Rewriting history

Steve Pratt hears how childhood visits to Hadrian’s Wall stimulated their interest in archaeology.

WHEN I phone, Professor Vince Gaffney tells me he’s “in a field, it’s pissing down with rain and I’m in the back of a lorry” in Wiltshire. But having to take temporary shelter from the British weather doesn’t dampen his enthusiasm for the amazing discovery he and an archaeological team, which includes his brother Chris, have made at the iconic Stonehenge site.

Just two weeks into a three-year international study of the landscape at the World Heritage Site, they’ve found evidence of a major ceremonial monument less than a kilometre away from the famous stone formation.

He regards the finding of the henge-like late neolithic monument as “remarkable” and something that will change the way we think about the landscape around Stonehenge.

An array of technology allows archaeologists to view this new discovery, and the landscape around it, in three dimensions.

This is just the latest project that has teamed the brothers from Newcastle, whose interest in archaeology was stimulated by their grandfather taking them on regular trips as children to Hadrian’s Wall.

“Chris and I have been planning a project here for several years but could only do it when the technology was advanced enough to get hold of data quickly,” says Prof Gaffney, who earlier this week won the best archaeological books prize at the British Archaeological Awards for Europe’s Lost World: The Rediscovery of Doggerland.

He was convinced they’d learn more about what had been on the Stonehenge site, but not quite how quickly or how much they would discover.

“We know an awful lot about the monument we can see but don’t know about 95 per cent of what’s there,” he says.

“We felt that in order to understand Stonehenge you had to know what was around it at any point in time. Finding an equivalent monument within 900 metres was unexpected. I did not doubt we would find things that were important, but everyone expects Stonehenge to be a solo monument.”

Prof Gaffney runs Birmingham University’s IBM visual and spatial technology centre, while his brother, Dr Chris Gaffney, is an archaeological geophysicist at Bradford University.

They’ve worked together before on projects around the world including Libya, Slovenia, Croatia and Italy, but nothing as big as the Stonehenge study. This forms part of the multimillion euro international Stonehenge Hidden Landscapes Project, which has brought together the most sophisticated geophysics team ever to be engaged in a single archaeological project in Britain.

Being brothers doesn’t get in the way of the work. “Any project like this is basically an academic group and the project always comes first,” says Prof Gaffney. “We’re there to do the best we can for the project but also know that if any major disagreements come up, we can discuss them and still go out for a beer as brothers.”

PROJECTS these days are led by the technology with archaeologists using ground penetrating radar and magnetometers to gather data from under the ground.

An array of technology allows them to view the new Stonehenge discovery, and the landscape around it, in three dimensions.

“When we started off computers were things you could only dream about. Now every part of our activity requires computers. Data doesn’t exist except in a digital sense,” says Prof Gaffney.

He’s what is called a “visualiser”. Before computers came along, he worked with pens, pencils and crayons to recreate lost worlds. “As data began to get more and more we realised you can’t just draw it, you had to use visualisation,”

he explains.

As a child, he followed up those visits to Hadrian’s Wall with his grandfather by cycling there at weekends to explore further. A school trip to Vindolanda, the Roman fort and settlement by the wall, when he was 14, made him determined to be an archaeologist.

“I love researching into the past and people,”

he says. “I still get a thrill out of it. Archaeology is still the best fun you can have.”

But he hasn’t excavated in the North-East since his student days. “The archaeology of the North-East is among the best. You have everything,”

he adds.

His work includes locating lost landscapes under the North Sea and researching the wetland landscape of the river Cetina in Croatia.

He is also, he adds, building a Byzantine army to march in a model of the 1071 battle of Manzikert.

Before becoming an academic, Dr Chris Gaffney formed a commercial archaeological geophysical company that evaluated sites for archaeologists, planners and developers.

His interest too was fostered by those childhood trips to Hadrian’s Wall, although he points out that archaeology was part of the school curriculum in those days. “You always knew there was history and archaeology around us, but it wasn’t until I had done a little bit of excavating I realised there was a social side to working in an area that was really close-knit. I liked that aspect,” he says.

THE work at Stonehenge will continue for several years. Dr Gaffney sees this week’s find as revealing new and important information about the hidden past at the landscape of the site. The newly-discovered monument is believed to be contemporaneous to Stonehenge and appears to be on the same orientation as the World Heritage Site monument.

It comprises a segmented ditch with opposed north-east/south-west entrances that are associated with internal pits that are up to one metre in diameter and could have held a freestanding, timber structure.

“We expect this to be the first of many significant discoveries,” says Dr Gaffney.

The sentiment is echoed by his brother.

“Stonehenge is one of the most studied monuments on Earth but this demonstrates that there is still much more to be found.”

* Pictured are from left, archaeologist Eamonn Baldwin, of the University of Birmingham, with archaeological geophysicist Dr Chris Gaffney, of the University of Bradford, with Professor Wolfgang Neubauer, director of the Ludwig Boltzmann Institute for Archaeological Prospection and Virtual Archaeology in Vienna