David Sankey

The following is PURE SPECULATION.  3 things conjoined -a while ago I greatly enjoyed Mark-Anthony Turnage's "Greek" https://youtu.be/8Tgp3K6TU2Y  , an opera based on Stephen Berkhoff's East End updating of Sophocles  "Oedipus Rex". This "In Our Time" on it reminded me that the story was (1) set in the Bronze Age , and (2) Thebes was suffering with a "plague" that Oedipus's Answer to the riddle of the sphinx cures https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m001mlm4   . The thing is - there was indeed a real-life plague in the Bronze Age, which we now know infected people in Britain also,  https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-023-38393-w and caused by the familiar Yersinnia Pestis bacterium that also caused the Black Death  ..... Could this be the "smoking gun" that traumatised a population who, uncomprehending the scale of the tragedy wove it into a myth that influenced people over centuries (including Freud)   down to the present day?????  We probably will never know, but it is worth considering    

It's with great sadness that I learned of the death of my friend and former colleague Angus Stephenson. He was a kind and generous collaborator and person. We worked together, supervising sites on different section of London's City Wall (published in https://lnkd.in/ebsmfBJQ ) and used that experience to push through reforming surveying in the DUA, with the appointment of Mark Green as the surveyor (a benefit of the DUA.MoL was how initiatives could rise from Senior Archaeologists and then be implemented). His Cambridge law degree came in useful when we faced mass redundancies and, as a committed Trades Unionist, he was instrumental in winning the highest protective award to that date . It also came in handy when -as a Project Manager- negotiating on behalf of the Museum of London with the Comptroller & City Solicitor, City of London Corporation, over excavations at the Guildhall Yard Roman amphitheatre. Both took a great toll on his reserves, which a return to digging in Ireland helped to recover. He began his archaeological career in York, pre-Coppergate days. He also managed to fit in spells with the old Central Unit and later English Heritage, West Yorkshire, as well as Ireland, the Emirates, for the British Gas aerial survey team and for a spell as a consultant. After his retirement, he spent a great deal of time back in his native North East working as a volunteer with https://www.citizan.org.uk/  and resuming his passion for birding

Wherever he went, he did a great many good deeds by stealth, helping people when they needed it most. There are many who have survived a personal crisis because of his practical help and generosity. He was a deeply moral person who became a vegetarian at college when he decided he "didn't want to eat anything that didn't want to die" . It is worth looking over his Flickr photos, to get an insight into his character and interests https://lnkd.in/eMt_cnue I feel blessed to have known him, to have worked with him, to have shared a sociable pint and discussed mutual concerns with him, and to have benefitted from and witnessed his many small kindnesses. We have lost a good un

Allan Fea, The Flight of the King: A full true and particular account of the miraculous escape of his most sacred majesty King Charles II after the battle of Worcester (2nd edn.), London (1908),   “house about a mile beyond Sturbridge [where] his majesty drank and ate a crust of bread..."

““““ Thereafter it seems that the party must have ridden east towards Stourbridge and Wordsley. Initially travelling over Stourbridge Common (the area around Dunsley Road) to the Gig Mill, and crossing the Withibrook there, they would then have ascended along South Road (then called Kinver Road24) to The White Horse Inn (now called The Old White Horse) near the present-day main entrance to Mary Stevens Park. From the inn, their route would have taken them along Worcester Street (formerly called Heath Road25), Market Street (formerly Rye Market26) and Lower High Street (formerly known just as High Street) to the bridge over the Stour at SO 900847. 

The reason for the King’s party choosing to speak French as they passed through the town (see Blount’s account) isn’t absolutely clear but it may have been thought a prudent deception because Stourbridge’s population, at that time, included a significant number of Lorraine glassmakers who had established themselves in the area by c. 1610. 

To get to the “house about a mile beyond Sturbridge [where] his majesty drank and ate a crust of bread", the party must then have made their way north along High Street Amblecote (the route of an ancient salt-way; now designated the A491) to Wordsley. The site of this house is reputed to have been “at the bottom of the hill near the present Wordsley Church” where, in 1908, there was “still to be seen an ancient red-brick gabled house where [the] halt was made...”  This would have been just over one mile from Stourbridge, at or near the junction of Kinver Street and Wordsley High Street.

King Henry’s Pavane & a Ronde Paul Baker

From 1.04 on https://www.blackcountryradio.co.uk/radioplayer/od/items/black-country-matters-8th-january/ 

In a paper published in the Lancet "A 1000-year-old case of Klinefelter's syndrome diagnosed by integrating morphology, osteology, and genetics" the authors conclude the individual had Klinefelter's syndrome (an extra X chromosome) identified by a probabilistic assignment based on a number of sequencing reads, and backed by morphological/osteological examination of the bones  (Klinefelter’s are “genetically male”, X is not a “female” chromosome, it is present in everyone, but an extra X chromosome  = XXY, can present a number of identifiable medical conditions, see  https://www.nhs.uk/conditions/klinefelters-syndrome for more)

Yet another reason for more - and more novel - DNA studies on archaeological skeletons.

  https://doi.org/10.1016/S0140-6736(22)01476-3  (original article has far more supplementary data + figs)

""""" The skeleton of a human being buried over 1000 years ago, in the medieval archaeological site of Torre Velha, in north-eastern Portugal, was referred to us for analysis and investigation (appendix).

On examination, we found the outstandingly well preserved skeleton of an adult who was likely to have been more than 25 years old at the time of death. The person was approximately 1·80 m tall. Notably, out of the six skeletons examined, where height could be ascertained, this individual was the tallest (appendix). Based on pelvic morphology and metric analysis of the skeleton, we concluded that the individual was a man. However, the bi-iliac width of our person was 289 mm, considerably larger than the average width previously reported for ancient Portuguese men (mean 261·8 mm; SD=13·4; Student's t test: t=22·6944; df=124; p<0·001). Additionally, the individual's teeth were worn asymmetrically, indicating probable malocclusion of the jaw and maxillary prognathism (figure; appendix). Bone densitometry analysis showed normal bone mineral density values (0·792–0·999 g/cm2).

Genetic analysis was undertaken using a variety of different methodologies—including the calculation of X chromosome to Y chromosome autosome ratios (0·902 and 0·298, respectively), X chromosome and Y chromosome dosages (approximately 2 and 1, respectively), and X chromosome heterozygosity (approximately 0·2). We also determined the Y chromosome haplogroup to be R1b-P310 (R1b1a1b1a1), a frequent western-European and pan-European lineage, in accordance with the individual's Iberian genetic ancestry (appendix).

Furthermore, using a novel Bayesian method, allowing us to probabilistically assign individuals to karyotypes based on the number of sequencing reads—or DNA fragments sequenced—mapping to the X, Y, or autosomal chromosomes, we concluded our individual's karyotype to be 47,XXY, and rejected models of contamination of XXY and XX or XY (figure; appendix). The closeness of the observed position of the studied individual and theoretical position for an XXY karyotype (figure) strongly agrees with our posterior probability of approximately 1 for this individual having a Klinefelter's syndrome karyotype. Considering the morphological findings—specifically the height, the bi-iliac width, the possible jaw malocclusion, and the maxillary prognathism—the genetic findings—indicating a karyotype of 47,XXY—we concluded that the studied individual had Klinefelter's syndrome."""""

Xavier Roca-Rada, MSc

Sofia Tereso, MSc

Adam B Rohrlach, PhD

André Brito, MSc

Matthew P Williams, PhD

Prof Cláudia Umbelino, PhD

Francisco Curate, PhD

Ira W Deveson, PhD

Yassine Souilmi, PhD

Prof António Amorim, PhD

Prof Pedro C Carvalho, PhD

Bastien Llamas, PhD

João C Teixeira, PhD

A teddy bear made by the East London Federation of Suffragettes-led Ealontoys Ltd. (Courtesy: East End Women’s Museum)

The East London Toy Factory was set up in October 1914 at “45 Norman Road” (now Grove) to provide work for women when the First World War began. It was started by Sylvia Pankhurst...  (revolutionary communist and a leader of the East London Federation of Suffragettes)   https://www.museumoflondon.org.uk/discover/teddy-bears-wars-suffragette-elfs  This was not long after she had organised a “People’s Army” to defend Suffragettes who were routinely attacked by police and thugs 

https://romanroadlondon.com/peoples-army-suffragettes-victoria-park/

Significantly, the East London Toy Factory produced dolls representing different races, such as Asian and African dolls, and was part of the welfare activity of the ELFS

"""Take a look at this hyaena tooth discovered last week outside one of our caves.

If our Curator, Angharad, was on Mastermind, her specialist subject would be 'Hyaenas of the Ice Age', so she took great interest in seeing the tooth before it is taken to the University of Sheffield for more research.  

Despite having found a number of hyaena bones and teeth within the Crags over the years, including Eric the baby hyaena, this is an exciting moment.

Hyaenas were last dated to have been in Britain around 35,000 years ago, and here at Creswell 42,000-50,000 years ago, which makes this tooth really, really old.

Together with Kevin from the University of Sheffield, it was agreed that it belonged to a juvenile hyaena, and after a little more research the tooth will be returned to the museum collection here at the Crags.

The tooth is believed to be an upper pre-molar, featuring 3 roots, all of which would have sat in the upper jaw. The shinier section would been the biting  surface."""   https://www.facebook.com/creswellcrags  28th June 2022 ...from comments later, it was found  during an excavation by the ( closing down soon ) University of Sheffield Archaeology Department   https://www.yorkshirepost.co.uk/education/university-of-sheffield-archaeologists-given-two-year-reprieve-from-departmental-closure-and-staff-will-not-be-made-redundant-3708017

An "almost complete" skeleton of a baby hyaena was found previously at Creswell Crags https://www.creswell-crags.org.uk/the-collection

Photo credit Creswell Crags Creswell Heritage Trust

....a former Museum of London DUA DGLA & MOLAS colleague who pursued a career as a surveyor and has latterly qualified as with a PhD in Historic Landscape Characterisation of the Tamar Valley

my photo   https://photos.app.goo.gl/eyJv7V7AvtuXmMUj6

my photo https://photos.app.goo.gl/MAxmRbcmxMUfFQGk7

This was a "shepherd's hut" of a well known 19th-c design... Augustus Henry Lane Fox, General Pitt-Rivers, began collecting artefacts during his military career, and exhibited them at the newly opened "Bethnal Green Museum" (now the  Young V&A . His opportunity to do archaeological work expanded enormously when he inherited estates and a fortune from his cousin (and which required a change of name to Pitt-Rivers. He combined interests in Ethnology and Archaeology and his collections formed the basis of the Pitt-Rivers Museum in Oxford and  the Salisbury Museum . His own excavations, on his own estates, were comparatively methodical and well documented for their time and he became the first Inspector of Ancient Monuments, following the Ancient Monuments Protection Act 1882

....featured on The Hidden History of the Front Door on Radio 4. Programme link to listen on BBC Sounds is here:

https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m00180ld  ....in the contribution by James Wright

Photo by James Wright

Photo by James Wright

Photo by James Wright

Baddesley Clinton was one of the models for the reconstruction of the moated manor house at Stepney Green  https://www.worldcat.org/title/stepney-green-moated-manor-house-to-city-farm/oclc/931646191

Below is a link to some of the photos that I took of Baddesley Clinton in preparation for writing the  book

https://flic.kr/s/aHsjPHEQHW