Derbyshire Scouts “prepared” for archaeology

Challenging Preconceptions of the European Iron Age: Essays in Honour of Prof John Collis Peak District: The New Naturalist Library

Edited by Wendy Morrison

Archaeopress Publishing, £30 (pb)

This collection of 12 essays by leading experts in the European Iron Age is a fitting tribute to Iron Age specialist Prof John Collis of the University of Sheffield’s threatened Archaeology Department on his 75th birthday.

Chief among these, and of most interest to ACID readers, is the essay by Graeme Guilbert which is the first ever fully comprehensive study of Mam Tor, including detailed new plans of the hillfort and its more than 200 hut platforms (see also feature on p4). Guilbert first met Collis during an excursion to Mam Tor by the Hill Fort Study Group on a rather overcast day in 1979, and he vividly recounts how that experience made a lasting impression on him:

“Even more striking, however, was the spectacle of the lofty hill itself, rising out of an undulating, winding ridge, scarred by massive landslips in several directions, with (the) summit straddled by sinuously contouring earthworks,” as he describes that first meeting.

Guilbert has been studying Mam Tor for over four decades, and some of the conclusions he comes to in his essay are about the theories that have caused considerable debate over those years. They include those that a) there was a “hilltop platform settlement” on the hilltop before the earthworks of the hillfort were built, and that b) the hillfort defences were built up to, and not destroyed by, the landslips of the socalled “Shivering Mountain” on its northern and southern faces, which thus formed part of its defences. He admits the conclusions about a previous settlement would put him at odds with Collis himself as expressed in his mentor’s contribution on the Iron Age in Vyner’s Building on the Past from 1994.

In conclusion, Guilbert suggests that “active scrutiny” of other likely looking unenclosed hilltop settlements should be made to ascertain whether Mam Tor was the exception to the usually accepted rule.

This is a fascinating and refreshing new look at one of the Peak District’s best known and spectacularly sited prehistoric sites, which is bound to provoke further research and thinking about the purpose and construction of hillforts during the Iron Age.

The Viking Great Army and the Making of England Warrior Treasure: The Staffordshire Hoard in Anglo-Saxon England

Dawn M Hadley & Julian D Richards

Thames & Hudson, £25 (hb)

The over-wintering of the Viking Great Army at Repton in AD 873-74 has been well documented (see ACID 2019, 2021). But this fascinating new book by two University of York archaeologists sheds new light on that momentous event and the subsequent colonisation of England by what the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle called the “great heathen army.”

Doubts had often been expressed about the small size of the D-shaped enclosure discovered at Repton in the 1974-88 still-unpublished Biddle excavations being able to accommodate such a large force. Now Hadley and Richards, sparked by findings by a local metal detectorist, have uncovered evidence of much larger camps at Foremark, two miles east of Repton, and an even larger one at Torksey in Lincolnshire.

The Foremark site, like that at Torksey, occupies a position which bordered the original course of a river (in this case the Trent), and it has produced Viking Age gaming pieces, weights, Islamic dirham coins, and a Thor’s hammer pendant.

A set of burial mounds at nearby Heath Wood, which had originally been excavated by Thomas Bateman in 1855, were also discovered by the authors to be a large Viking cremation cemetery, at present the only one found in the UK. The remains revealed evidence of pagan cremation practices and possible Scandinavian origins.

The authors conclude that the main over-wintering Viking force in Derbyshire in AD 873 camped beside the Trent at Foremark, burying their dead at Heath Wood, while a smaller, maybe more elite, force at Repton was engaged in looting and guarding the captured Saxon monastery.

“As in the case of Torksey, the clue, all along, was in the name,” the authors admit. “Foremark – or, to give it its Scandinavian origin, forn (‘old’) verk (‘defensive fortification’).” Penny Anderson

William Collins, £65 (hb), £35 (pb)

This is the worthy successor to Prof K C Edwards’ The Peak District, the classic natural history of Britain’s first national park, first published 60 years ago as No. 44 in Collins’ authoritative New Naturalist Library series.

While Edwards’ book, with its impressionist cover of a limestone dale by Clifford and Rosemary Ellis, was required reading when I first came to Derbyshire in the mid-seventies, this weighty, 500-page tome by one of our leading modern ecologists and botanists is surely destined to achieve the same level of importance.

In her foreword, Anderson explains how she and the Manchester University distinguished zoologist, the late Derek Yalden, had always hoped to write this book together. But his untimely death at the age of 72 in 2013 made this impossible – although she appropriately dedicates this book to him, dubbing him “Mr Peak District Naturalist.”

Like Edwards before her, Anderson does not confine herself to writing purely about natural history. Her chapters on how, since the Ice Age and over the last 10,000 years, humankind has materially shaped the landscape, and on the uncertain future facing this most pressurised of parks, make this one of the most thorough, well-researched and knowledgeable surveys of the area since Millward and Robinson’s regional history of 1975.

In the final chapter on the future of the Peak, Anderson outlines the changes which are likely to take place over the next few years. Chief among these is climate change, and she suggests that the warming climate could accelerate landslips such as that on the east face of Mam Tor. Some iconic moorland bird species like the dunlin, golden plover and snipe may well decline too as the insects such as cranefly and midges they feed on are depleted. On the other hand, warming temperatures might encourage the spread of species usually found in the south, such as willow warblers, stonechats and even Dartford warblers.

Despite a few typos (for example, the Neolithic Minninglow chambered tomb overlooking the High Peak Trail near Pikehall is consistently spelt “Minginglow”), this is an essential and attractive if costly book, graced by the cover picture of the threatened golden plover by Robert Greenhalf (although oddly it is only Robert Gillmor who is acknowledged in the prelims).

Chris Fern & Jenni Butterworth

Historic England, £14.99 (pb)

Tantalising parallels between the Staffordshire Hoard and the Benty Grange helmet are made in this accessible, if rather expensive, 120-page new survey of the famous collection of Saxon artefacts, discovered by a metal detectorist in a field near Lichfield in 2009.

The boar-crested 7th century Anglo-Saxon Benty Grange helmet was excavated by Thomas Bateman in 1848 from a tumulus on a farm near Monyash and is now exhibited alongside a beautifully reconstructed replica in Weston Park Museum, Sheffield.

In this new book, the authors claim what may have been a “playful reference” to the boar figurine on the crest of the Benty Grange helmet in the boars’ heads on either side of the apex of a gold sword pommel found in Staffordshire. There are also links made to the Christian cross found on the nasal piece of the Benty Grange helmet and the various Christian objects, including an inscribed folded gold strip and the great gold cross found in Staffordshire.

The helmet itself in the Staffordshire hoard was constructed of iron strips, or Spangenhelm, as was the one found at Benty Grange. The authors claim it may have been worn by an army commander and was possibly the equivalent of a crown.

A further possible link between the two rich warrior finds is that both were made close to the borders of the AngloSaxon kingdom of Mercia, which at the time was undergoing conversion to Christianity.

Items from the Staffordshire Hoard are on display at the Potteries Museum and Art Gallery, Stoke-on-Trent, and at Birmingham Museum and Art Gallery.