According to the ancient Greek geographer Ptolemy, the Parisi tribe occupied the area of the present-day East Riding of Yorkshire during the Roman period. Over the last few decades our understanding of this region and its inhabitants has been transformed through the work of research projects, archaeological investigation, and even chance finds. Discoveries including the Hasholme logboat, chariot burials, hoards of Iron Age gold coins and Roman settlements and villas have all helped to develop our knowledge of this area and provide a fascinating insight into the lives of a local tribe and the impact of Rome on their development. Peter Halkon tells this captivating story of the history of the archaeology of the Parisi, from the initial investigations in the sixteenth century right through to modern-day investigations.
According to the ancient Greek geographer Ptolemy, the Parisi tribe occupied the area of the present-day East Riding of Yorkshire during the Roman period. Over the last few decades our understanding of this region and its inhabitants has been transformed through the work of research projects, archaeological investigation, and even chance finds. Discoveries including the Hasholme logboat, chariot burials, hoards of Iron Age gold coins and Roman settlements and villas have all helped to develop our knowledge of this area and provide a fascinating insight into the lives of a local tribe and the impact of Rome on their development. Peter Halkon tells this captivating story of the history of the archaeology of the Parisi, from the initial investigations in the sixteenth century right through to modern-day investigations.
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According to the ancient Greek geographer Ptolemy, the Parisi tribe occupied the area of the present-day East Riding of Yorkshire during the Roman period. Over the last few decades our understanding of this region and its inhabitants has been transformed through the work of research projects, archaeological investigation, and even chance finds. Discoveries including the Hasholme logboat, chariot burials, hoards of Iron Age gold coins and Roman settlements and villas have all helped to develop our knowledge of this area and provide a fascinating insight into the lives of a local tribe and the impact of Rome on their development. Peter Halkon tells this captivating story of the history of the archaeology of the Parisi, from the initial investigations in the sixteenth century right through to modern-day investigations.
Product Details
| ISBN-13: | 9780752492360 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | The History Press |
| Publication date: | 10/01/2013 |
| Sold by: | Barnes & Noble |
| Format: | eBook |
| Pages: | 128 |
| File size: | 8 MB |
| Age Range: | 12 Years |
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The Parisi
Britons and Romans in Eastern Yorkshire
By Peter Halkon
The History Press
Copyright © 2013 Peter HalkonAll rights reserved.
ISBN: 978-0-7524-9236-0
CHAPTER 1
THE SEARCH FOR THE PARISI
Beginnings
The investigation of Iron Age and Roman eastern Yorkshire began in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, following the trend for antiquarian exploration elsewhere in Britain (Gaimster et al. 2007). Before that the remains of Roman buildings encountered were treated with little respect and used as a resource. According to Hull Chamberlain's Roll No. 1, payment was made between 1321 and 1324 for the carting of stone from Brough for the refurbishment of the city defences (Corder and Richmond 1942). Roman structures were quarried for the construction of churches as a number in eastern Yorkshire contain reused Roman stone, such as Kirby Grindalythe (Buckland 1988, 295). Indeed in his appendix to Burton's account of the discovery of the circular Roman temple at Millington, Drake remarks that: 'it had been the custom for the inhabitants of their village, time out of mind, to dig for stones in this ground when they wanted.' (Drake 1747, 14).
At Kirby Underdale the possible altar of Mercury (Ramm 1978, 103; Tufi 1983, no.19, Pl 4), which will be discussed in Chapter 10, had a complex history. Originally found in the 1870 refurbishment of the church, it was placed in the rectory garden before being reinstated in the church wall (Kitson Clark 1935, 95).
Although the Tudor antiquarian Leland travelled along the main roads through East Yorkshire (1540–46) which followed the routes of Roman predecessors, he makes little reference to anything other than medieval antiquities. His account, however, does provide interesting topographical observations, including a description of the Walling Fen as, 'so large that fifty-eight villages stand in or abutting it ... the fen itself ... is sixteen miles around its perimeter' (Chandler 1993, 537).
One of the earliest references to Roman coins in the region is a letter from William Strickland of Boynton Hall to Sir William Cecil in 1571, then Secretary of State to Elizabeth I, which refers to a hoard of at least sixty Roman coins dating from Vespasian to Antoninus Pius (AD 69–161), found when a house was swept away by the sea at 'Awburn' (Auburn) near Bridlington (Lemon 1856, 406; Kitson Clark 1935, 63). This example also provides a reminder of the vulnerability of the Holderness to coastal erosion.
It was not until William Camden (1551–1623) that the history and topography of Roman York and eastern Yorkshire was recorded in any systematic way. Camden (Holland 1610, 35) was one of the first to equate the settlements listed by Ptolemy, and other Roman documents such as the Antonine Itinerary, the Notitia Dignitatum and Ravenna Cosmography (Ramm 1978; Rivet and Smith 1979), with towns within the East Riding of his day: 'Under the Roman Empire, not farre from the banke, by Foulnesse a River of small account, where Wighton, a little Towne of Husbandry well inhabited is now seen stood, as we may well thinke in old time Delgovitia.'
The debate about the location of Delgovitia and other places mentioned in these documents is still ongoing (Creighton 1988; Millett 2006) and will be addressed later in this book.
In 1699, Abraham De La Pryme (1671–1704), Curate of Holy Trinity church in Hull (Jackson 1870, 200), without knowing the full implications of his observation, noted the following in his diary: 'I saw on my journey to York many hundreds of tumuli which I take to be Roman at a place called Arras on this side Wighton not mentioned in any author description thereof which I intend to digg into ...'
De La Pryme's enthusiasm for the study of the past is beyond doubt, expressed in this extract of a letter to Dr Gale, Dean of York: 'Thank you for your encouraging me to prosecute these studdys, than which nothing is more sweet, nothing more pleasant to me ... I do already find that there are a great many old antiquitys monuments and inscriptions ... in many parts of this country' (Jackson 1870, 200).
De La Pryme never did carry out this intention and it was not until 1815–17 that the mounds at Arras were opened by Stillingfleet, Hull and Clarkson and found to be Iron Age in date, an event which will be discussed in more detail below.
De La Pryme was also the first to recognise the significance of Roman antiquities at Brough-on-Humber (Jackson 1870, 219). Another antiquarian, Horsley, also described the ramparts and foundations of Roman Brough and their setting, observing that 'The Humber formerly came just up to it, and it still does at high spring tides' (Horsley 1732, 314 and 374).
In the late 1970s Peter Armstrong (pers. comm.) recognised curves of ancient shorelines, fossilised within field boundaries to the west of Brough. Herman Ramm (1978, 111) also noted the changes that had taken place in the shape of the Humber shore in the Walling Fen area based on eighteenth-century maps. It was not until the research of the present author that the full significance of Horsley's remark was recognised (Halkon 1987; 2008; Halkon and Millett 1999). From study of soil maps (King and Bradley 1987) it was realised that Roman Brough was at the edge of the tidal inlet into which the Foulness flowed, later becoming the Walling Fen, described by Leland. This observation also provided a context for the inscribed Roman lead pigs found in this vicinity, traded from Derbyshire through the Humber estuary, which were first recorded in the later eighteenth century (Gough 1789; Kitson Clark 1935).
Horsley's contemporary, the great York antiquarian Francis Drake, disputed the former's equation of Brough with Petuaria in his attempt to place the Roman settlement names of East Yorkshire (Drake 1736) and to trace the routes of the Roman roads around York (Plate 1). At Barmby Moor, Drake (1736, 63) cites the perceptive observation of Dr Martin Lister, made around 1700, one of the first recorded 'scientific' fabric descriptions of the pottery which he found there, rightly presuming it to be Roman:
There are found in York in the road or Roman Street out of Micklegate and likewise by the river side ... urns of three different tempers viz. -1. Urns of a blewish gray colour having a great quantity of coarse sand wrought in with the clay 2. Others of the same colour being either a very fine sand mixed with it full of mica or 'cat silver' or made of clay naturally sandy ... The composition of the first kind of pot did first give me occasion to discover the place where they were made. The one about midway between Wilberfoss and Barmby on the Moor ... in the sand hills on rising ground where the warren now is – where I have found scattered widely up and down, broken pieces of rims, slag and cinders. (Lister 1681–2, in Hutton et al. 1809, 518).
The pottery described is very similar to that produced at Holme-on-Spalding Moor (Halkon and Millett 1999), and the 'sand hills on rising ground' are very like the location of most of the Roman settlements and kiln sites around Holme.
Drake (1736, 33) adds that: 'It is to be observed that the present road to York goes through this bed of sand, cinders &c [etc] but the Roman way lies as I suppose a little on the right of it.'
One of the first Roman mosaics to be found in the East Riding was ploughed up at Bishop Burton near Beverley (Thoresby 1715, 558) and described in more detail by Gent (1733, 77) as being of red, white and blue stones (see Chapter 8). It is only recently that the precise find spot has been located (Williamson 1987). In the north of possible Parisi territory, the Roman forts near Pickering, usually known as Cawthorn camps were first noted by Robinson in a letter to Gale in 1724, which subsequently became the focus of much later research.
To the west of the Wolds, near the source of the River Foulness at Londesborough, Drake (1736, 32) reported the discovery of a Roman road during the construction of the Great Pond, one of a series of lakes and canals created by Knowlton, the chief gardener to Richard Boyle, 3rd Earl of Burlington and 4th Earl of Cork (1694–1753) at Londesborough Park. Burlington, a great patron of the arts, must take credit for supporting this important burst of activity (Henrey 1986, 78).
The discovery of the road renewed the efforts of antiquarians to locate the Roman settlements listed by classical authors, for Drake was in correspondence with the Revd William Stukeley, the doyen of English Antiquarians of the time, concerning his discoveries. Stukeley visited 'Lonsburrow' and Goodmanham on 1 July 1740 and the newly discovered Roman road was exposed for him to examine (Lukis 1887, 386). Lord Burlington commissioned John Haynes of York to draw a map showing the route of the Roman road through his estate and beyond. The document, dated 1744, was entitled 'An accurate survey of some stupendous remains of Roman antiquity on the Wolds in Yorkshire ... through which some grand military ways to several eminent stations are traced' (Henrey 1986, 205) and it is a testament to Haynes' map-making skills that it was possible to correlate the buildings illustrated in his map to those revealed in recent survey work (Halkon et al. 2003; Halkon 2008, 198).
In a letter to Mark Catesby read at a meeting of the Royal Society on 6 March 1745–46, Thomas Knowlton described the discovery (Philosophical Transactions Royal Society, March/April 1746, 100):
Many foundations (were found) in a ploughed field ... discovered by one Mr Hudson, a farmer at Millington, as he formerly tended his sheep on one side of the hill, and on the opposite side had perceived in the corn a different colour for some years before: which led him this summer to dig ... there were many other foundations which had Roman pavements within them ... by which I imagine after the dissolution of the temple became a Roman station, then called Delgovicia, which has been so uncertainly fixed at Goodmanham, Londesborough, Hayton &c.[etc].
This extract is particularly interesting because it is one of the earliest references from the East Riding to cropmarks being used for the recognition of archaeological features. It is also a reminder that Hayton, which has been the focus of recent fieldwork (Halkon and Millett 2003; Halkon et al. forthcoming), was even at this date perceived to be a possible location for a Roman settlement of some significance.
The discovery of the Millington remains caused some excitement as Drake and his colleague John Burton (Burton 1745; 1753) carried out survey work there as well. Ramm (1990) highlights some contradictions between the accounts of Knowlton and the other two writers, though Burton and Drake both endorsed Knowlton's conclusion that Millington was Delgovicia. In the manuscript version, Drake points out an interesting hazard to archaeological survey at this time:
Whilst we were on the spot directing the survey, in the year 1745, a year in which the House of Stewart again did attempt to recover the British Crown, some people observing us, gave an information at York, that we were marking out a camp in the Wolds; which had like to cause us some trouble to contradict. (Drake 1746, cited in Ramm 1990, 13).
The remains at Millington and the location of Delgovicia will be discussed below, but the impact of these discoveries remained in local memory for some time afterwards as they are reported in the diary of John Wesley:
Mon. July 1, 1776. I preached at about eleven to a numerous and serious congregation at Pocklington. In my way from hence to Malton, Mr C- (a man of some sense and veracity) gave me the following account: his grandfather Mr H-, he said about twenty years ago, ploughing up a field, two or three miles from Pocklington, turned up a large stone, under which he perceived there was a hollow. Digging on he found at a small distance, a large magnificent house. He cleared away the earth; and going in to it, found many spacious rooms. The floors of the lower storey were of mosaic work, exquisitely wrought. Mr C- himself counted sixteen stones within an inch square. Many flocked to see it from various parts, as long as it stood open, but after some days, Mr P-(he knew not why) ordered it to be covered again and he would never suffer any to open it, but ploughed the field all over. (Curnock 1938, 113).
Surprisingly Drake paid little attention to Malton, the main Roman centre in the north of the territory of the Parisi, other than noting the presence of its fortifications (Kitson Clark 1935, 99). He was, however, involved with the discovery and exhibition to the Royal Society in 1755 of the tombstone inscription to Macrinus, a cavalryman in the imperial bodyguard found there which will be discussed more fully in Chapter 6 (RIB 714; Kitson Clark 1935, 100). John Walker, a Fellow of the Society of Antiquaries of London, lived in Malton and noted some finds. He corresponded with Thomas Hinderwell who copied much material into a 1798 edition of his History of Scarborough (Hinderwell 1798). It is thanks to this remarkable book that so much information about Roman Malton and district is preserved. The Malton Messenger newspaper also provided detailed accounts of discoveries, many of them reported by the antiquarians Captain Copperthwaite, George Pycock and Charles Monkman during the period of rapid development which followed the arrival of the railways from the 1860s onwards (Kitson Clark 1935). The foundations were therefore laid for the important fieldwork around Malton undertaken in the 1920s to 1940s by the Roman Malton and District Committee of which Philip Corder, John L. Kirk and the Revd Thomas Romans were the luminaries. Their work, which expanded to include other areas of North and East Yorkshire, became the main archaeological effort in the region between the nineteenth-century barrow diggers and the excavations backed by the Ministry of Works in the 1960s and later. The contribution of this group will be considered more closely in the next section.
As far as the Iron Age is concerned, the first recorded excavations of square barrows in East Yorkshire were at Danes Graves near Kilham in 1721 (Stead 1979,16) when several mounds were dug into after they were observed by a group who were beating the bounds of the parish, an event which was recorded in a parish register. Antiquarian exploration resumed at Arras from 1815 to 1817, where Barnard Clarkson, of Holme House, Holme-on-Spalding Moor, the Revd Edward Stillingfleet, vicar of South Cave and an active antiquarian, with Dr Thomas Hull of Beverley, supervised the excavation of many of the barrows, which had been noted by De La Pryme. They identified the burials as being of 'Ancient British' origin, the discovery of several chariot burials causing Stillingfleet (1846) to equate them to classical descriptions of chariot-fighting Britons. It is important to note that the so-called 'King's Barrow' and 'Queen's Barrow' are described as being circular.
The only contemporary account of the find is a manuscript plan drawn up by William Watson, a mapmaker of Seaton Ross, which is dated August 1816 (Stead 1979, Plate 1, 109). The first published reference appears in Oliver's History of Beverley (Oliver 1829), which includes a letter from Thomas Hull to the Scarborough antiquarian Hinderwell. A fuller account was given by Stillingfleet (1846), published thirty years after the discovery. Presumably inspired by the publication of the above, the Yorkshire Antiquarian club carried out further excavation at Arras in 1850 (Proctor 1855; Davis and Thurnam 1865; Stead 1979), as well as on the contrasting lowland square barrow cemetery at Skipwith Common (Stead 1979).
The indefatigable Canon Greenwell excavated further Iron Age burials, some furnished with chariots at Arras and Beverley (Greenwell and Rolleston 1877; Greenwell 1906, Kinnes and Longworth 1985, 142, PL un. 64), and finally aged seventy-seven, with his old arch rival Mortimer (then aged seventy-two) at Danes Graves, in 1897–98, with the comparatively youthful drainage commissioner and antiquary Thomas Boynton FSA of Bridlington, aged sixty-five (Fig. 3a, b, c).
The details of these and later excavations are described by Stead (1979) and will be discussed in Chapter 4.
Apart from the route of the Roman roads and the location of named Roman settlements, the focus of antiquarians, especially on the Yorkshire Wolds, had been on burials, which they hoped would supply artefacts for their collections. However, Stillingfleet (1846) made some observations about the landscape of the area around the Arras cemetery. He was one of the first to suggest that the nearby 'Double Dykes' were contemporary with the burials, and similar to the linear earthworks of the North Yorkshire Moors, studied by Spratt (1981; 1989). Drake and Burton had mapped the entrenchments around the temple site at Millington, wrongly attributing them to the Romans, assuming that they were part of the 'Roman Station' of Delgovitia. Some antiquarians had confused the linear earthworks with roads, an error highlighted by the Revd Maule Cole (1899), who published the first systematic account of the roads since Drake. This survey is of particular importance, for according to Kitson Clark (1935, 33), the Ordnance Survey maps at 6 inches to the mile were based on his paper.
(Continues...)
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Table of Contents
Contents
Title Page,Acknowledgements,
List of Illustrations,
List of Plates,
Introduction,
Chapter 1 The Search for the Parisi,
Chapter 2 The Landscape of Eastern Yorkshire,
Chapter 3 The Emergence of a Tribal Society,
Chapter 4 The Arras Culture,
Chapter 5 Settlement and Economy in Iron Age Eastern Yorkshire,
Chapter 6 Later Iron Age Eastern Yorkshire and the Coming of Rome,
Chapter 7 The Impact of Rome – The Larger Settlements,
Chapter 8 The Impact of Rome – The Countryside,
Chapter 9 Crafts and Industry,
Chapter 10 The Individual in Roman Eastern Yorkshire,
Chapter 11 From the Parisi to Deira,
Bibliography,
Plate Section,
Copyright,