Untitled Document

Southwell Community Archaeology Group
Meeting Notes 6th February 2010

Held: 10.00am The Old Court House
Present: 19 Members
Apologies: Paul Birks, Stuart Blackwood, Rodger Dobson, Dave Johnson

1. Chairman’s Report
Trevor Wight gave a brief report on developments since the last meeting:

Future Events
Meetings were provisionally planned for 20th March, 5th May, 17th July, 18th September and 20th November. This year it was hoped to have a number of talks, do more field walking and carry out a geophysical survey of the old Minster School playing fields.
Members’ attention was brought to hands on archaeological training under University supervision available at the Langford excavation. A 5 day minimum commitment is required between April and November 2010. Further details are available on w.

Caroline Butler
SCAG had been contacted via our website by the daughter of the new Bishop of Southwell who is undertaking a Masters in Professional Archaeology at Oxford. She was keen to speak to us about the title of her dissertation and subsequently decided on “The Archbishop’s Palace at Southwell: the challenges of historic non-ecclesiastical buildings owned by the Church of England”. She was interested in getting involved in our research on the Roman villa.

Subscriptions
Members were reminded that 2010 subscriptions were due.

Church Street Site
Representatives of SCAG, as one of the consortium of heritage groups in the town, had met JWA Architects on 4th February. They were shown radically revised plans which allowed for preservation of the high status archaeology west of the recently discovered wall in an undeveloped “green strip”.
The new proposals had been prepared following consultations with NSDC Planners, Southwell Minster, English Heritage and Nottinghamshire’s County Archaeologist. The archaeological report was due 6 weeks from 4th February and it was expected that a planning application would be made during March.
Questions remaining unanswered were:
Who will be the eventual builder/developer?
Who will own the open space green strip?
What is in the archaeological report?
What will be the mitigation strategy for the area to be built on?

Southwell Heritage
After encouragement from NSDC and Notts CC, considerable work had been put into an application to East Midlands Development Agency for a feasibility study into the tourism potential of an “Outstanding Heritage Area” incorporating the Minster, Archbishop’s Palace and Roman Villa. Unfortunately the application to EMDA had been unsuccessful and NSDC were now looking at alternative funding sources.

2. Flint Handling Session
The Chairman then introduced David Budge, Archaeological Assistant, Notts CC, who gave an excellent presentation on flint tools followed by a brief opportunity to handle samples. Unfortunately there was insufficient time to have a full handling session but David has agreed to come back soon for another session.
In his presentation he explained that flint was formed from the remains of sea urchins and sponges living in the Cretaceous Period. Silica from them leached out of the contemporaneously deposited chalk and tended to gather around nuclei such as sponge skeletons producing layers of nodules of black silica with a white surrounding cortex.
Flint’s property of conchoidal (conical) fracture was demonstrated as were the telltale signs of worked flint (platform, bulb, scars, ripples and evidence of intent and methodical fracturing).
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The differences between primary (chalk nodule) and secondary (pebble) sources of flint, between impact and pressure flaking and between core and flake tools were explained.
There was a brief history of the development of tool making from crude Palaeolithic hand hammers through disposable hand axes, scrapers, and blades to Bronze Age barbed and tanged arrow heads.