacock's Farm, Shippea Hill, Cambs’, Antiq.J. XV (1935), pp. 302–3Google Scholar.

27 Montelius, Oscar, ‘The Chronology of the British Bronze Age‘, Archaeologia, LXI (1908), pp. 97–162CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

28 All the features of the ‘Early Bronze Age’ here defined, Wessex culture apart, have been found at Plantation and Peacock's Farms by the Little Ouse: beaker pottery, food-vessel pottery and a flint industry including plano-convex knives characteristic of food-vessel interments; also a flanged axe with punched decoration (found by chance). [Note by Dr Grahame Clark, July 1946.]

29 Professor Childe has in his Prehistoric Communities of the British Isles (1940) tried out an entirely new chronological system, by which the whole prehistoric era is divided into nine periods (I-IX). It solves many difficulties, but creates others, since the cultural equivalent of a number is not constant but varies geographically.

30 Reference on p. 8 above. It must be remembered, however, in reading this Cambridge-shire study, that in this period especially, important aspects of culture coming from the south-east are best illustrated outside the county borders.

30a ‘An Archaeological Survey of Oxfordshire’, Archaeologia, LXXI (1920–1921), p. 229Google Scholar.

31 ‘Early Settlement at Runcton Holme’, Norfolk, , Proc. Prehist. Soc. East Anglia, VII (1933) PP. 231 ffGoogle Scholar.

32 See p. 3, n. 9, above.

33 Rostovtzeff, M. and Taylor, M. V., ‘Commodus-Hercules in Britain’, J. Rom. Studies, XIII (1923), pp. 91 ffCrossRefGoogle Scholar.

34 Heichelheim, F. M., ‘Some Unpublished Roman Bronze Statuettes in the Museum of Archaeology and Ethnology, Cambridge’, Proc. Camb. Antiq. Soc. XXXVII (1937)Google Scholar, with bibliography.

35 Unpublished. There was ‘a large single-ditched military camp containing pottery not much later than the Claudian Conquest’.

36 See p. 8, n. 24 above.

37 My study of pre-Norman Crosses was published in the Comm. Camb. Antiq. Soc. XXIII (1922), pp. 15–441Google Scholar, under the title ‘Anglo-Saxon Monumental Sculpture in the Cambridge District’. The paper did not cover so large a region as the book.

38 ‘The Domesday Geography of Cambridgeshire’, Proc. Camb. Antiq. Soc. XXXVI (1936)Google Scholar.

39 The attribution to the Early Age, Iron (The Archaeology of the Cambridge Region, p. 93 )Google Scholar of the vase figured on PI. XV, 1, requires reconsideration. Mr A. G. Wright kindly informed me that several examples, in hard grey ware, are in Colchester Museum associated with third- and fourth-century Roman burials. Another error should be recorded. The strap-end figured on PL XXXIII, 7 and discussed on p. 266 is of the eleventh century. See Kendrick, T. D. in Antiq. J. XVIII (1938), p. 380Google Scholar.

40 Proc. Prehist. Soc. East Anglia, VII (1933), PP. 149–64.Google Scholar es P. Fig ‘2 and p. 153. See an interesting commentary on the position in 1938 of the study of stone and flint axes by MrBruce-Mitford, R. L. S.: Antiq.J. XVIII (1938), pp. 279–84CrossRefGoogle Scholar; cf. ‘Report by the SubrCom-mittee… on the petrological identification of stone axes’, Proc. Prehist. Soc. (1941), pp. 68-70.

41 Grahame Clark stresses the importance of the flint or stone axe in the Neolithic economy: ‘Farmers and Forests in Neolithic Europe’, Antiquity (1945), P. 68Google Scholar.

42 See Grahame Clark's summary statement in V.C.H. Cambs. i, p. 271.

43 Proc. Prehist. Soc. East Anglia, VII (1933), p. 156Google Scholar.

44 V.C.H. Cambs. 1, p. 283.

45 The student should be warned that the brooches and other objects of Hallstatt types referred to on pp. 74-5 as coming from Ixworth, Suffolk, are all suspect.

45a See also MrCrawford's, remarks in Antiquity, VIII (1934), p. 9Google Scholar.

46 In Urgeschichtlicher Anzeiger, I (1924), pp. 57–8Google Scholar. Menghin discussed The Archaeology of the Cambridge Region and a work by Max Hellmich very different in character but with an underlying similarity of method, published in the same year, Die Besiedlung Schlesiens in vor-undfriihgeschlichtlicher Zeit (Breslau: Preuss and Jünger).

He remarks, from his Germanic angle, that the geologist Robert Gradmann, writing at the beginning of the present century, first discussed the relation of pre- and early historic settlement to the primitive landscape. Ernst Wahle deepened the knowledge gained by Gradmann by all-round geographical research into prehistoric material, and saw that the method was capable of even more significant refinement and that research into quite small areas would be important in this respect.

There are now, Menghin continues, two works of this kind; one comes from Germany and has obviously been influenced by Gradmann and Wahle, the other comes from England. They are the first, he implies, to compare settlement patterns through a succession of culture phases in a given area. After a critical but appreciative survey of each book, he concludes: ‘Man sieht, die Kleinarbeit, wie sie von Fox und Hellmich geleistet worden ist, trägt reiche Früchte. Es ware zu wünschen, daβ sie Uberall Nachfolger findet. Denn decken sich die Ergebnisse beider Arbeiten auch in weitem Masse, so ware es doch verfruht, ihre Ergebnisse zu verall-gemeinern. Nur wenn typische Landschaften ganz Europas in ähnlicher Weise untersucht werden, werden wir einmal ein klares Bild des vorgeschichlichen Siedelungsganges zeichnen und gemeinsame Züge wie Verschiedenheiten der einzelnen Regionen erfassen können.’

47 The philosophical basis of the belief in the validity of the results obtained (given, I would add, the conditions stated above) was stated by Crawford, O. G. S. in Man and His Past (pp. 142–3)Google Scholar; it is that ‘chance finds’ follow the laws of probability: in a given region, in areas of close settlement more ‘portable antiquities’, coins, weapons, tools and such like, tend to be discovered in sewer or pipe-line or railway-cutting excavations, or dug up in gardens, or picked up by ploughmen or ditchers, than in areas of sparse settlement. Moreover, in the former areas more barrows and other ancient constructions are likely to survive than in the latter, because there were more of them to start with. This survival is aided by the fact that much of the area of ‘primary settlement’ tends to lose its population as civilization develops, and man's destructive activities are thus mainly concentrated elsewhere.

48 Archaeologia, vols. LI (1888), LIII (1893 and 1893) and LXXi (1921)Google Scholar: Kent, Hertfordshire, Cumberland and Westmorland, Oxfordshire. The last shows some improvement: two maps were produced, one for pre-Roman and Roman, the other for post-Roman distributions.

49 This criticism is based on my 1926 experience in writing ‘Early Man’ for vol. 1 of Huntingdonshire. The use of identical base-maps for ‘Early Man’ and ‘Roman Huntingdonshire’ was due to personal contacts.

50 It is important to add that in this criticism I am concerned only with comparative surveys of successive periods on physiographical lines, not with studies of individual cultures in relation to their environment. Such studies have in the hands of qualified workers reached during the last twenty years a standard perhaps higher than anything attempted by me in The Archaeology of the Cambridge Region.

51 Fox, C., ‘The Devil's Dyke: Excavations in 1923 and 1924’, Comm. Comb. Antiq. Soc. XXVI (1925), pp. 90–129Google Scholar.

51a Proc. Comb. Antiq. Soc. XXX (1929), pp. 78–93, XXXII (1932), pp. 52-6Google Scholar.

52 Sir Lecture, John Rhys Memorial, ‘The Boundary Line of Cymru’, vol. XXVI, pp. 275–300Google Scholar.

53 Published by the Oxford University Press in 1925.

54 ‘On two Beakers of the Early Bronze Age recently discovered in South Wales; with a record of the distribution of Beaker pottery in England and Wales’. Arch. Camb. LXXX (1925), PP. 1–31Google Scholar.

55 Proceedings of the Congress (Oxford, 1934), pp. 27–9Google ScholarPubMed.

56 The 4th edition, a revision carried out in 1943, is the only one I could now advise students to read.

57 Hants. Field Club and Arch. Soc. Proc. XIV (1938), p. 23Google Scholar, and Map IV: Proc. Prehist. Soc. (1941), Map I, p. 81, and pp. 74-8.

58 Primarily by Mr W. F. Grimes and since by myself: see Personality (4th ed.), p. 58, footnote, and the former's ‘Early Man and the Soils of Anglesey’, Antiquity (1945), pp. 169–74Google Scholar.

59 In ‘An Introduction to the Prehistory of Cumberland, Westmorland and Lancashire north of the Sands’, Cumb. and West. Antiq. and Arch. Soc. Trans, (n.s.), XXXIII (1933), p. 171Google Scholar.

60 Proc. Prehist. Soc. (1939), pp. 222-48.

61 Antiq. J. XIX (1939) (pt. i), pp. 369–91Google Scholar.

62 ‘A La Tene I brooch from Wales: with notes on the Typology and Distribution of these Brooches’. Arch. Comb, LXXXII (1927), pp. 67–112Google Scholar. In this paper the significance of the belt of Jurassic rocks extending diagonally across England from Yorkshire to Somerset as a trade and culture route governing human distributions from Neolithic times onward, and particularly important in the Early Iron Age, was first defined (p. 96). See also Proc. Comb. Antiq. Soc. XXX (1929), p. 52Google Scholar.

63 ‘A Find of the Early Iron Age from Llyn Cerrig Bach, Anglesey’, National Museum of Wales, 1946, and ‘A shield-boss of the Early Iron Age from Anglesey, with ornament applied by chasing tools’, Arch. Comb. (1945), pp. 199-220.

64 On p. 316, for N.E. Europe, read N.W. Europe.