I have just got home from a dinner at the Old Mill in Baginton where I met a long term Facebook friend from Sardinia. Massimiliano Schirru and I have been friend on Facebook for over ten years and the other day I thought I would give him a call to have a chat. It turns out that his English is far better than my Italian and we talked about his Roman Fort and upcoming visit to the UK. Obviously I invited him to Coventry.
Our guest is in the enviable position of owning his own Roman Fort which took up most of the conversation. We discussed the Lunt Roman Fort and the challenges facing the heritage industry. Max is well connected in the heritage industry and I learned a lot about German and Polish Roman Forts which operate in the same way as his own and Lunt. At eight I waved him off wishing him a happy time in Britain taking in our Roman inheritance.
Coventry is blessed with cathedrals (Cathedra?) in that it has three of them. Of the first only a few ruins remain and of the third it stands but the third remains a ruin in memory of the Coventry Blitz of November 1940.
St Michaels was built in the between the 14th and 15th centuries in impressive red sandstone. The spire is the third highest in England and the choir sat on meisercords showing the famous Dance of Death. Nothing remains of these carvings beyond an account held by the city archives. It was an impressive Gothic church covered in carvings with wonderful stained glass windows. It was raised to Cathedral status in 1918 and served in that capacity till its destruction in the 1940s.
In 1940 it was destroyed during the Coventry Blitz by incendiary bombs. In an act of defiance against the Nazi hate Provest Richard Howard had the words “Father Forgive” inscribed behind the alter and used his Christmas address (Christmas Underfire), broadcast which was recorded in the bombed out ruins, to the world, to call for peace and reconciliation.
Housed in the ruins are the Coventry Blitz museum which I regard as one of the two second best museums in Coventry. A wonderful collection in an intimate space, well worth a visit.
The ruins of the Cathedral are a meditative and reflective space remaining holy ground and a national monument not to war or reprisal but to reconciliation and peace. If you’re visiting Coventry the Cathedral ruins are well worth a trip.
Archaeology is the science (sic) of things. It is a science of material that is lost, thrown away or placed on purpose in an inaccessible place. From the thing and its context a narrative can be created that sheds light on the past. I have done archaeology but prefer the historical activity of creating the narrative more.
Archaeology works best when you are dealing with a materialistic society. It is easier to draw conclusions when there is a lot of material to work with such as the grave of an Anglo-Saxon king or even a Anglo-Saxon peasants burial. These contain the remains and grave goods. Societies that don’t bury their dead with grave goods are far more tricky not least if you draw the conclusion that more grave goods means that the person was richer. Consider the grave of Medieval Christian knight verses the grave of the afore mentioned peasant.
If I lost all my possessions today I would be on a par with our earliest ancestors in the Palaeolithic era. These people were nomadic hunter gatherers who followed the seasons and the herds through the landscape. They pose a significant challenge to archaeology because they were a non-materialistic throw away society. First they were non-materialistic because they were nomadic. They needed to travel light and could not be encumbered with material possessions. Second they were a throw away society in that if they needed a flint tool they could pick up a nodule of flint, knapp a tool and then after it had been used throw it away. In fact at Boxgrove we can see where they knapped a handaxe, where it was used and where it was discarded afterwards. They were a throw away society to such an extent that stone tools are regularly found and in such numbers that museums are not interested in collecting them!
The Bronze Age was a good time to be alive, it comes after the Neolithic Stone Age and the invention of farming. Populations increased and monuments that amaze us to this day such as Stone Henge were created.
Meanwhile in the Middle East we see the first great civilisations. On Crete we see the Minoans, mainland Greece the Mycenaean civilisation, we further east we see the Hittites, Canaanites and the powerful kingdom of Egypt. These civilisations throve in an atmosphere of peace and war. They traded together, cross pollinated each others culture and arts and regularly engaged in warfare. This is the age of the chariot, the heroic champion and the famous Trojan war.
This state of affairs continued and must have seemed like normal life. Harvests were collected, kings and queens ruled and wars rumbled on until a series of catastrophes caused what is known as the Bronze Age Collapse during the 12th century BC. First there was a super volcano explosion on the island of Santorini and Helka III on Iceland caused a volcanic winter that brought famine to Egypt and by extension to the rest of the northern hemisphere. Failing crops caused unrest and social collapse as well as greater conflict amongst the civilised states. Furthermore we see migrations of the Dorians in Greece and the infamous Sea Peoples from the ‘west’.
When I teach the Bronze Age Collapse I joke that the Sea Peoples are a little bit like ‘Cotton Eye Joe’ we don’t know where they come from and we don’t know where they go. They are mysterious and sweep in from the west and plunder the east. The eastern powers already under strain from climate catastrophe and earthquakes are destroyed. The Sea Peoples then continue to move west and potentially pick up collaborators from amongst the Greeks. The Hittites send pleading messages to the Egyptians for help but they and the Canaanites fall to the pressure. It is only the Egyptians who are able to stand against them, resist them and even defeat them. Never one to let an opportunity pass the Egyptians then may have settled the survivors in Israel as a client state to protect the Egyptians trade routes to the Red Sea and onto the Indian subcontinent.
So why did the Sea Peoples destroy Bronze Age Greece its because their descendants would be known as the Philistines of Biblical fame and archaeology of the earliest Philistines does show Greek pottery. Its fun to imagine that Golliath of Gath might have been the Great, great grandson of a Greek hero like Agamemnon.
This year we choose to go back and visit a museum that I used to work at and really like. I personally think that it is the best museum in Coventry (and the West Midlands) and it is called the Lunt Roman Fort. The tour of the site took about an hour and a half and covered the main features of the site in great detail. I honestly could not fault it and that is one of the main joys of a historian. Rich and George did an excellent job and were clearly very happy and confident in their Roman costumes and personalities.
The Lunt is the worlds only partially reconstructed Roman Fort in situ. The reconstructions date from the 1970s and are now over fifty years old meaning the reconstruction has been there longer than the Roman occupation. Lunt is a mysterious site because first it is atypical and second it does not appear in the literature. The site is not constructed like a typical Roman Fort in a playing card shape. This one has wiggly walls and a Gyrus. The Gyrus is a fascinating structure that seems to be a horse training ring although that is debated. The site also has reconstructions of a gateway and an granary building. The granary contains a small but well stocked museum including finds from the site.
Historytalker 