Post by UKarchaeology on Jul 13, 2015 16:00:54 GMT
In September 2011, Project Eliseg – comprising staff and students from Bangor and Chester universities – conducted a second season of excavation at the early ninth-century Pillar of Eliseg, Llangollen, Denbighshire, Wales. It is the first time an early medieval cross in Wales has been subject to extensive archaeological excavation. This is particularly important as, unlike most early medieval inscribed stones and sculpted crosses from western Britain, the Pillar of Eliseg seems to have remained at or is very close to its original location.
The Pillar is a scheduled ancient monument under the stewardship of Cadw. Located close to the tourist hotspot of Valle Crucis Abbey, it is crucial for our understanding of the history and archaeology of early medieval kingdoms of Wales (see Evans 2005). The monument comprises part of a round cross-shaft set within its original base and placed upon a mound. It once bore a long Latin inscription couched in legal phraseology saying that the cross was raised by Concenn, ruler of Powys (died AD 854), in memory of his great-grandfather, Eliseg.
The Pillar as Multimedia Monument
The text was fully decoded by the seventeenth-century antiquary Edward Lhuyd although it is now almost invisible. The text was intended for oral proclamation and, as well as commemorating Concenn’s immediate lineage, it celebrated the legendary ancestors of his dynasty. These include the Roman usurper Magnus Maximus, the Dark Age ruler Guarthigirn (otherwise known as Vortigern whom the Pillar implausibly asserts was the son of Magnus Maximus) and Guarthigirn’s sons including one Britu whom the warrior-saint Germanus is said to have blessed.
The formula of the text and the commemorated ancestors promote the early ninth-century rulers of Powys as legitimate heirs to an illustrious home-grown military and spiritual legacy defending kingdom and faith against all-comers. Recently, Edwards (2009) has re-assessed the Pillar of Eliseg’s significance as political propaganda, perhaps serving as an assembly place and inauguration site for the beleaguered dynasty of Powys, sandwiched as it was between militarily superior and geographically larger rivals to the west (Gwynedd) and east (Mercia).
The Pillar is also a prime example where early medieval sculpture deployed multi-media to convey social memories and mythologies and install them in the landscape
The Pillar is also a prime example where early medieval sculpture deployed multi-media to convey social memories and mythologies and install them in the landscape. In addition to the legal form, mythological content and performative function of the text, the cross-shaft also invoked antiquity. It is similar to a Mercian tradition of crosses and pillars seemingly invoking Roman imperial traditions of commemorative sculpture.
The material used to make the cross was of the highest quality sandstone available in the region from Cefn-y-fedw to the east. The cross’ movement over many kilometres from the quarry site along the Vale to its current position may have been as important a public ceremony as those performed around the cross once erected.
The decision to place the stone cross on an ancient mound can also be read as a link to multiple mythical and biblical pasts. It also continued a widespread tradition of reactivating ancient monuments for burial and ritual activity during the fifth to eighth centuries AD across Britain.
The landscape context is also significant. The cross was located prominently on a major route into the Vale of Llangollen from the north and possibly close to a church site below the later Cistercian monastery of Valle Crucis (Edwards 2009; Williams 2011). Project Eliseg seeks to explore through excavation these interpretations and see if further evidence about the early ninth-century monument can be revealed.The biography of the Pillar
Equally of interest to Project Eliseg is the biography of the monument from prehistory to the present day. As stated, it has been speculated that the mound was far older than the Pillar, perhaps prehistoric date. Soon after construction, the dynasty commemorated by the monument collapsed with Concenn’s death, yet the monument accrued prestige, giving its name to the Cistercian house of Valle Crucis founded in 1201 and is mentioned as the ‘Ancient Cross in Iâl’ in 15th century poems (Edwards 2009).
In the late 16th or early 17th century, the cross seems to have suffered a similar fate of ruination as the monastery of Valle Crucis itself. It had fallen (or was pulled down) and was already fragmentary when the antiquary Edward Lhuyd recorded the inscription in 1696.
The fragments that were still visible were subject to a form of restoration in the 1770s. T. Lloyd, the landowner and a local Welsh squire, ‘excavated’ the mound in around 1773, finding a skeleton with a silver disc in a cist-grave. In 1779, he re-erected the Pillar and inscribed it with his own Latin text commemorating his actions.
Since then, the monument has been incorporated into the romantic and visitor landscape of the Vale of Llangollen and enshrined within the material culture (gates, signs, fences, guide-book) of a protected ancient monument. The prehistory, creation, fame, ruination, restoration and protection of the monument constitute a unique biography requiring further archaeological investigation.
Excavations by Project Eliseg: 2010 & 2011
After geophysical survey (resistivity, magnetometry, and GPR of the mound), excavations in July 2010 revealed the mound’s surface, that of a likely Bronze Age kerb cairn. We searched for a ring-ditch and burials placed around the mound without result. Excavations also ground-truthed anomalies in the surrounding field which proved negative.
The September 2011 excavations concentrated on the west side of the mound and explored an area of possible antiquarian disturbance. Upon excavation, it appeared that the top of the monument had been subject to considerable disturbance, and we identified post-medieval pottery and other finds quite deep within the cairn material. However, conclusive evidence of an antiquarian excavation was elusive. Below this upper-layer, we encountered primary cairn material including spreads of charcoal and at least two cist-graves. One small cist was identified in plan, the other was a large cist revealed in the section of our trench and therefore just outside our area of excavation.
The pace of our excavation was intentionally slow, this being a scheduled ancient monument and the weight of responsibility to excavate without error or rush took precedent over all else. We were sieving all of the soil from the cairn and 3-D locating all finds where possible. Frustratingly, despite this care, we were unable to find a single prehistoric or early historic artefact in the primary cairn material. Moreover, the weather was poor and most students were laid low for some part of the dig with a severe bug. Consequently, the 2011 season did not come close to completing the excavation of the trench we had opened and the directors decided to leave the excavation of the cist-graves and the excavation of the lower levels of the cairn material to a future season planned for September 2012 rather than rush the dig to completion. The student experience was also a major success, with all of those involved getting an opportunity to participate in a wide range of excavation methods and techniques.
In order to explore this complex history within a single monument, Project Eliseg employs established archaeological methods of barrow-excavation. We are being more innovative with our public outreach strategy. For the 2010 field season, we organised a very successful open day involving re-enactors, storytellers and artists as well as archaeological tours of the excavation. For 2011, we employed a media supervisor, third-year Chester archaeology student Joseph Tong, who used video to record every stage of the excavation and to communicate our results through a daily video blog posted on Facebook and Youtube. In both seasons, we have worked closely with archaeological artist, Aaron Watson, to create a visualisation of how the monument may have once appeared in the early ninth century.
Conclusion
Despite the inconclusive results and incomplete excavation after two seasons, Project Eliseg is on track to revitalise public interest in a much-neglected and extremely important historic monument. We have also revealed and recorded the character of the mound for the first time. On the evidence so far however, this was a prehistoric monument adopted in the early ninth-century as a royal monument commemorating faith, history and identity at a time of crisis for the kingdom of Powys. The 2012 field season promises to reveal more of this enigmatic monument’s hidden secrets.
Acknowledgements
Project Eliseg is co-directed by Nancy Edwards and Gary Robinson (Bangor University) and Howard Williams and Dai Morgan Evans (University of Chester). The project is financed by Cadw, The School of History, Welsh History and Archaeology at Bangor University, the Department of History & Archaeology at the University of Chester, the Centre for Advanced Welsh and Celtic Studies of the University of Wales. Thanks are due to the Davies family of Abbey Farm for permission to excavate, Paul and Rita Coleman for the use of their outbuildings and the staff of Llangollen Museum and the Abbey Grange Hotel for continued support.
More information:
Video blogs can be viewed on the Project Eliseg Media sites on Youtube: www.youtube.com/user/ProjectElisegMedia
Websites Project Eliseg has a bilingual website: projecteliseg.org/
The excavation also has a Facebook page: www.facebook.com/pages/Project-Eliseg-Media/169085143168656
Edwards, N. 2009 Rethinking the Pillar of Eliseg, Antiquaries Journal 89: 143–78.
Evans, D.M. 2005. The origins of Powys – Christian, heretic or pagan? Montgomeryshire Collections 93: 1-15.
Williams, H. 2011. Remembering elites: Early medieval stone crosses as commemorative technologies, Boye, L., Heidemann Lutz, L., Kleingärtner, S., Kruse, P., Matthes, L., Sørensen, A.B. (eds) Arkæologi i Slesvig/Archäologie in Schleswig.Sonderband “Det 61. Internationale Sachsensymposion 2010” Haderslev, Denmark. Neumünster: Wachholtz, pp. 13-32.
(Source/more pics etc: www.pasthorizonspr.com/index.php/archives/11/2011/project-eliseg-digging-for-early-medieval-myths-and-memories )