Transcendent Experiences Among Pilgrims to Lourdes: A Qualitative Investigation

This is the final version. Available on open access from Springer via the DOI in this recordMillions of pilgrims visit Lourdes each year, often seeking revitalisation rather than miraculous cures. We sought to understand the phenomenon of transcendent experiences. We spoke with 67 pilgrims including assisted pilgrims, young volunteers and medical staff. About two in five reported a transcendent experience: some felt they had communicated or had close contact with a divine presence, while others reported a powerful experience of something intangible and otherworldly. Transcendent experiences are an important feature of pilgrimage to Lourdes and the place offers the faithful a means of connecting with the divine, with nature and with the self.BIAL Foundatio

Hidden husbandry: disentangling a disturbed profile at Beckery Chapel, a medieval ecclesiastical site near Glastonbury (UK)

Beckery Chapel, near Glastonbury, is the site which has the earliest scientific dating evidence for monastic life in the UK, and later in the medieval period became a Chapel that played a significant role as a destination for pilgrims, as part of the Glastonbury Abbey estate. The site was previously excavated in the 1880s and the 1960s, and in 2016 the South West Heritage Trust excavated a building, that proved to be an outbuilding used when the medieval chapel was in operation. Soil micromorphological analysis was conducted first to understand the sediments within the profile from this building, which appeared fairly homogenous and bioturbated in the field. It untangled the bioturbation processes and revealed a rare northern European, geoarchaeological example of a livestock enclosure from a dryland context in this temperate environment. The results of our innovative multi-proxy approach highlight the potential and methodological considerations for future studies to integrate micromorphology, palaeoparasitology and mycology to examine animal management on dryland archaeological sites. They increase the knowledge of the economic activities of the ecclesiastical occupation at Beckery, contributing to an enhanced understanding of the Chapel site, its wider landscape and its role as part of the Glastonbury Abbey estate

The Scale and Impact of Viking Settlement in Northumbria

Recent archaeological research, notably at the Viking winter camp at Torksey, has indicated that the armies that invaded Anglo-Saxon England in the late 9th century were much larger than has often been assumed and that a literal reading of the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle’s assessment of the size of Viking fleets may, after all, have been correct. Furthermore, study of the Torksey metalwork assemblage has allowed the identification of the archaeological signature of the Viking Great Army and, when applied to Cottam, it confirmed the identification of an initial phase of raiding by an element of the Army, followed shortly thereafter by settlement represented by the development of a hybrid Anglo-Scandinavian culture. Taken together, over 25 categories of non-ferrous artefacts are diagnostic of Viking or Anglo-Scandinavian activity in Northumbria. Applying this model to over 15 sites, largely known only from metal-detecting, we can observe a common pattern. At the majority of sites, a large and fairly standardised Middle Anglo-Saxon finds assemblage is succeeded by just a few Viking finds, which we attribute to raiding following Halfdan’s return to Northumbria with part of the Great Army in AD 876. At a much smaller number of sites there are also assemblages of Anglo-Scandinavian finds, relating to the establishment of new settlements by the new landowners. The overall picture is of major settlement disruption and dislocation of existing land holdings and populations in the late 9th century. This demonstrates, for the first time from archaeological evidence, the scale and impact of Viking activity in Northumbria

The English medieval first-floor hall: part 2 – The evidence from the eleventh to early thirteenth century

The concept of the first-floor hall was introduced in 1935, but Blair’s paper of 1993 cast doubt on many of those buildings which had been identified as such. Following the recognition of Scolland’s Hall, Richmond Castle as an example of a hall at first-floor level, the evidence for buildings of this type is reviewed (excluding town houses and halls in the great towers of castles, where other issues apply). While undoubtedly a number of buildings have been mistakenly identified as halls, there is a significant group of structures which there are very strong grounds to classify as first-floor halls. The growth of masonry architecture in elite secular buildings, particularly after the Norman Conquest, allowed halls to be constructed on the first floor. The key features of these are identified and the reasons for constructing the hall at this level – prestige and security – are recognized. The study of these buildings allows two further modifications to the Blair thesis: in some houses, halls and chambers were integrated in a single block at an early date, and the basic idea of the medieval domestic plan was already present by the late eleventh century

Back to the Grindstone? The Archaeological Potential of Grinding-Stone Studies in Africa with Reference to Contemporary Grinding Practices in Marakwet, Northwest Kenya

This article presents observations on grinding-stone implements and their uses in Elgeyo-Marakwet County, northwest Kenya. Tool use in Marakwet is contextualized with a select overview of literature on grinding-stones in Africa. Grinding-stones in Marakwet are incorporated not only into quotidian but also into more performative and ritual aspects of life. These tools have distinct local traditions laden with social as well as functional importance. It is argued that regionally and temporally specific studies of grinding-stone tool assemblages can be informative on the processing of various substances. Despite being common occurrences, grinding-stone tools are an under-discussed component of many African archaeological assemblages. Yet the significance of grinding-stones must be reevaluated, as they hold the potential to inform on landscapes of past food and material processing

A resource-based archaeological simulation

This chapter outlines one method of using a computer to assist in teaching the principles of archaeological excavation and analysis to students. It forms a part of a joint project between the Departments of Archaeology at the University of Southampton and the University of York, sponsored by the UGC/Computer Board Computers in Teaching Initiative; the project, known as Southampton York Archaeological Simulation System, was first mooted by Sebastian Rahtz in mid-1986, funded by the CTI in February 1987 and officially began in October 1987 (Shennan 1987a). The work described here is an offshoot of initial discussions about what Southampton York Archaeological Simulation System should do, based in particular on the issues raised at the Southampton York Archaeological Simulation System Steering Committee meeting in October 1987 at York. The current plans for the full system are outlined in Shennan 1987b, O'Flaherty 1987 and by Brendan O'Flaherty in this volume; it should be stressed that this is not intended to be a full explication of the issues and problems facing Southampton York Archaeological Simulation System, but rather a demonstration of one solution to the computer software problems

Possible Directions in Electronic Publishing in Archaeology

Since their development in the late l940s, the main work in the application of computers has been persuading the recalcitrant machines to do clever things, huge, enormous jobs that humans cannot manage, such as calculating mathematical formulae to a trillion points of accuracy, directing spacecraft to Mars or looking after the sale of sandwiches in Marks and Spencer. The very word, computer, is associated with calculation, with science and mathematics, things that men in white coats do—we would do better to remember Marshall McLnhan's phrase 'information processing' (which he came up with when IBM asked him what they did) or the French word, ordinateur, or 'arranger', altogether a more appropriate description of the machine. Archaeologists have largely followed the trend in their use of computers—for most people, there is still a feeling that one has to do something clever to justify the use of a computer. The last decade, however, has seen the growth of a feeling that computers can be used for really pretty dull things, things that humans can do, but cannot be bothered with; the theme of my paper is this use of computers, to do useful things, not clever things. UNIX hackers will recall that Thomson and Ritchie wrote the system a) for playing games and b) as a text-processing environment [1]. At a gathering like Computer Applications in Archaeology, I am probably preaching to the converted, but then again a glance at the contents of this conference reveals that many archaeological computer hackers are still trying to do clever things, rather than using a computer to give them extra time to do the clever things themselves..