07-16-2008, 06:11 PM
I was asked by Peter Guest to post this reply onto the website.
Greetings to you all from Caerleon - the source of the ceremonial lance/shield grip/unidentified iron object controversy. Thanks to you all for increasing the hits on our websites - there's no such thing as bad publicity especially when it generates increased awareness of archaeology and interest in things Roman and military. this week is National Archaeology Week - the press release was fortuitously timed to coincide with the start of NAW and yesterday we had slightly fewer than 200 visitors to the excavation of a legionary fortress (not bad for a Tuesday). The WAG Minister for Heritage is celebrating NAW here in Caerleon in 2 days time and I'm sure he'll want to see the infamous artefact too. Like the rest of us, however, he will have to wait until the object is x-rayed, conserved, identified and published, together with the hundreds of other objects from the excavation, in the final report to discover its function (and age). You are not the first to have considered that we have found a shield grip - the other half of B&C suggested it as a possibility, as did the ESG (by the way, isn't the academic/re-enactor divide getting a bit tired?), although others who have seen the object aren't convinced either way.
I remember the 1987 trip along the Danube very well indeed. It was a once-in-a-lifetime experience travelling through the Balkans in a Land Rover in the final years of the Iron Curtain and I certainly learned a few things - including how essential it is to see and handle an object before passing judgement, and also (more importantly perhaps) that we should avoid taking ourselves too seriously.
Thanks again for taking such a keen interest in our work at Caerleon - I hope that those of you who live close enough will take the opportunity to come and visit before the excavation closes at the end of this month. Anyway, must dash as we think we might just have unearthed Excalibur!
Peter Guest
Greetings to you all from Caerleon - the source of the ceremonial lance/shield grip/unidentified iron object controversy. Thanks to you all for increasing the hits on our websites - there's no such thing as bad publicity especially when it generates increased awareness of archaeology and interest in things Roman and military. this week is National Archaeology Week - the press release was fortuitously timed to coincide with the start of NAW and yesterday we had slightly fewer than 200 visitors to the excavation of a legionary fortress (not bad for a Tuesday). The WAG Minister for Heritage is celebrating NAW here in Caerleon in 2 days time and I'm sure he'll want to see the infamous artefact too. Like the rest of us, however, he will have to wait until the object is x-rayed, conserved, identified and published, together with the hundreds of other objects from the excavation, in the final report to discover its function (and age). You are not the first to have considered that we have found a shield grip - the other half of B&C suggested it as a possibility, as did the ESG (by the way, isn't the academic/re-enactor divide getting a bit tired?), although others who have seen the object aren't convinced either way.
I remember the 1987 trip along the Danube very well indeed. It was a once-in-a-lifetime experience travelling through the Balkans in a Land Rover in the final years of the Iron Curtain and I certainly learned a few things - including how essential it is to see and handle an object before passing judgement, and also (more importantly perhaps) that we should avoid taking ourselves too seriously.
Thanks again for taking such a keen interest in our work at Caerleon - I hope that those of you who live close enough will take the opportunity to come and visit before the excavation closes at the end of this month. Anyway, must dash as we think we might just have unearthed Excalibur!
Peter Guest
Chris Waite
