Air Reconnaissance of Roman Scotland

Antiquity ◽  
1939 ◽  
Vol 13 (51) ◽  
pp. 280-292 ◽  
Author(s):  
O. G. S. Crawford
Keyword(s):  
Field Work ◽  
General Character ◽  
Roman Britain ◽  
Ordnance Survey ◽  
The Way

On 6 June I started from Southampton to carry out an investigation of the Roman roads and sites in Scotland from the air. For several years, as part of my official duties, I have been examining these on foot, in pursuance of a plan to publish a third edition of the Ordnance Survey Map of Roman Britain. It is intended to prepare the way for this map (which may be published on a slightly larger scale—10 miles instead of 16 miles to the inch) by the publication of maps of special regions on the scale of 4 miles to the inch. The drawing of the first two of these (Scotland, Sheet 3 [Forth and Tay], and Sheet I [The Border]) had been finished; but many doubtful points remained even after intensive field-work, and it seemed probable that a short air reconnaissance under favourable conditions would solve some of them. This opinion was amply justified by results. About a dozen new Roman sites (including as ‘ sites ’ new stretches of Roman road) were discovered; about 50 new sites in all, including many native forts, were placed on the map; and valuable results of a general character were obtained.

O. G. S. Crawford

Antiquity ◽  
1976 ◽  
Vol 50 (200) ◽  
pp. 185-186
Author(s):  
Stuart Piggott
Keyword(s):  
Generation Gap ◽  
Roman Britain ◽  
Ordnance Survey ◽  
Evening News ◽  
First Time

In June 1926 my father, a master at the school in Hampshire in which I was an idle and unedifying pupil, received a letter from the Archaeology Officer of the Ordnance Survey in Southampton, asking for details of a new Romano-British site at West Harting, on the downs just across the county boundary in Sussex. Crawford was collecting material for the second edition of the 0s Roman Britain map: my proud discovery of sherds in moleheaps and rabbit-scrapes had found its way into the parish magazine and thence to the Portsmouth Evening News where it had been spotted by OGSC, and so the letter was really for me. Correspondence followed; the next year, in Southampton with my parents en route for a holiday in France, I was able to meet him for the first time. The Generation Gap had not then been invented, and we liked one another from the start, and from then on OGS (as we were all later to call him) took upon himself to be my archaeological godfather.

Watching Birds and People

2008 ◽  
Vol 2 (2) ◽  
pp. 160-176
Author(s):  
Mikael Rothstein
Keyword(s):  
Common Ground ◽  
Field Work ◽  
Personal Knowledge ◽  
Mutual Understanding ◽  
Knowledge And Skills ◽  
Good Working ◽  
Anthropological Field Work ◽  
Different Cultures ◽  
The Way

This article explores ornithology as a hidden resource in anthropological field work. Relating experiences among the Penan forest nomads of Sarawak, Borneo, the author describes how his personal knowledge of bird life paved the way for good working relations, and even friendship, with the Penan. Representing two very different cultures simple communication between the scholar on duty and the Penan community was difficult indeed, but the birds provided a common ground that enabled the two parties to exchange experiences, knowledge and skills. In certain ways the author's fieldwork-based project relates to the Penan’s religious interpretation of birds, but the article is primarily concerned with the fact that a mutual understanding was created from this common ground, and that our thoughts on fieldwork preparations may be taken further by such experiences.

The Toccatas of Bach

1912 ◽  
Vol 39 ◽  
pp. 45-53
Author(s):  
J. A. Fuller-Maitland
Keyword(s):  
Recent Work ◽  
Good Reason ◽  
General Character ◽  
Valuable Book ◽  
The Way

There are no fewer than twelve complete works of Sebastian Bach to which the name Toccata is applied, and in nearly all cases the title seems to have come from the composer himself. It is always worth while to trace, if we can, the reasons which led a great man to choose one name rather than another for his creations; and in the case of Bach, I think we are justified in supposing that the names he gave were not purely arbitrary, but were chosen for some good reason. Certain modern composers, notably Brahms, have shown a strange indifference to the effect wrought by a well-chosen name for their music. His later works for pianoforte, often grouped under the heading of “Fantasias,” are divided into “Intermezzi” and “‘Capricci” according to whether they are slow movements or fast. But Bach, with his methodical habits, never showed that kind of almost perverse nonchalance in regard to the names his works were to bear. Remember the “Partitas,” and how each of the six introductory movements had a different designation from all the rest. As a matter of fact, there is not much indication of any inner variety of structure among the six, for all are preludial in general character, and it is evidently only a whim of the composer to give the six different titles. One of these, the sixth by the way, is styled “Toccata,” but has none of the distinguishing marks which, I hope to persuade you, Bach had in his mind when he used the title for independent compositions. Mr. Albert Schweitzer in his exceedingly valuable book on Bach (I am speaking of the recent work in two volumes, translated from the French by Mr. Ernest Newman) says that these Toccatas might just as well have been called Sonatas, or by any other name. Here I cannot agree with him, and the main object of my remarks on the present occasion.is to examine into the structure and style of the pieces, and see if we cannot discern some characteristic common to them all, and not shared by any other compositions of Bach.

The Characteristics of Certain Resisting Surfaces and Screws

1916 ◽  
Vol 20 (77) ◽  
pp. 3-9
Author(s):  
G. H. Bryan
Keyword(s):  
General Idea ◽  
General Character ◽  
Lateral Stability ◽  
Wind Gusts ◽  
The Stability ◽  
The Way

In the stability investigations which the late Captain Ferber published in the Revue d'Artillerie, the sustaining and other surfaces of an aeroplane were in certain cases taken to be represented, for dynamical purposes, by a system of three plane resisting laminæ fixed mutually at right angles. Unfortunately, however, such a system cannot in general be made equivalent to a collection of surfaces, such as those of an aeroplane, with the result that Captain Ferber's investigation failed to give the correct conditions of lateral stability. At the same time, Ferber's system of three orthogonal planes is so convenient, especially for forming a general idea of the effects of wind gusts on an aeroplane, that it is desirable to investigate conditions and limitations under which such a representation is valid. The desirability of a further investigation of the forces and couples acting on a system of resisting surfaces of a general character was foreshadowed in “Stability in Aviation,” and a more detailed discussion of the problem has now become necessary in order to prepare the way for further studies in the rigid dynamics of the motions of aeroplanes or of systems resembling them.

Villages in Roman Britain: Some Evidence

1964 ◽  
Vol 44 (1) ◽  
pp. 19-32 ◽  
Author(s):  
S. J. Hallam
Keyword(s):  
Land Use ◽  
Iron Age ◽  
The Other ◽  
Roman Britain ◽  
Ordnance Survey ◽  
Roman Countryside ◽  
The One

‘Villages’ of ‘up to a hundred little huts’ and even ‘pit dwellings' passed from history to mythology after Bersu's Little Woodbury excavations, and Professor Hawkes's consequent reinterpretation of the Cranborne Chase ‘village’ of Woodcuts as superimposed successive farmsteads. The ‘villages’ of the old Ordnance Survey Map of Roman Britain have no place in the scheme of things exemplified in the 1956 edition. But the new orthodoxy of the ‘single farm’ as the dominant, or indeed the exclusive, settlement form in the Roman and immediately pre-Roman countryside has itself been thrown open to doubt as scholars have, on the one hand, accumulated more evidence of the actual abundant variety of Iron Age to Roman settlement types and, on the other, questioned themselves and each other more closely on the origins of the pattern of English settlement, and the probability that it was not imprinted on a countryside devoid of all trace of previous land-use and organization.

I.—Belgic and Roman Silchester: the Excavations of 1954–8 with an Excursus on the Early History of Calleva

Archaeologia ◽  
1969 ◽  
Vol 102 ◽  
pp. 1-81 ◽  
Author(s):  
George C. Boon
Keyword(s):  
Field Work ◽  
Early History ◽  
Total Evidence ◽  
The South ◽  
Public And Private ◽  
Ordnance Survey ◽  
North West ◽  
The North ◽  
History Of

SummaryThe excavations were undertaken by the Silchester Excavation Committee supported by donations from public and private bodies and from individuals and by permission of the Duke of Wellington, K.G., F.S.A. Their purpose was the investigation of (a) a previously unsuspected polygonal enclosure of about 85 acres, here named the Inner Earthwork, which lay partly inside and partly outside the line of the familiar Roman town wall; and (b) a western extension to the known line of the Outer Earthwork, which increased the size of this enclosure from about 213 to 233 acres. With the assistance of the Ordnance Survey, the aerial traces of these earthworks, first observed and recorded by Dr. J. K. St. Joseph, F.S.A., were confirmed and extended by field-work and excavation, and have been planned as appears on pl. I.The excavations showed that the Inner Earthwork was a defence of Gaulish ‘Fécamp’ type, and that it was erected, on the south, over an area of late pre-Roman occupation, the first clearly identified at Calleva Atrebatum, but one with strong ‘Catuvellaunian’ influences in its pottery-series. It is claimed that the Inner Earthwork was constructed by the client King Cogidubnus in or shortly after A.D. 43–4, as the defence of this, the most important settlement in the north-west of his dominions. It is further suggested that the Inner Earthwork was replaced by the Outer Earthwork also during the reign of Cogidubnus.The excursus attempts to collate with the results of excavation the earlier discoveries of pre-Conquest material. The total evidence is finally related to the Belgico-Roman topography of Silchester and its neighbourhood, within the historical framework of the century and a half which separated the arrival of the earliest Belgic immigrants in the region from the death of Cogidubnus and the consequent emergence of the Roman Civitas Atrebatum.

A Roman Fortified Villa at Norton Disney, Lincs.

1937 ◽  
Vol 17 (2) ◽  
pp. 138-178 ◽  
Author(s):  
Adrian Oswald
Keyword(s):  
Fourth Century ◽  
Roman Period ◽  
Roman Britain ◽  
Ordnance Survey ◽  
The Road ◽  
Right Hand ◽  
The Military

Villas are so uniform in character that they arouse comparatively little interest compared with the military problems of Roman Britain. But a villa surrounded by ditches, whether for defensive purposes or not, can be immediately classed as a rarity. A list of such examples of domestic fortification in the Roman period includes the houses at Castle Dykes, near Ripon, at Cwmbrwyn in Carmarthenshire, at Bartlow in Cambridgeshire, at Langton in Yorkshire, and at Ely near Cardiff. Of these only the two last have been scientifically excavated, and only the house at Ely has fortifications which conform to the building. In these circumstances the discovery of a villa surrounded by five ditches and occupied, through five periods of construction and reconstruction, from the latter half of the first to the middle of the fourth century is of particular interest.The villa in question is situated some 200 yards east of the Fosseway, at a point 9 miles south of Lincoln and a mile and a half north of Brough (Crococolana). The site is marked on the Ordnance Survey and known locally as Potter Hill. It comprises a long ridge of land some hundred feet higher than the plain in which Crococolana is placed. Stukeley in his Itinerary says, ‘and journeying to the space of about 12 Roman miles, I found Collingham on my right hand: there is a high barrow or tumulus called Potters Hill, where they say was a Roman pottery: it stands upon an eminence commanding a prospect both ways upon the road. Half a mile further is Brough.’Nevertheless the presence of a Roman building was not suspected until the discovery in 1933 by the farmer, Mr. E. Taylor, of a mosaic pavement.

The Present State of the Tabula Imperii Romani

1984 ◽  
Vol 74 ◽  
pp. 200-201 ◽  
Author(s):  
A. L. F. Rivet
Keyword(s):  
Roman Empire ◽  
Early Development ◽  
Present State ◽  
Vice President ◽  
Roman Britain ◽  
Ordnance Survey ◽  
Uniform Scale ◽  
The World ◽  
Western Half ◽  
Made In

The decision to produce maps covering the whole of the Roman Empire at a uniform scale of 1/1,000,000 was first made at a meeting of the International Geographical Union at Cambridge in July 1928. The proponent of the idea was O. G. S. Crawford, then Archaeology Officer of the Ordnance Survey, and since he was also mainly responsible for its early development, the model adopted was that of the second edition of the O.S. Map of Roman Britain, but the physical base chosen was that of the International Map of the World, which was then in production. Considerable progress was made in the 1930s—it was in 1934 that the title Tabula Imperii Romani was adopted—but wars interrupted matters and it was not until 1957 that the work was formally taken over by the Union Académique Internationale. Professor G. Lugli became the first President of the Permanent Committee of the TIR, to be succeeded in 1968 by Professor J. B. Ward-Perkins; on his death in 1981 the Presidency was assumed by Professor E. Condurachi, with Professor G. Carettoni as Vice-President taking over most responsibility for the western half of the Empire.

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