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| Lecture Programme 2017-2018 |
The 2017/2018 season of lectures is held in the McDonald Institute seminar room, Division of Archaeology, Downing Street, Cambridge at 7.30 pm. This season's talks arranged to date are:
4 October Dr Preston Miracle on Vela Spila (Croatia) – a brief introduction to recent fieldwork.
Abstract: Vela spila Cave (Korcula, Croatia), preserves a long, rich,
high-resolution record of palaeoenvironmental and archaeological remains
in the Adriatic region. Its deposits span from the Last Glacial Maximum
(ca. 20 kyr) to the Bronze Age (ca. 3 kyr). In this talk we focus on
Late Upper Palaeolithic, Mesolithic and Neolithic assemblages. During
the late glacial period Late Upper Palaeolithic people seasonally
visited Vela spila to process and consume large game animals (e.g. red
deer, European ass, wild cattle) that they hunted on the exposed Great
Adriatic Plain. Raw materials for the production of stone tools and
shell beads were also procured some distance from the cave; groups had
large annual ranges. Starting around 17.5 kyr people developed the
technology of firing clay into ceramic, zoomorphic 'figurines'; this
technology was used until about 15 kyr. Human activities at Vela Spila
changed significantly after the deposition of the Neapolitan Yellow Tuff
(NYT, c. 14.3-13.9 kyr) shortly after the onset of rapid, late-glacial
warming (GI-1d, starting c. 14.7 kyr). Immediately after the deposition
of the NYT the Pleistocene ceramics disappear, the intensity of site
visits drops significantly, and the cave was abandoned. After a break in
occupation for about 5 kyr, Mesolithic people revisited the cave during
the Holocene starting about 9.5 kyr. Rising sea levels had a dramatic
impact on Vela Spila’s Mesolithic inhabitants; roe deer, fox, fish,
and shellfish dominate the food waste and only locally-available raw
materials were used to make stone tools and shell beads. Over the course
of the Mesolithic occupation, the human use of subsistence resources
intensified. The 8.2 kyr event is roughly correlated with the first
appearance of Neolithic technologies (domestic animals followed by
pottery) at the site. The archaeological assemblages display aspects of
both continuity and change across the Mesolithic-Neolithic transition.
With the adoption of food production in the Neolithic, Vela spila was
used primarily as a pen for keeping domestic sheep and goat.
1 November Patricia Duff on Vela Spila fieldwork - making archaeology meaningful to the community.
6 December Terry Dymott and Mike Coles - Holes and Hills: a review of Group fieldwork over the past year.
10 January Bill Franklin - A Brief History of Enclosure, using Cambridgeshire examples.
7 February Mark Hinman, Regional Project Manager Pre-Construct Archaeology Ltd on some highlights of their work
7 March Talk CANCELLED.
4 April AGM and talk by Mike Coles - The brick industry of South West Cambridgeshire in the 17th and 18th centuries
2 May Paddy Lambert, Oxford Archaeology East - 'The People of Roman Britain - Introducing the Romano-British' - Using various epigraphic sources, such as graffito and archaeological evidence, it is a tour of the real people that fleshed out the archaeological record, from the immigrant to the aspirational tribesperson. Whether the humble builder who wrote a rhyme on a building tile, to the grand tombstone of a procurator from Asia, this talk will take a tour of the real Romano-British, in their own words.
6 June Craig Cessford, Cambridge Archaeological Unit - Middle Saxon to Post Medieval Burials in Cambridgeshire and its Hinterland
3 October Dr Paul Spoerry, our president and manager of Oxford Archaeology East - Aspects of same recently excavated Anglo-Saxon cemeteries from Cambridgeshire
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