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shewhomust) wrote2021-04-16 04:46 pm
shewhomust) wrote2021-04-16 04:46 pm
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Dive into Durham
Tuesday's talk - the one interrupted by the arrival of our groceries - was by Gary Bankhead, underwater archaeologist. But that description makes me think of people discovering wrecked ships out in the ocean: Gary Bankhead dives in the river Wear, in the middle of Durham City, and most of his finds are tiny, buttons and buckles and lead seals fastened to bolts of cloth as a guarantee of quality. He was speaking to the Fen Edge Archaeolofgy Group, and D., who is a member, had passed on the link. This seems like a roundabout way to hear a talk about Durham, but somehow we've never managed to hear Gary speaking locally - though we have followed his career with interest, and had run into him at the mini-conference about the Lanchester diploma that we attended.
When I say that we have followed his career with interest, I'm not just throwing words around: it's been a more than usually interesting career, starting out with a very odd story, then making a sharp swerve into the minutiae of academic study - and, for the record, he's an entertaining and enthusiastic speaker, too. The first time he dived in the Wear, back in 2007, he came up with a silver trowel presented in 1961 to the then Archbishop of Canterbury by the Bengal Coal Company, when he laid the foundation stone of a church in India. Over the two years that followed, he found more than 30 gold and silver objects presented to archbishop Michael Ramsay, who had moved back to Durham on his retirement: here's the Guardian's version of the story.
Less highly coloured, but even more interesting, are the 13,000 tiny objects which make up the River Wear Assemblage: the knives and spoons, ear wax scoops, bone stylus, seal matrix,lead toys, lead dice, needles, thimbles, spindle whorls, lead cloth seals, coin weights, pilgrim souvenirs, harness equipment, buttons, chains, pendants, finger rings... The Dive into Durham website gives a list, and some tantalising little pictures. There are one or two very pretty things: a seal matrix (which can be matched to the wax seal on one of the cathedral's documents) for example, whose loss must have been keenly felt. But mostly these were not things you would even try to recover from the river, trivial everyday objects: which makes them all the more precious for what they can tell us. An article in the Northern Echo goes into some detail about just one of these stories.
When I say that we have followed his career with interest, I'm not just throwing words around: it's been a more than usually interesting career, starting out with a very odd story, then making a sharp swerve into the minutiae of academic study - and, for the record, he's an entertaining and enthusiastic speaker, too. The first time he dived in the Wear, back in 2007, he came up with a silver trowel presented in 1961 to the then Archbishop of Canterbury by the Bengal Coal Company, when he laid the foundation stone of a church in India. Over the two years that followed, he found more than 30 gold and silver objects presented to archbishop Michael Ramsay, who had moved back to Durham on his retirement: here's the Guardian's version of the story.
Less highly coloured, but even more interesting, are the 13,000 tiny objects which make up the River Wear Assemblage: the knives and spoons, ear wax scoops, bone stylus, seal matrix,lead toys, lead dice, needles, thimbles, spindle whorls, lead cloth seals, coin weights, pilgrim souvenirs, harness equipment, buttons, chains, pendants, finger rings... The Dive into Durham website gives a list, and some tantalising little pictures. There are one or two very pretty things: a seal matrix (which can be matched to the wax seal on one of the cathedral's documents) for example, whose loss must have been keenly felt. But mostly these were not things you would even try to recover from the river, trivial everyday objects: which makes them all the more precious for what they can tell us. An article in the Northern Echo goes into some detail about just one of these stories.