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Treasure Hunters Target Archaeology Using Public Archive - WB 12.11.21
79 Plays2 years ago
Welcome to Watching Brief. As the name implies, each week Marc (Mr Soup) & Andy Brockman of the Pipeline (Where history is tomorrow's news) cast an eye over news stories, topical media and entertainment and discuss and debate what they find.
0:00 Introduction
4:11 More Today Programme Coverage
5:10 H.E.R. Today Gone Tomorrow?
20:51 It’s not Easy Being a Student in 2021
30:22 Something Positive!?
***
Link of the Week:
Corfitz Ulfeldt's pillory: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corfitz_Ulfeldt
***
Links:
Council Acts After Accusations Metal Detecting Rally Company Used H.E.R. Data to Target Archaeology:
We were ahead of the curve - One of the benefits of the weekly format:
The Today Programme and The War on the National Trust: An Episode in Shameful Journalism:
No 10 is marching through cultural institutions - and making a battleground of the arts:
***
Save Sheffield Archaeology ‘United Against Cultural Vandalism’ - 1st December:
https://www.facebook.com/SaveSheffieldArchaeology/posts/195318222754570
Save Worcester Archaeology: Decision on the Future of Academic Staff:
https://twitter.com/saveworcsarch/status/1453709108083924994
Big Mandate for Strike action at UK Universities over pay & working conditions:
UCU members back strikes over pension cuts:
https://www.ucu.org.uk/article/11857/UCU-members-back-strikes-over-pension-cuts
University Strikes: Academics at 37 Institutions Support Action:
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/education-59171771
Durham University staff vote to strike this term over pensions cut:
https://www.palatinate.org.uk/durham-university-staff-vote-to-strike-this-term-over-pensions-cut/
***
Tulip Reaction: ‘Death to the Cocktail Cornichon’:
https://www.architectsjournal.co.uk/news/tulip-reaction-death-to-the-cocktail-cornichon
Tulip Tower plan Rejected by Gove:
https://www.constructionnews.co.uk/buildings/tulip-tower-plan-rejected-by-gove-11-11-2021/
Archaeologists Discover Ancient ‘Hangover Prevention’ Ring:
Recommended
Transcript
Introduction to Archaeology Podcast Network
00:00:01
Speaker
You're listening to the Archaeology Podcast Network.
00:00:05
Speaker
Welcome to Soupcast, coming to you from Archaeosoup Towers. By popular demand, we're taking selected videos from the Archaeosoup back catalogue and bringing them to you as convenient podcasts. As the name implies, with Archaeosoup you get a bit of everything thrown into the pot. Archaeology, discussion, humour and debate. You can find out more at archaeosoup.com. So sit back, relax and enjoy our hearty helping of Archaeosoup.
Watching Brief Segment Overview
00:00:47
Speaker
back to watching brief for the week of the 8th of November 2021. I am joined as ever by my co-host Mr Andy Brockman and this week we would like to issue a joint statement on the ambitious targets we are setting for watching brief and its its carbon footprint. We are going to aim to reduce the length of watching brief to 15 minutes per show by 2050.
00:01:13
Speaker
This is a fairly ambitious target and unless one that we can meet if we start work immediately on this goal, which may see in the short term watching brief actually increase in its average length. But as we develop new technologies and as we become more and more efficient in our approach to our
00:01:34
Speaker
by 2050, 15 minutes per episode is an achievable goal. I think this is all that we're able to commit ourselves to at this stage, but I feel as though it can be achieved, Andy.
00:01:49
Speaker
Absolutely. Although I want to point out that the Australian version of watching brief will hope to achieve that same goal by 2070. Yes. We'll also be attempting to hire a conservative member of parliament as a consultant. We'll be doing that as soon as we've raised enough money and track one down in the Caribbean.
00:02:11
Speaker
Yes, and it can be anything up to a million pounds, as far as we can tell, for the going rate.
Political Shaming and Satire
00:02:17
Speaker
So, Ashley, with that in mind, we do, in fact, have a Patreon if you want to help us. No, no, no, no. Don't go there.
00:02:25
Speaker
Look, I am pretty sure that attempting to bribe a member of parliament is probably a specific offence under British law, so I think we've got to sort of steer well through that and point out in subtitles, we're joking. We are absolutely joking, yeah, yeah, yeah. But if you're at all aware of what's been happening in this country in the past couple of weeks, then that will make some sense to you. But yes,
00:02:49
Speaker
We would appreciate your support on Patreon, but don't worry, we're absolutely not going to use your money if you do want to support our work here to attempt to bribe or hire or consult with anyone, in fact, especially members of the UK Parliament.
00:03:07
Speaker
However, I will point out as a special tribute to the actions of the UK government in trying to get one of its members off a corruption hook and by changing the rules. Our link of the week is a sort of tribute to that kind of politics, really. All the people who undertake that kind of politics. We've linked to an image of perhaps one of my favorite historic objects ever.
00:03:36
Speaker
It's the shaming pillar of the Danish politician and traitor, Kurfitz Bevelte, who was active in the 17th century. He got involved in a plot to overthrow the Danish state, effectively.
00:03:52
Speaker
and was run out of Copenhagen, but unfortunately, well, fortunately for him before he could be executed for treason. So to get their own back, the Danes hanged an effigy of him and also erected what they call the shaming pillar, which is now in the National Museum at Copenhagen, a shaming pillar. And it has an inscription which is in translation, to the eternal mockery, shame and disgrace of Corfis or Felt.
00:04:20
Speaker
We just thought that that's a tradition, a folk tradition that maybe is right for revival given what some of our politicians have been up to in the last few years.
00:04:31
Speaker
Absolutely. Absolutely. And also a nice little bit of history. So don't let anyone complain that we're being too Westminster or political. That's historical,
Critique of Media Coverage
00:04:41
Speaker
Andy. This is an archaeological news podcast. Anyway, we're going to start this week's watching brief by examining the fact that we are amazing.
00:04:53
Speaker
and that we were apparently ahead of the curve on one news story in particular last week. In all seriousness, the story with regards to the problematic coverage of the AGM at the National Trust and the Restore Trust movement on the BBC Radio 4's Today programme,
00:05:17
Speaker
not only was brought to our attention through people's reaction on Twitter, but also actually made it into, for example, the Byline Times this past week. We'll link to that below. And that is starting to raise some questions as to why actually what they describe here is shameful journalism. I don't think we went quite that far in our coverage of this. But, you know, just to highlight that if you want the tip-top sharpest edge of some of this commentary, then watching Brief is the place
HER Data Usage and Concerns
00:05:46
Speaker
to be.
00:05:46
Speaker
But also as well, Andy, there's a development with regards to something that we touched on last week, and that is the use of the Historic Environment Records Office data, data set and publicly available database, to target sites of archaeological interest for, for example, metal detecting, isn't there?
00:06:08
Speaker
That's right. To recapitulate quickly, on Friday last week, and we talked about it in watching brief as well, we published a story on the pipeline suggesting that a metal detecting rally company, commercial metal detecting rally company called Sovereign Metal Detecting in Shropshire, had said in fact that it was using research to target archaeology
00:06:35
Speaker
for its commercial rallies and it published some quotes which at least one of them we were able to trace back to the Shropshire Historic Environment Record, that's the archive that basically catalogs all known archaeology in the county and it's a
00:06:52
Speaker
core tool for the development process, but also for researchers. But it was never intended to provide a tool for metal detectors and particularly commercial metal detecting rallies to target archaeology for their events. We wrote up the story and contacted Shropshire Council and the Portsmouth Antiquities Scheme for comment.
00:07:17
Speaker
after we published the story on the Friday, on the Saturday, Sovereign Metal Detecting announced that the venue that they had originally announced for their Sunday rally, which was the one that appears to have used HER data, that that rally venue had been cancelled and they were putting an alternate in place. They didn't explain why. And then on Monday,
00:07:43
Speaker
I got a reply back from the Shropshire Council Press Office saying that yes, they were concerned about what appeared to have been going on and they were, as a result, making the coarsening the location data on the publicly available parts of the HER so that it was more difficult to tie records down to a specific location.
00:08:13
Speaker
Right. Now, obviously, there's a knock on effect for genuine researchers who don't aren't trying to just go out there and find stuff. But also, a number of people are commenting on the story said, well, wait a minute, haven't metal detectorists been using HRs and air photographs, all the other tools that archaeologists use to find sites for years?
00:08:39
Speaker
And the answer to that is yes, it's a known issue. What I think was different about our story was that I think it's the first time that we've tied a specific location and a specific company down to using HDR data to promote their rally.
00:08:58
Speaker
It's interesting, one of my first roles in the Northeast when it comes to the heritage sector was volunteering at the local HDR office. Apparently they didn't at the time often take on volunteers, but I seem like an eager, reasonably capable person.
00:09:19
Speaker
What was interesting there was that that experience really highlighted a couple of things for me. First of all, it highlighted the range of people who come to use HDR records, and it is a range. Some of it will be commercial archaeologists, some of it will be academics, some of it will be interested members of the public, both local and from further afield, who are looking
00:09:41
Speaker
into certain records or plots of land or questions that they maybe have identified on the web portal and want to come in and actually check maybe some physical records if they're available. So access is a key aspect of the HDR, or certainly again, walls, back when I was volunteering for them, was a key aspect of the database and local or regional rather offices.
00:10:03
Speaker
But also, there's a strange tension that I was right in the middle of during my time volunteering.
00:10:15
Speaker
whereby I was, one of the big projects that I was asked to do was to transfer data that had been taken from local records from a diving, an amateur diving group who had been able to more securely identify the locations of shipwrecks off the coast. So off the Northeast coast in and around Tynemouth and up and down the coast as far north as Berwick and as far south I think as Middlesbrough.
00:10:45
Speaker
And that was interesting because it meant they were able to more accurately describe what was there. So there was a discussion about whether this was a triple screw engine, this kind of thing, if the ship's bell was present, so on and so forth. But implicit in these non-archaeological reports, these were reports of hobbyist divers who were looking for interesting places to dive, there were descriptions that were built into those
00:11:14
Speaker
that were kind of highlighting objects of value. Things like ship's bells, things like brass, or identifiable naval artifacts and memorabilia, I suppose. Especially things like name, you know, ship's name plaques, this kind of thing. And we were, at the time, we were sort of
00:11:40
Speaker
querying as to how we go about recording that in the HDR, because in that sense the record had to be as full as possible. And this information was available on paper elsewhere. Someone cared to go looking for it. But we're also aware at the time of the fact that what we were doing was kind of showing some low hanging fruit.
00:11:57
Speaker
to people who may want to come and look at it. So this has always been an issue and certainly I suppose the reason why I share that anecdote is just to highlight that it's not as though members of staff in the offices haven't been aware of the potential for this sort of abuse. But it's interesting that in this instance it looks as though you've all but absolutely confirmed that this is likely to have been the case with this group. Do we know what actually put them
00:12:23
Speaker
It's likely to have put them off potentially going ahead. I mean, were they contacted by the council perhaps? That's possible. I'm still trying to find out what exactly happened, but certainly it was all systems go until it wasn't. So something happened that made them pull that venue.
00:12:42
Speaker
I just make one sort of quick addition to what you've just said and you're quite right, you know, people working in HGRs have known about this for some time and have been concerned about it for some time.
00:12:56
Speaker
Like many, many other things, the arrival of the medium we're talking on now, the internet, has changed things because there is now, and again, a number of people have contacted me since the story came out, expressing concerns about the wholesale, in some cases, export of HGR data onto privately operated websites. Yes.
00:13:20
Speaker
for various interest groups. And we're into a very gray area here because of things like copyright and so on, because certainly for commercial purposes, most HGRs charge. So if you're a development archaeologist doing desktop study and you use local HGR data,
00:13:40
Speaker
you'll be charged for it by the council. I think that's perfectly fair. It's being done for commercial purpose. It's helping to support the provision of what is in many places a diminishing service because it's expensive. Well and what was at the time a very cold back room in a graveyard where we had a kettle and a toilet that occasionally broke. There wasn't even a toaster. We couldn't even make a toasty. Anyway go on.
00:14:11
Speaker
Exactly. That's exactly the point. There's been a lot of concern in the archaeological community for some time about the fact that some councils don't even maintain an HER they're supposed to. At least they're advised to. It's not statutory. And although, again, they've been campaigning to make it statutory.
00:14:34
Speaker
the the idea that this data which is essentially public data is being used commercially without permission and in potentially in some cases in ways that are you know potentially harmful to the things actually meant to be there to understand to protect which is this you know the historic environment the historic record
00:14:54
Speaker
what's out there in the landscape. It is concerning, I suspect from the context I've had since the story came out, I think there's going to be a follow-up and all I can say really is watch these space and if anyone watching this has experience of the HDR
00:15:16
Speaker
being misused. We want to encourage people to use HGRs to do proper research that gets published, family research, whatever it is. But we need to know if HGRs are being used to target and potentially damage the historic environment. So if anybody has got any information on that, please get in touch. Yeah, absolutely.
00:15:37
Speaker
I suppose something that occurs to me, I think it might have been our friend Rhys in Australia, potentially, who commented on last week's video, suggesting that one way around this sort of problem is to make it so that people have essentially paid membership access. So he was talking about how
00:16:00
Speaker
if it was him or someone else, certainly mentioned how in Australia you have registered heritage workers, people who are trained cultural asset management types who have a login and if they want to get data then we know who was accessing the database and they have to pay in order to do that.
00:16:22
Speaker
The problem there is that it somewhat goes against the spirit of the HDR and I don't think we are yet at a point where we have to recommend or suggest or move towards that sort of gated access or lack of access, I suppose.
00:16:39
Speaker
One of the beauties of the HDR is that it is actually open access for anyone who is interested. But I suppose a question though implicit in that is how on earth do we potentially square that circle or circle that square in so much as we can't police how people, we can't police intent, can we, I suppose, if we're going to allow open access.
00:17:05
Speaker
No, that's absolutely true. And the point about access and maintaining access was made by Shropshire Council when they responded to media requests. It is a public record. It needs to remain accessible to the public.
00:17:22
Speaker
There are precedents for potential ways of dealing with this kind of issue. For example, the portable antiquities scheme database, if you want access to the higher level database information, including the eight-figure Audant Survey grid references and 12-figure Audant Survey grid references, then you have to apply to them for a login and show that you're a bona fide researcher.
00:17:51
Speaker
Okay. Yeah. And so you have a, you basically have different different levels of access. There's a publicly accessible database, which which certain information is excluded from, and then the higher level, which is, you know, is accessed by password, and there is control over who actually gets the passwords.
00:18:11
Speaker
Okay, okay, so there's something there potentially in terms of access, it's just that having a wholesale ring fence database is not the goal of the project in that sense. No, and I think it's worth mentioning as well, one of the government's ambitions that it's announced is to make the development process as online as possible, and in fact quite a few counties have started to migrate their database, their HRs onto online where they can,
00:18:41
Speaker
And that is a trend that will only increase, I think, we're actually able to maintain, they will increasingly become digital. And so the issue becomes a very live one. Yeah, well, sorry, not not to add something else to that as well. But also, I guess, there's also actually a real positive boom there in terms of transparency. So some something that we mentioned, I think a couple of watching briefs ago now was the issue whereby some people, especially if they're interested in
00:19:10
Speaker
the potential value of an artifact that they may have recovered, often there's a suspicion that people at museums and people in archaeologists and others have vested interest that they're somehow hiding from the public. And so again, being anything other than transparent up until the point at which you are putting an object in danger,
00:19:31
Speaker
I think would be, would probably make these sorts of interactions even more fraught with potential for misunderstanding and their own right suspicion. So, yeah, okay, okay. We'll have to try and find a way forward there. Let's get right on that. We'll get on that straight away after this watching brief, shall we? We'll solve that problem.
00:19:50
Speaker
And in all seriousness though, along with world peace and world hunger, and the climate emergency. Exactly.
Challenges in Cultural and Higher Education
00:20:00
Speaker
As part of this segment as well, we've included a link to an article below highlighting in the context of the National Trust conversation we had last week and also the Byline Times coverage of it this week,
00:20:15
Speaker
highlighting, it's an opinion piece, it's an editorial essentially I suppose from the perspective that number 10 is marching a coach in horses through cultural institutions in Britain. I'm not sure that we necessarily need to go into that right now here but it does, that's the reason why we've included that link below, it sort of expands on something that we were talking about last week and also frankly the general context of heritage in this country at the moment.
00:20:44
Speaker
The article you're referring to is by Charlotte Higgins, who looks in detail at the people in the Downing Street operation, who she argues are behind this tall culture war effort, which is also being mirrored by magazines like, or newspapers like The Mail and like The Telegraph. And The Spectator, yeah.
00:21:07
Speaker
spectator and various people on Twitter as well. So, yeah, it's a developing story. Yeah. Well, and it's also, it's also, I was gonna say, it's just one of the, one of the things that there is a reality for archaeology and the heritage sector in the UK at the moment. And that's really underscored by the opening for our second segment for this week's Watching Brief.
00:21:34
Speaker
which I've sort of loosely titled, it's hard being a student these days, in so much as the somewhat hostile or the very least suspicious environment that surrounds cultural education at the moment in this country, that is being encouraged by people with a lot of power, is highlighted once more at Sheffield, where they are calling for a new rally
00:21:59
Speaker
United Against Cultural Vandalism is set to have a face-to-face rally on the 1st of December this year. I have to say, and also in the context of some of the other things we're about to talk about, it really can't be easy studying to be an archaeologist or a related humanities academic at the moment.
00:22:26
Speaker
Absolutely. I mean, everybody has had an appalling 18 months with COVID. The situation in higher education has been particularly fraught. At the beginning of the pandemic, we had students almost being barricaded and quarantined into accommodation blocks in Manchester.
00:22:43
Speaker
and course tutors trying to conjure up online courses from a standing start really because the tradition has been for in-person teaching and in-person seminars and so on. So the whole mechanisms of higher education were
00:23:11
Speaker
thrown out of joint and thrown back together again. Added to that there has been what some people argue is a concerted attack on the humanities in general and some archaeology departments in particular
00:23:28
Speaker
Chester came under threat fortunately there haven't been any last jobs lost there in the end but also you know Sheffield we've covered ad nauseam on on the watching brief and also Worcester more slightly more recently where you know in both cases the archaeology department's being closed.
00:23:49
Speaker
Well, in that instance, Worcester said that on Tuesday, the 26th of October, that there's been finally, Worcester University finally communicated its decision about the future of archaeology lecturing staff within the department of geography, archaeology and environment. And it looks as though
00:24:08
Speaker
It's not really a reprieve, is it? It's more like a logical extension to allow teachers to finish teaching for this academic year.
00:24:20
Speaker
That's right. Basically, they're allowing all the current staff to teach out until the end of the current academic year, at which point all the archaeological jobs become redundant. In a sense, as you say, it's a recognition of a reality in a situation where students were committed to modules and so on until the end of the year. And the university would have had to have scrabbled around to find alternative staff
00:24:44
Speaker
teach those modules out or actually send the students elsewhere. So it would have been an even bigger problem, the one they've saddled themselves with already. That's it. But as you say, quite rightly, once those jobs become redundant in the early summer, archaeology at Worcester ends.
00:25:08
Speaker
and also the Sheffield University has again it is in the process of winding up the archaeology department as it currently is and there is still no sign of what they intend to replace it with.
00:25:24
Speaker
They're still talking about focusing on centres of excellence, but there's actually no real understanding, certainly in public, of what that actually means.
00:25:39
Speaker
And I think the other thing to add here, we saw the dangers of conflating issues in Poland again the other day, but there are issues that are conflated here because the loss of the archaeology department is happening against the background of a much wider and very bitter dispute between the University College Union
00:26:03
Speaker
which represents many university staff, including the academic staff and also others, and the university governing bodies, which is over, well, they've just held a strike ballot, over one dispute over the pay and conditions and another dispute over pensions.
00:26:26
Speaker
They're both pretty intractable problems that are very, I think, probably tactically quite cleverly the University College Union is treating them as separate issues. And in both cases, the membership has voted both in favour of
00:26:44
Speaker
action short of a strike and action including strike action. It's more it's complicated by the fact that individual branches have to take votes and have to pass a 50% threshold. But pretty much I think pretty much every UCU branch has certainly voted
00:27:07
Speaker
in favour of action short of the strike and many of them have endorsed strike action. So we are looking at a potential autumn and winter of problems for people who are just going back to in-person teaching and in-person learning.
00:27:27
Speaker
I was talking to a colleague yesterday at one of our major universities in the archaeology department at one of our major universities and they were telling me that in a sense nobody wants this. It's going to cause yet more problems for staff and for students. At the same time they feel it has to be done.
00:27:48
Speaker
Well, and they feel it has to be done in the context of, I've lifted from my alumni's student newspaper here, an article highlighting Durham University staff vote to strike this term over pensions. And they highlight here that the UCU was set to strike in order to protest changes to the university superannuation scheme, or USS Enterprise, they're sorry, USS, the sector's principal pension benefit system.
00:28:15
Speaker
They argue that the proposals would cut members annual guaranteed pension by 35% and limit protection of the lump sum from the effects of inflation, presumably devaluing the value of anything that has been put into pension pots.
00:28:34
Speaker
And as you say, and the reason why we're highlighting this is not that this is part of that difficult time that archaeology students will be suffering, but rather this is part of an ongoing difficult time that higher education seemingly is going through. I mean, I think from memory, I think this might be the third strike in at least four years, maybe. It feels as though every year at the moment there's some sort of strike action, unfortunately. And it looks as though
00:29:01
Speaker
Whatever solution that is that is coalesced from from negotiations tends to just sort of kick a problem slightly further down the road.
00:29:17
Speaker
Is this just what it's like to be a student these days? In that sense, I think what I would say is comment below, folks. And academic staff as well. One of the issues is career paths.
00:29:33
Speaker
You go from undergrad, you do your master's, then you maybe go on and do your doctorate, then you try and get a postdoc. When you're doing your PhD and as a postdoc, you're probably starting to teach, but are you on a contract or are you just on a zero hours contract?
00:29:54
Speaker
with very few rights and benefits like pensions. For example, the ability to turn down work, which is actually technically outside the remit of your job description, because everyone chips in here, this kind of thing. Let alone the ability to do things like, for example, aspire to get onto the property ladder or start a family or whatever.
00:30:21
Speaker
These are really, really tough.
00:30:27
Speaker
nasty arguments, problems. And I mean, for example, some people argue that the way universities now currently run themselves, there's a there's almost like a sort of stratification between the staff who've been established for some time and have managed to establish pension rights over years. And new staff joining who have far fewer benefits and far lower wage and may not even have guaranteed teaching hours. No, no, no.
00:30:59
Speaker
Blimey, well, is there any positive this week? I feel as though I'm almost missing this week, just a good old fashioned, here's something cool that's been found type of archaeological story. But it did feel as though this was the flavour of the week, unfortunately, the flavour has been quite serious. Can we end on a positive note, Andy?
00:31:29
Speaker
Um, I find it difficult cause I know a couple of stories that are coming down the track that we're going to be covering in the next few weeks and months.
Heritage and Policy Decisions
00:31:36
Speaker
Oh yeah.
00:31:38
Speaker
Hang on, just a second. I can find something. Please, we need it. We're keeping this in, just to highlight that it is actually happening live. In case people doubt it. There must be something positive.
00:32:01
Speaker
Actually, there is a sort of positive story today. It broke just before we started recording, in fact. The news has broken that the housing communities and local governments, sorry, the levelling up secretary, they renamed it.
00:32:21
Speaker
Michael Gove has rejected the planning application for what has been called the Foster Tulip. Well, at least that's one of the kind of things it's been called. It is this colossally expensive, colossally tall, only a few meters short of a shard.
00:32:42
Speaker
You might say that I couldn't possibly comment. Some of the names that it has been called are not fit for a podcast that's going out before the watershed. But Michael Gove has turned down the application on two grounds, one of which is embodied carbon, because the amount of carbon the project would generate for absolutely really no point whatsoever.
00:33:11
Speaker
Which actually tied in with something we were talking about a couple of watching weeks ago in terms of then architects and other bodies trying to move towards more carbon neutral building. Absolutely. Absolutely.
00:33:26
Speaker
We're always happy to bash the government, but also we have to give the government credit where it's due, and credit is due to Michael Gove here, I think, for rejecting what was an absolutely ridiculous planning application. Carbon and, get this, heritage grounds.
00:33:43
Speaker
It would have had a very intrusive visual impact on the Tower of London World Heritage Site and it was opposed quite vehemently by Historic England. Is this the government learning a lesson from Liverpool?
00:34:00
Speaker
It is certainly possible. It is certainly possible. Yeah, rescinding that status. Absolutely. Now, the question I would leave our viewer with is, can you think of another World Heritage Site in England where a massively carbon
00:34:22
Speaker
positive rather than carbon neutral project, construction project is taking place within and across a World Heritage Site. Oh, I don't know. There's one I can think of which was recently found to have been unlawful.
Archaeological Discoveries and Anecdotes
00:34:44
Speaker
Oh, I see. And I think Michael Gove and the government may find this precedent being quoted back at them in future. They may indeed. They may indeed. Well, I have found my positive story. This is just triple checking the location.
00:35:12
Speaker
Yes, cool, okay, great. So this is the story of a ring, a ring which has been discovered according to CNN. Is it one ring to bind them all? It's not, it's not. It's one ring to maybe re-bind your head after a hard night's drinking. This is a ring that's been found in Israel, excavated in the city of Yavni.
00:35:37
Speaker
and it's a ring that has a jewel in it, an amethyst, that had various virtues attached to the gem. It includes, for example, the prevention of the side effects of drinking known as the hangover.
00:35:53
Speaker
The ring was found just 150 metres or 492 feet away from the remains of a warehouse containing the amphora that stored a great many, great many litres of wine. They failed testing the ring, exactly. It's been dated to approximately the 7th century around the Byzantine era and the start of the early Islamic period.
00:36:19
Speaker
though officials said the ring could be even older. Gold rings in late with amethyst stone are known in the Roman world, said the press release, and it is possible that the rings find discovery belongs to elites who lived in the city as early as the third century AD or common era. So there you go, yes that's a nice little story, a ring to stave off the effect of a hangover.
00:36:45
Speaker
I hate to impose a sense of reality on this but in my experience there are many many alleged cures for hangovers and they never work. I think whoever bought that ring was had.
00:37:03
Speaker
You just have to do it and you just have to bring us back down. Look, I'm very happy to experiment and see whether it works. I mean, if they'll let us borrow it or make a copy, I'm very happy to see whether it works. There were the party seasons coming up, plenty of opportunities to give it a go. Well, apparently we're going to have plenty of beer this year in the UK.
00:37:28
Speaker
but very few turkeys so there we go this this little helpers with that and iron brew as well I've heard people say and apparently
00:37:39
Speaker
It's a good hang of video. We've even had Alexandra Casio Cortez from the AOC, the famous American seller, tweeting from COP26 that she managed to find Iron Brew and she loved it. Excellent. Although, and so we really are going off on a tangent here, but although it should be said that Iron Brew, it was recently, or not that recently actually, a few years ago now, it was altered so that it doesn't have
00:38:06
Speaker
as much sugar and Mrs Soup is not happy so whenever we can we get the original 1908 recipe iron brew that comes in glass bottles but anyway sorry that's nothing to do with anything. We're dealing with material culture and historical history of food. I thought you were going to say the hysteria of going slowly mad but
Podcast Outro and Listener Engagement
00:38:32
Speaker
that's as well it has been it has been an interesting week and for various reasons thank you guys for watching and for listening next week is there any clue we can have as to what's coming next week or is this another one of those ones where where we can't
00:38:47
Speaker
I think because there's still things happening and comments still being sorted. I think we need to sit on it as well. Watch this space is all I can say. Watch this space indeed. Thank you guys. As I say, do comment below. Do let us know what your experience at the moment at university is if you feel
00:39:04
Speaker
So you have a story that you want to share. And if you wanted to share something confidentially, please do reach out to us. Obviously, Andy's DMs are open on Twitter. And there's an email link just below that we always keep an eye on as well. Yeah, thank you. Until next time, do take care. Bye bye.
00:39:27
Speaker
This podcast episode has been produced by the Archaeology Podcast Network in collaboration with Archaeosoup Productions. Find out more podcasts at www.archaeologypodcastnetwork.com
00:39:43
Speaker
This has been a presentation of the Archaeology Podcast Network. Visit us on the web for show notes and other podcasts at www.archpodnet.com. Contact us at chrisatarchaeologypodcastnetwork.com.