A Romano-British leather shoe from the City of London

A Romano-British leather shoe from the City of London, from the founding collection of the Pitt Rivers Museum

During August, we are publishing through this blog a series of new photographs taken by archaeological photographer Ian Cartwright for an online Image Gallery created with the support of the Arts and Humanities Research Council. You can read more about the gallery here, and you can see the whole gallery online here.

Here is the caption for this image:

This is a Romano-British leather shoe (top and bottom view) with iron hobnails. The text written onto it in red ink – “ROMAN SOLDIER CALIGA, LONDON WALL, 22 FT IN PEAT DEC 11 1866” – refers to Pitt-Rivers’ pioneering salvage recording, undertaken during the construction of  during the construction of the Gooch and Cousens wool warehouse on the south side of London Wall, opposite Finsbury Circus in the City of London. 

The deep excavations revealed organic materials preserved in waterlogged deposits. The Pitt Rivers Museum holds more than 250 objects recovered during this salvage archaeology, including copper alloy pins, needles and spoons; a wide range of iron objects; Romano-British and post-Roman ceramics; animal bone and bone tools; samples of wooden piles; human remains, and leather shoes such as these.  

Pitt-Rivers wrongly thought the site was a ‘lake village’ that was the stronghold of Cassivellaunus – the chieftain who led defence against Julius Caesar in 54 BC. A soldier himself, General Pitt-Rivers’ recording of a Roman military boot (caliga) conveys a sense of his imaginative interest in archaeological evidence of the encounters between prehistoric and Roman populations.

(Pitt Rivers Museum Accession Number 1884.92.42).

A Roman lamp stand

The Excavating Pitt-Rivers project has nearly finished cataloguing the Founding English archaeological material. Our last count totals just over 10,900 objects which is an increase of 3,500 from our original estimations!

The remaining objects are those that are more difficult to locate in our stores; the title of the project is currently very apt. One object that we recently found is an excellent Roman lamp stand thought to have been found in London.

Roman lamp-stand (1884.116.95 .1-3). 

The copper alloy lamp stand has been beautifully made and comprises of a tripod-foot with lion feet detailing and three birds sitting on the tops of each foot; a spirally-fluted shaft ornamented with a cockerel and a cat / weasel. The dish top is square and has fractured from the main shaft.

The shaft is spirally-fluted and has a cat / weasel attached to the lower section.

Above the cat / weasel is a cockerel; the detailing on this ornament is particularly fine. 

The feet of the tripod are lion feet and each has a bird attached.

The dish-top is square with a circular indent for holding the oil. A hole has been drilled through the middle to attach it to the main shaft, it is likely that this hole was created during restoration and is not an original feature.

This object is by no means characteristic of the majority of material that makes up the English archaeological founding collection but has to be one of my favourites. Similar examples can be seen at the British Museum (1756,0101.530, 1869,0304.1, and 1772,0302.43).

Pitt-Rivers and London: draft report

Image: A Romano-British ceramic vessel from the site of Broad Street Station (now Broadgate, EC2 - behind Liverpool Street Station) collected on 17 July 1868, probably by General Pitt-Rivers himself; from the founding collection of the Pitt Rivers Museum (Pitt Rivers Museum accession number 1884.37.27)

The Excavating Pitt-Rivers team has now completed documenting the c. 1,016 archaeological objects collected by General Pitt-Rivers from London - a collection that represents just under one tenth of the c. 10,763 archaeological objects acquired by the General from England between 1851 and 1880.

Our draft report on the material from London, and the sites from which they were collected, is now published, and is online here. Through our documentation of the artefacts, we have identified a range of sites from which material was collected, largely through early instances of salvage archaeology, undertaken during groundworks for railways (including the London underground) and warehouses during the 1860s.

Image: Ceramic bowl recorded as 'found in London', collected by General Pitt-Rivers before 1881; from the founding collection of the Pitt Rivers Museum (Pitt Rivers Museum accession number 1884.37.27)

Most of the material from the City of London comes from the site of the Gooch and Cousens Warehouse on London Wall, which Pitt-Rivers published in 1867. However, further objects come from (in order of the number of objects) sites at Queenhithe Dock/Thames Street (SE1), Cannon Street & Cannon Street Station (EC4), Lothbury/Tokenhouse Yard (EC2), Bishopsgate (EC2),  Broadgate (EC2), Lombard Street (EC3), Poultry/Mansion House Street (EC2), Old Jewry (EC2), Moorfields (EC2), Bucklersbury (EC4), Clement’s Lane (EC4), Mansion House (EC4), Walbrook (EC4), Billingsgate (E14), Birchin Lane (EC3), Lower Thames Street (Brewer’s Quay) (EC3), Minories (EC3), Finsbury Circus (EC2), Bell Yard/Fleet Street (EC4), Holborn Viaduct (EC1), Smithfield (EC1), Bartholomew Lane (EC2), and Cripplegate (EC2).

Beyond the City of London, there is a large collection of Palaeolithic material from Pitt-Rivers' pioneering survey of the Thames Valley near Ealing undertaken in 1869-1871. Alongside this material are objects collected or excavated from  sites as diverse as Southwark Street and Borough High Street, Walthamstow; Hampton Court; Lincoln’s Inn, Serle Street;  Queen Square, Camden; Yeading Brook, Hounslow Heath; Charing Cross Station; Wormwood Scrubs; Mill Hill, Barnet; Grays Inn Road; Sanderstead - and even from a cesspool at Homerton.

Many of the objects have specific dates from the 1860s, when they were collected, recorded. We hope that publishing this draft report will help us contact museum professionals, archaeologists, historians and others with knowledge of the context of the archaeology of these sites, and the history of construction at them, to add to our knowledge of Pitt-Rivers activities in early 'rescue' archaeology, from Roman, Palaeolithic and other sites in London. To contact the project, please read the report, and email dan.hicks@prm.ox.ac.uk

Image: a sherd from a Romano-British Samian ware bowl, marked as collected during excavations for the new railway station at Cannon Street in 1864; from the Pitt Rivers Museum founding collection. The potter's mark - 'OF.SEVERI' - has copied onto a label stuck to the sherd  (Pitt Rivers Museum accession number 1884.41.114)

Image: Ceramic jug from Bishopsgate acquired by General Pitt-Rivers on 22 February 1878; from the founding collection of the Pitt Rivers Museum (Pitt Rivers Museum accession number 1884.37.39)

Image: a sherd of Romano-British Samian ware pottery, marked as collected from New Southwark Street on 10 December 1886 by General Pitt-Rivers (then known as 'A.L. Fox') (Pitt Rivers Museum accession number 1884.41.106)

Image: a sherd of Romano-British Samian ware pottery, collected during excavations at the Gooch and Cousens warehouse on London Wall, and evocatively marked in Pitt-Rivers' own hand as found at a depth of 13 feet 'in roadway, Dec 28 [1866], by me' (Pitt Rivers Museum accession number 1884.41.109)

Image: A Palaeolithic implement, collected from Clapham Rise, Battersea by General Pitt-Rivers on 25 September 1869. (Pitt Rivers Museum accession number 1884.122.356)

Image: Base of a sherd of Romano-British pottery, collected during excavations at the Gooch and Cousens warehouse on London Wall, and evocatively marked in Pitt-Rivers' own hand as found at a depth of 13-14 feet 'in peaty earth in roadway, Dec 28 [1866], by me' (Pitt Rivers Museum accession number 1884.41.42)

A Romano-British medical set

Roman medical implements.
(left to right: PRM 1884.140.530, 1884.140.531, 1884.140.1532 &1884.140.509)

Four Roman medical implements have recently been catalogued and researched as part of the Excavating Pitt-Rivers project. These implements are made of copper alloy and would have been cast and then hammered into shape. These objects are recorded as being from London Wall where we know Pitt-Rivers completed excavations in 1865, 1866 and 1867.

The two implements on the left are waisted leaf-shaped spatulas; they would have been used to mix and apply ointments to patients. Sometimes the spatula was also used as a cautery, as a tongue depressor and as a blunt dissector (Baker 2009).

The two implements on the right are spoon probes with olivary ends. These are similar to the spatula probe, but have narrow leaf shaped spoons in place of the spatula. The spoon could have been used for a number of different purposes to remove medicines from containers, to mix ointments, as a curette and possibly in lithotomy operations. The olivary end could also be used to mix ointments, to create a drip effect, to explore fistula and examine carious bone. (Baker 2009).

More information on these particular objects and other Roman medical implements can be found in this paper by Patricia Baker.