TAMESIDE ARCHAEOLOGICAL SOCIETY LTD

Our last post asked for thoughts on this small but beautiful find:

We had a number of responses and the consensus seems to be that it is a piece of slag from the process of smelting iron. Iron slag has a high silica content, but has different appearances dependent upon the properties of the ore and of the flux used in the smelting process. Accordingly, different colours can be produced.

Slag doesn’t usually look so attractive, but this piece benefits from being a small fragment which helps to show off its translucent quality.

Most slag from blast furnaces is ground down and used in building materials, particularly concrete. However, it has also been used in glass making. It was used from the C19th especially in the manufacture of pressed glass, or “slag glass”, as it lowered production costs and contributed interesting qualities such as colour and swirling patterns.

Someone raised the point that there had been Huguenots involved in glass production in the Haughton Green area in the C17th. That is not where this was found, but it opens up another interesting avenue for exploration.

For the record, someone also mentioned opal, which would have sounded so much nicer, but if it’s slag, then slag it is.

If anyone has anything further to contribute, please do so, either here or on our Facebook page.

This is a recent find from a multiphase site.

It is 6 x 9 x 5 mm, blue glass, an inverted pyramid covered partially with a form of cortex.

But what is it?

Answers on a postcard, by carrier pigeon or electronic thingummy! We’d just love to know.

Please see this flyer for news of the seminar to be held on Tuesday 11th December.

Further to our recent news that we had won funding for an evaluation of some of the stones from our mesolithic/neolithic site in Tameside, we were happy to welcome Ann Clarke  to one of our gatherings, where she gave us a very interesting talk on stone tools.

Ann is a freelance archaeologist and lithic specialist with considerable experience, especially in Shetland and Orkney. She came down last week to look through the stones so that the assessment sample could be selected, but kindly agreed to talk to us first.

She covered a range of finds, their possible uses and how they were formed, stimulating some lively discussion afterwards.

The following morning it was down to work and Ann was tweeting “It’s not all pretty rocks. I’m currently in a garage in Manchester going through 1000 stone finds from excavation by @tasarch5”! It is certainly true that there is more to assessing stones than meets the eye.

The next step was to get the selection up to Scotland where Ann could carry out her evaluation and prepare a report.

We look forward to sharing the results on here at some point in the future.

Ann explains how the Skaill knives pictured on the screen were formed and used.

Ann’s talk stimulated lively discussion over cups of tea and Keith’s wonderful biscuits.

The garage – and the rocks – in question!

Our Heritage Weekend at Mottram Church went very well indeed. The three days were  well-attended and we were able look for more graffiti as well as record examples already discovered.

While setting up on Thursday, a trip up the tower revealed some new pieces, but most of the finds have been on the pews. Some have been drawn, some carved, or compass-drawn, and many have been created using a sharp pointed instrument. The range of means by which the graffiti have been created has led to an interesting discussion on the nature of things carried by the congregation in their pockets!

Attempts at taking graffiti rubbings were less than successful (we have not given up!), but the acquisition of a super-duper new light meant that we were able to take good photographs  in some of the dimmest corners. Hopefully we now have a fairly full record of the graffiti in the church which we can contribute to the wider survey.

Taking in the view from the top of the tower.

Three of the new pieces found this weekend.

News has just come through that TAS has received some new funding from the Mick Aston Fund.

Mick Aston, who passed away in 2013, is regarded as a key figure in the popularization of archaeology through the development of the long-running Channel 4 programme “Time Team”. A fund set up in his name is particularly focused on encouraging greater community involvement and makes grants of up to £1,000, which are very useful to  local societies like ours.

Our recent application secured the maximum award and will be used to gain an evaluation of some of the 2000+  stones we collected from our investigation of a local mesolithic site.

All we have to do now is work out how to get them to the expert. Anyone got a very large envelope?

Members engaged in our own initial assessment of the stones.

Never let it be said that TAS members would let a little thing like a heatwave stop them digging where no spade has dug before.

Well that’s how it felt on Sunday last when machetes might have helped us reach a site where we wanted to dig  two in a series of test pits. The normally boggy field had dried out a lot, but the vegetation was chest high in places. Removing the turf wasn’t easy either – most teeth are extracted with less pain – but fortunately one of the team had brought along her new, shiny and really quite sharp spade, so we let her do most of the work on our pit while we stood back and admired.

Both pits seemed to show quite good evidence of a trackway, but not at great depth and as yet we’re unsure of how much archaeology we’ve actually uncovered. Nevertheless it was some reward for our morning spent in the increasingly hot sun. Another highlight was our little visitor, a newt who literally dropped in to see us. The lucky little chap just avoided being troweled and seemed to enjoy basking in the attention if not in that heat.

World Cup fever hits, as TAS members form wall to defend section photograph from glaring sun

TAS member tries out shiny new spade on test pit.

Smooth newt checks out TAS site.

TAS put on two displays for the weekend 23rd and 24th June. The first was at the Together Centre in Dukinfield. A steady stream of people appreciated the display, while the talk given by our Chairman was well-attended and received.

On the Sunday, we moved the show down to Portland Basin Museum where we were ideally situated for anyone visiting the industrial history section to come and enjoy our display and slideshow as well.

As ever it was good to meet new people and to discuss the work we have been engaged in.

Part of our set up at Portland Basin.

The gorgeous weather over the Bank Holiday weekend welcomed some of us back into the field. (some brave souls had already been out and about).

We’ve been investigating a stone-age site that’s looking very interesting indeed and we wanted to continue our work with some further test pits. On the original dig we had found evidence of a “modern” ditch and were keen to find out more about its course. Everything we can find will help us to build a fuller picture of how this site has been used.

The work involved taking levels to help define location, carefully stripping back the turf, so that we could restore the site with as little damage as possible, and then sifting the top soil to see if there were any finds that would give clues to more recent use.

Careful trowel work then took us to the next level and some evidence of the ditch with  changes of colour and consistency. There was also some stone that could have been part of a boundary of some sort. There was nothing conclusive, but a couple more pieces of the jigsaw and maybe some pointers towards further work.

A lovely, fascinating way to spend a sunny morning

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Post-excavation work is long, varied, demanding, but ultimately rewarding. This is because the hours spent in the field are given shape and meaning by the identification and classificatation of finds  and organization of data.

One of our recent digs has presented us with a new challenge in the form of 2000+ stones collected on site. These need to be classified and recorded so that a sample of them can then be assessed by an expert.

This is a steep learning curve for some of us. Identifying material type can be difficult enough in itself, because we cannot carry out any of the normal tests that would damage the find and compromise the information we might glean from it. We then have to determine, shape, size (they’re the easy bits), and whether there are features such as facets, incisions or polishing that suggest human use.

Thankfully, it gets easier as we go on and learn what to look for. There is also a steadily growing sense of satisfaction in handling and recognizing objects that were used by people thousands of years ago; fitting a stone between your fingers in just the way it would have been held. In this way we are illuminating the work of the dig and making a tangible link with pre-history at the same time.

Probably not a stone-age sculpture, but it does look like a smiley face, doesn’t it? Or have we just been doing this for too long?

Each stone need to be identified for material type, so we have a sample table to help us.

Then there’s measuring and looking for features. We’re using someone’s garage for the purpose, hence the coats.

Maybe Chris has been overdoing it  today. Eat the cookie, Chris! It really did taste much nicer.