Search results for ""Museum of London Archaeology""

The excavation at 201 Bishopsgate in 1998-9 uncovered evidence for Londinium's northern cemetery, roadside occupation along Roman Ermine Street, and medieval and later development to the west of Bishopsgate. This area has been extensively used and re-used, from burials to refuse-disposal to houses, as London has expanded. This volume documents the excavation with many pictures and tables, as well as extensive descriptions and discussions of the excavation at each stage.

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London’s Spitalfields Market was the location of one of the city’s largest archaeological excavations, carried out by MOLA between 1991 and 2007. This book presents the archaeological and bioarchaeological evidence for Roman activity here, to the north-east of the urban settlement and the site of a series of burial grounds on the east side of Ermine Street. Burial began here c AD 120 and continued into the 4th century AD. Excavation revealed a number of ditched enclosures, some used for the interment of 169 inhumations and five cremation burials, some for other purposes. Among the early burials men outnumbered women by five to one, but by the later 3rd and 4th centuries AD a more even sex ratio prevailed. Subadults were well represented, with one area apparently set aside for the burial of neonates and children. The cemetery attracted some particularly wealthy 4th-century AD burials, including at least two in stone sarcophagi, one of which contained an inner, decorated, lead coffin enclosing a young woman. She had been anointed with imported resins and buried in fine clothing, with unusual glassware and jet items. Some burial rites and grave goods are more familiar from Continental cemeteries, emphasising the cosmopolitan and mobile nature of London’s population.

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This report presents an overview of Roman urban development in London south of the Thames. The establishment of the Roman bridge and the first approach roads and landing places, made Southwark an ideal location for the development of facilities for the trans-shipment of goods between land and river. The wide range of data from 41 previously unpublished north Southwark sites provides the means for 'mapping' Roman activity in Southwark: the nature of the early settlement, changing patterns of land use and broader processes of social and economic change. Early land reclamation preceded the establishment of a thriving trade centre involved in the redistribution or marketing of locally processed and imported goods, with evidence of a concentration of buildings burnt in Boudican fire of AD 61 along the main road to the bridgehead. Increased land reclamation and construction of more masonry buildings in the 2nd century AD indicate further growth. By the 3rd century large stone buildings at ten of the sites reported suggest an administrative area housing official residences. After the mid 4th century the settlement contracted to the area immediately around the bridgehead with a cemetery on previously occupied land to the south.

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This is an archaeological, architectural and historical study of one of the largest complexes of buildings in the medieval City of London, but one which is largely unknown and of which only two fragments survive above ground today. It is the fifth volume in a series on the monasteries of London. Holy Trinity Priory, Aldgate, was the first religious house to be established inside the walls of London after the Norman Conquest, in 11078; one of the earliest Augustinian houses to be established in England; and the first to be dissolved, in 1532. By 1200 the precinct north of Leadenhall Street and just inside Aldgate was filled with imposing stone buildings, including a large and architecturally impressive church which was the burial place of two of the children of King Stephen in the middle of the 12th century. Londons first mayor, Henry FitzAilwin, was buried in the entrance to the chapter house. In the 16th century the monastery was owned by the Duke of Norfolk, second only to Queen Elizabeth in power, who was executed in 1572 for his part in plots surrounding Mary Queen of Scots. Several modern excavations of 1977 to 1990, many antiquarian drawings, and a ground-floor and a first-floor plan of all the monastery buildings made around 1585 are brought together here for the first time, to reconstruct a fully illustrated and detailed history and archaeology of the priory site. Not only can all the major periods of the priorys building history be suggested and compared with other religious houses in medieval London, but the excavations produced their own surprises, such as evidence of the beginning of the tin-glazed or delftware pottery industry in the 1590s, and a unique Jewish plate of the 18th century.

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Additional burial areas for the parish of St James Westminster in the 17th to 18th century were excavated in 2008–9. As the northern part of the parish around Soho grew and its population increased from the mid 17th century, pressure mounted on burial space in the churchyard on Piccadilly and on existing support structures for the least fortunate members of society. In response, the lower ground (the early extramural burial ground, 1695–1733) and the upper ground (the later extramural burial ground, 1733–90) were opened in succession, along with the new workhouse complex (1725–1913) and the workhouse burial ground (1733–93). In the later 19th to 20th century public baths were constructed over part of the site and the workhouse was repurposed and then redeveloped.The three burial areas were used intensively and a total of 2553 burials were recorded. Intra-site comparisons exploring demographic and health profiles show a higher proportion of adult females in the workhouse population and a disproportionately low number of childhood deaths across all three grounds. Full osteological analysis of 1786 skeletons revealed the wide range of conditions afflicting the buried population. Higher overall rates of pathological bone conditions, including infectious disease and trauma, were identified, however, in the workhouse burials when compared to the extramural grounds. Together with historical and archaeological evidence, these results and those from comparative contemporary sites help place the lives of the urban poor and destitute within the wider context of the 17th and 18th centuries.

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Modern Liverpool Street was once on the margins of London: the story of its development – from the medieval marsh of Moorfields to municipal, non-parochial, burial ground and later suburb – is illustrated by archaeological investigations undertaken as part of the Crossrail Central development. Excavation also recovered a wealth of well-preserved artefactual evidence for the local inhabitants, from the 16th century to the 19th-century households of Brokers Row.The New Churchyard, or 'Bethlem' as it was later known, was established after the severe plague of 1563 and was in use from 1569 to 1739; archaeological evidence suggests c 25,000 people in total were buried here. Contemporary accounts and parish registers, combined with tombstones and detailed osteological analysis of one quarter of the 3354 burials excavated, enable the reconstruction of some of their lives, and their deaths. They included migrants, many of the city's poor and those on the fringes ofsociety. Some were the victims of recurrent epidemics and outbreaks of plague – confirmed by the identification of the plague pathogen in five skeletons – when mass, but orderly, graves were dug

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In 2003 archaeologists discovered an intact princely burial between busy Priory Crescent and the railway line near Priory Park in Prittlewell. A find of international significance, this is the richest and most important Anglo-Saxon burial found since the 1939 discovery of the great ship burial at Sutton Hoo in Suffolk. The lavishly furnished wooden chamber beneath a mound contained the coffin of a high-status man, evidently a Christian, who died at the end of the 6th century AD. The results of years of study of the excavated evidence are described and illustrated here to provide an account of the burial and the grave goods, and the information they give us about the East Saxon kingdom, where the man lived, and its contacts with Kent, Francia and the Christian Mediterranean.

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The discovery of one of Roman Londons most significant buildings - its amphitheatre - underneath the medieval Guildhall resulted from major archaeological excavations which took place between 1985 and 1999 as part of the City of London Corporations ambitious programme of redevelopment at the Guildhall. The history of the Guildhall and its precinct from the 12th to the 20th centuries is the subject of a companion volume. This book describes the construction, development and disuse of the amphitheatre, from the 1st to 4th centuries AD. Constructed on relatively low ground in the north-west part of Londinium, the first amphitheatre was built in c AD 74 of timber. Evidence was recovered for the eastern entrance, arena palisade, bank for seating and associated drains. The amphitheatre was rebuilt shortly after AD 120, with masonry foundations and walls, associated with new timber stands. The evidence allows conjectural reconstruction and comparison with other British amphitheatres. Abandoned by the mid 4th century, the amphitheatre was largely demolished and sealed by dark earth. The arena may have survived as an oval depression until the area was reoccupied in the 11th century. Significant finds assemblages include an early 2nd-century dump of glass cullet, lead curses from the arena surface and samian pottery with gladiatorial motifs. The amphitheatres remains are preserved and displayed in the basement of the new Guildhall Art Gallery.

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Museum of London Archaeology (MOLA) carried out a programme of archaeological investigations at Magna Park, Lutterworth, Leicestershire between June 2020 and March 2021. A total of just over 12ha was examined as part of the archaeological works, which were separated into eight mitigation areas.The archaeological works revealed the second largest middle Bronze Age cemetery yet found in the county, comprising a group of 30 cremation burials. A further two contemporary cremation burials located 500m away were likely part of the extended funerary landscape.The area of investigation is located along the present A5 which follows the Roman road of Watling Street. This major routeway was hugely influential to the development of the settlements at the site from the middle/ late Iron Age throughout the Roman period and into the medieval period. The site saw four separate farmsteads established in the 1st century BC, and two additional settlement sites established in t

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A lavishly illustrated account of the buildings of the friars in the middle ages, bringing them vividly to life. with contributions from Ian M. Betts, Jens Röhrkasten, Mark Samuel, and Christian Steer. Nominated for the Current Archaeology Book of the Year Award 2019 The friaries of medieval London formed an important partof the city's physical and spiritual landscape between the thirteenth and sixteenth centuries. These urban monasteries housed 300 or more preacher-monks who lived an enclosed religious life and went out into the city to preach. The most important orders were the Dominican Black friars and the Franciscan Grey friars but London also had houses of Augustine, Carmelite and Crossed friars, and, in the thirteenth century, Sack and Pied friars. This book offers an illustrated interdisciplinary study of these religious houses, combining archaeological, documentary, cartographic and architectural evidence to reconstruct the layout and organisation of nine priories. After analysing anddescribing the great churches and cloisters, and their precincts with burial grounds and gardens, it moves on to examine more general historical themes, including the spiritual life of the friars, their links to living and dead Londoners, and the role of the urban monastery. The closure of these friaries in the 1530s is also discussed, along with a brief revival of one friary in the reign of Mary. NICK HOLDER is a historian and archaeologist at English Heritage and the University of Exeter. He has written extensively on medieval and early modern London. IAN M. BETTS is a building materials specialist at Museum of London Archaeology; JENS ROHRKASTEN was Lecturer in Medieval History at the University of Birmingham; MARK SAMUEL is an independent architectural historian; CHRISTIAN STEER is an independent historian, specialising in burials in medieval churches.

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A lavishly illustrated account of the buildings of the friars in the Middle Ages, bringing them vividly to life. with contributions from Ian M. Betts, Jens Röhrkasten, Mark Samuel, and Christian Steer. Nominated for the Current Archaeology Book of the Year Award 2019 The friaries of medieval London formed an important partof the city's physical and spiritual landscape between the thirteenth and sixteenth centuries. These urban monasteries housed 300 or more preacher-monks who lived an enclosed religious life and went out into the city to preach. The most important orders were the Dominican Black friars and the Franciscan Grey friars but London also had houses of Augustine, Carmelite and Crossed friars, and, in the thirteenth century, Sack and Pied friars. This book offers an illustrated interdisciplinary study of these religious houses, combining archaeological, documentary, cartographic and architectural evidence to reconstruct the layout and organisation of nine priories. After analysing anddescribing the great churches and cloisters, and their precincts with burial grounds and gardens, it moves on to examine more general historical themes, including the spiritual life of the friars, their links to living and dead Londoners, and the role of the urban monastery. The closure of these friaries in the 1530s is also discussed, along with a brief revival of one friary in the reign of Mary. NICK HOLDER is a historian and archaeologist atEnglish Heritage and the University of Exeter. He has written extensively on medieval and early modern London. IAN M. BETTS is a building materials specialist at Museum of London Archaeology; JENS ROHRKASTEN was Lecturerin Medieval History at the University of Birmingham; MARK SAMUEL is an independent architectural historian; CHRISTIAN STEER is an independent historian, specialising in burials in medieval churches.

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MOLA (Museum of London Archaeology) was commissioned by RPS Group PLC, on behalf of Morris Homes, to undertake archaeological work on land at Upton Park south of Weedon Road, Northampton. Two adjacent palaeochannels crossed the western extent of the site and are likely to have dated to the Pleistocene period. The earliest evidence of human activity consisted of a background scatter of Neolithic flint. The first feature was an isolated barrow that was established in the early Bronze Age. A later unurned cremation was cut into the backfill of the recut ditch and radiocarbon dated to the end of the early Bronze Age or the beginning of the middle Bronze Age. At least one isolated early Bronze Age pit was found in another part of the site. Parts of two late Bronze Age/early Iron Age sinuous pit alignments were recorded over nearly 0.5km within the site with c257 pits revealed. An estimated 66% of these pits by volume were examined. This is the first time in the county since Wollaston Quarry in the 1990s that pit alignments were seen over such a distance within a single planning application. The archaeological excavation of these has resulted in them being by some distance the two most examined pit alignments in the county, if not the region. Both had most likely fallen out of use by the early Iron Age, but a middle Iron Age date should not be ruled out. In the northern and southern pit alignments there were 16 and seven areas respectively where there were different variables in the pits such as circular or rectangular plan form (and some pit areas had be recut by ditches), which may suggest they had been constructed and maintained by different gangs/communities over probably hundreds of years. Relatively little detailed work has been recorded on this enigmatic feature type. The extensive work and examination of the two pit alignments at Upton has allowed a typology of the variable areas of pits (and related ditches) to be postulated. A detailed discussion has compared these features in a local, regional and national context. Future recommendations for excavation of pit alignments have been recorded. A Roman trackway lay within the western part of the development area and it was part of the routeway network located around the nearby Duston Roman town. Medieval drainage ditches and field systems relating to part of the medieval settlement of Upton lay within the eastern part of the development area.

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