Category Archives: landscape and garden archaeology

What were bronze age hillforts, like Earnsheugh, used for?

Why would someone want to live in a Bronze Age hillfort?


The high point in these images is a ‘hillfort’ 150m above the North Sea and with nothing but water and ice between this point and the north pole. The name ‘hill-fort’ suggests a fort on a hill. Archaeologists have never been happy with this term but are unable to think of anything better. Hillforts were made about 2500 years ago, in many parts of NW Europe, and there is no firm evidence concerning their use. Some hillforts are thought to have been military, some residential (many contain hut circles), some religious. The hillfort at Earnsheugh in Berwickshire, in the above photographs, would seem a very odd choice for a residential site, even if for a tribe which enjoyed seaviews as much as I do. It also seems an odd choice for a military site, because it would be so easy to starve out the occupants. So what were hillforts used for? An archaeological dig at Fin Cop in the Peak District has been in the news this week with interpretations of why the skeletons of women and children, only, have been found. http://www.archaeologicalresearchservices.com/projects/fincop.html http://www.thisisderbyshire.co.uk/news/Mass-grave-holds-evidence-horrific-massacre-Iron-Age/article-3461045-detail/article.html Some newspapers have suggested they were sacrificial sites. Heaven knows. The unusual semi-circular form of the Earnsheugh hillfort may result from 2400 years of erosion. Vitruvius’ account of the aims of construction was: Commodity, Firmness and Delight. Which of these qualities, if any, does Earnsheugh have? It is a great place fort a walk, if you do not suffer from vertigo, but why would anyone want protection from the landward side when visiting the place? Is it an example of ‘landscape architecture’?

The prospects for an International Society for Garden Archaeology

This is not a disused railway siding in Birmingham. It was once the grandest garden court in Europe's grandest palace: the Palace of the Emperors on the Palatine Hill in Rome. Something should be done. But what?

I was very pleased to hear from Kathryn Gleason about the foundation of International Society for Garden Archaeology. The Gardenvisit blog has a number of posts on garden archaeology and I have gleaned the following thoughts from them:

1) the work archaeologists do on archaeology is of great value, for the information it yields and for the carefulness of their approach. But the work archaeologists do on garden ‘restoration’ and ‘management’ is generally terrible. It tends to lack each of the three essentials for dealing with historic garden sites: (a) a broad perspective on garden history (b) design judgment (c) technical knowledge of construction techniques and building materials (d) technical knowledge and skill with plant material and techniques of plant management
2) garden archaeologists should take an interest in two separate but related issues (a) the investigation, care and management of what are primarily archaeological sites (b) the investigation, care and management of what are primarily garden sites
3) I admire the garden archaeological work of Wilhelmina Feemster Jashemski (at Pompeii and Herculaneum) and of Barry Cunliffe (at Fishborne Roman Palace) but I do not admire they ‘resotrations’ of Roman gardens.
4) the archaeological principle of preserving evidence should have a strong position in the care and management of historic gardens
5) the current condition of the garden courts in Rome’s Palace of the Emperor’s (on the Palatine Hill) is depressing
6) the vast crowds who course through the Emperor’s garden in the Forbidden City (in Beijing) are wearing away the wonderful pebble paving.

Turfing the grand courtyard on the Palatine was wrong. But what should be done? To answer the question one needs historical and design judgment underpinned by a detailed knowledge of Roman planting and construction. But I am doubtful about any kind of restoration on such an important site.
Image of the Palatine courtesy Jeff, Jen and Travis

Please protect the Museum of Egyptian Antiquities


This is not a railway station: it is the Museum of Egyptian Antiquities – and a nearby building is on fire today. The thought of the antiquities being damaged is horrific and it makes me think they should be copied for public view and placed in secure underground bunkers. In fact they should make two copies. In the case of statues, one should go on display in a museum and the other should go in the place where it was found. This should be the normal procedure. For example, large numbers of statues were found at Hadrian’s Villa. Copies should be sited in their original locations.
I would love to see the Egyptians changing their government. But waiting till the old devil dies would be better than damaging the fabulous antiquities. Dr. Zahi Hawass, Secretary General of the Supreme Council of Antiquities (SCA), said two mummies were damaged by demonstrators. But his job came from Mubarak – so can he trusted?
It seems a petty point to add, but the Egyptian Museum also has material of the first importance to the study of garden history.

Image courtesy jkannenberg

The landscape setting of Dun Carloway Broch, Lewis, Outer Hebrides

Brochs are a unique building form, dating from the 1st century BC and indigenous to Scotland. They had internal wooden floors and they were inhabited. This is clear. But how they were located and why they were built is unclear. Gordon Childe interpreted brochs as fortifications from which chiefs ruled subject populations. Since no evidence for this could be found, this was followed (in the 1980s) by a theory that they were prestige dwellings for important families, but again there was a lack of evidence and it is often the case that brochs are not located in good agricultural land. But many brochs do have significant positions in the landscape, near cliffs, in valleys and by narrow stretches of water. This suggests, to me, that like so-called hill-forts and stone circles, they had a symbolic and aesthetic role in proclaiming that an area of land was in the ownership of a clan of closely related families. Brochs are early examples of Scottish landscape architecture.

Thank you to Maciomhair for his beautiful black and white photograph of Dun Carloway Broch in Scotland’s Outer Hebrides. The building form made good use of local materials and gave a high level of protection from wind and rain. Since travel by boat was easier than travel on land, the west coast of Scotland had relatively good links with Celtic Europe. The crofts on the left of the photograph are a survival of a medieval building-and-farming settlement type. When the brochs were built, other families lived in circular huts with mud or stone walls and thatched roofs.

Garden archaeology and archaeologists

There is no evidence for the gardens of Herculaneum having had lawns. So why is this grass here?

There is no evidence for the gardens of Herculaneum having had lawns. So why is this grass here?

I despair of the archaeologists who manage historic gardens – please can someone cheer me up by pointing to some good examples of garden archaeology combined with garden management. (Photograph of Herculaneum courtesy dandwig)

The best garden archaeologists, like those who ‘restored’ Kenilworth Castle Garden, seem to be dry academics devoid of design sense or design judgment. Normal, bad, garden archaeologist-managers seem to work on the principle that ‘we don’t know much about historic gardens so they must have resembled modern gardens’. Gertrude Stein remarked that ‘Civilization begins with a rose. A rose is a rose is a rose is a rose.’ GERTRUDE STEIN DID NOT say “Civilization begins with a garden. A garden is a garden is a garden is a garden.” Garden archaeologist-managers reason that because modern gardens have lawns and shrubs THEREFORE historic gardens must have been the same. It is rubbish and their approach to garden management is rubbish.

Take Roman peristyle gardens as an example. I know of many fresco paintings of Roman garden planting, always with flowers and birds, but not one single  example of an illustration of a Roman lawn. So why do our garden archaeologists supply all excavated Roman gardens with lawns? Are they vandals, penny-pinching accountants or imbiciles?

Garden fresco at Pompeii - showing lush planting in a courtyard

Garden fresco at Pompeii - showing lush planting in a courtyard

Roman courtyard gardens DID NOT have mown lawns and the Romans DID NOT have lawn mowers. They clipped box, to make what we call topiary, but there are very few illustrations of linear and uniform box hedging of the type which became common in renaissance gardens. Nor are there any illustrations of Roman parterres – and I am doubtful about the accuracy of Barry Cunliffe’s ‘restoration’ of the garden at Fishbourne Roman Palace

A Persian garden pavilion, with Ardashir and Gulnar

Ardashir with a slave girl, Gulnat

Ardashir with the slave girl, Gulnat, who loved him

I wish Iran would devote less effort to enriching uranium and more to enriching Iranian gardens and conserving  Persian gardens. Persia was one of the central powers in garden history, drawing upon and influencing Mesopotamia, Central Asia, India and Islam. My own modest proposal for conserving the Bagh-e Fin will be the subject of a future blog post.
Omar Khayyám (1048-1131), born in Nishapur, was an astronomer and a garden poet. The Rubiayat of Omar Khayyam, 1120 CE, begins:

I

Wake! For the Sun behind yon Eastern height
Has chased the Session of the Stars from Night;
And to the field of Heav’n ascending, strikes
The Sultan’s Turret with a Shaft of Light.
Awake Morning: For the sun behind yon eastern height.]
II
Before the phantom of False morning died,
Methought a Voice within the Tavern cried,
“When all the Temple is prepared within,
Why lags the drowsy Worshipper outside?”
III
And, as the Cock crew, those who stood before
The Tavern shouted – “Open then the Door!
You know how little while we have to stay,
And, once departed, may return no more.”
IV
Now the New Year reviving old Desires,
The thoughtful Soul to Solitude retires,
Where the White Hand of Moses on the Bough
Puts out, and Jesus from the Ground suspires.
V

Iram indeed is gone with all his Rose,
And Jamshyd’s Sev’n – ring’d Cup where no one knows;
But still a Ruby gushes from the Vine,
And many a Garden by the Water blows.