Formation | 1961 |
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Type | Archaeology |
Purpose | Study of archaeology in Cornwall and the Isles of Scilly |
Headquarters | Cornwall |
Location | |
Official language | English |
Website | cornisharchaeology |
Cornwall Archaeological Society is an amateur archaeological society based in Cornwall, United Kingdom for the study of archaeology in Cornwall and the Isles of Scilly. It was founded in 1961 by members of the West Cornwall Field Club. [1]
The West Cornwall Field Club was founded by Lt Col F. C. Hirst and six of the volunteers who were excavating a site at Porthmeor, in the parish of Zennor from 1933 to 1935. [2] Membership increased to nineteen in 1937 and averaged fifty in the 1950s. Between 1953 and 1961 the club produced twenty-seven publications including six field guides and an annual journal, and the club members took part in forty excavations. During the fifties many members lived in mid and east Cornwall and the field club was publishing increasingly more articles from those areas. It was felt that the name no longer relevant to the scope of the field club and at the annual general meeting on 10 August 1961 it was unanimously approved to change the title to Cornwall Archaeological Society. [3]
The first President of the society was C. A. Ralegh Radford an archaeologist and historian from Devon who specialised in the Dark Ages. [3]
The Society has organised a number of excavations. One, considered to be outstanding was at Carn Brea led by Roger Mercer from 1970 to 1973, which established a new class of site — the Early Neolithic tor enclosure. [4]
The Society publishes a journal Cornish Archaeology Hendhyscans Kernow in most years. The first was published in 1962 and the latest, number 54, was published in 2015. A newsletter is published three times a year. [7]
The following have served as presidents of the society since its foundation in 1961.
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A fogou or fougou is an underground, dry-stone structure found on Iron Age or Romano-British-defended settlement sites in Cornwall. The original purpose of a fogou is uncertain today. Colloquially called vugs, vows, foggos, giant holts, or fuggy holes in various dialects, fogous have similarities with souterrains or earth-houses of northern Europe and particularly Scotland, including Orkney. Fewer than 15 confirmed fogous have been found.
Carn Euny is an archaeological site near Sancreed, on the Penwith peninsula in Cornwall, United Kingdom. It consists of evidence of both Iron Age and post-Iron Age settlement, with excavation on the site showning activity at Carn Euny as early as the Neolithic period. The first timber huts there were built about 500 BC, and 400-500 years later were replaced by stone huts; the remains of which are still visible.
St Keverne is a civil parish and village on The Lizard in Cornwall, England, United Kingdom.
A causewayed enclosure is a type of large prehistoric earthwork common to the early Neolithic in Europe. It is an enclosure marked out by ditches and banks, with a number of causeways crossing the ditches. More than 100 examples are recorded in France and 70 in Southern England and Wales, while further sites are known in Scandinavia, Belgium, Germany, Italy, Ireland and Slovakia.
Durrington Walls is the site of a large Neolithic settlement and later henge enclosure located in the Stonehenge World Heritage Site in England. It lies 2 miles (3.2 km) north-east of Stonehenge in the parish of Durrington, just north of Amesbury in Wiltshire. The henge is the second-largest Late Neolithic palisaded enclosure known in the United Kingdom, after Hindwell in Wales.
Carn Brea is a civil parish and hilltop site in Cornwall, England, United Kingdom. The population of Carn Brea including Bosleake and Church Coombe was 8,013 at the 2011 census. The hilltop site is situated approximately one mile (1.6 km) southwest of Redruth. The settlements of Bosleake, Brea, Broad Lane, Carn Arthen, Carn Brea Village, Carnkie, Four Lanes, Grillis, Illogan Highway, Pencoys, Penhallick, Piece, Pool, Tolskithy, Tregajorran, Treskillard, Tuckingmill and West Tolgus are in the parish.
A tor enclosure is a prehistoric monument found in the southwestern part of Great Britain. These monuments emerged around 4000 BCE in the early Neolithic.
Roger James Mercer HonFSAScot was a British archaeologist whose work concentrated on the Neolithic and Bronze Age of the British Isles.
In archaeology, an enclosure is one of the most common types of archaeological site – It is any area of land separated from surrounding land by earthworks, walls or fencing. Such a simple feature is found all over the world and during almost all archaeological periods. They may be few metres across or be large enough to encompass whole cities.
Chapel Carn Brea is an elevated Hercynian granite outcrop, owned by the National Trust at the southern edge of the civil parish of St Just, Cornwall, England, United Kingdom. The hill is 5 kilometres (3.1 mi) south of St Just and 3.5 kilometres (2.2 mi) east of Sennen Cove, and just to the north of the A30 London to Land's End road, which runs through the village of Crows-an-Wra. It should not be confused with another Carn Brea, the hill overlooking the Camborne–Redruth area.
Pool is a village in Carn Brea civil parish in west Cornwall, England. It is bypassed by the A30, on the A3047 between Camborne and Redruth, between Tuckingmill and Illogan Highway.
Antony Charles Thomas, was a British historian and archaeologist who was Professor of Cornish Studies at Exeter University, and the first Director of the Institute of Cornish Studies, from 1971 until his retirement in 1991. He was recognised as a Bard of the Cornish Gorseth with the name Gwas Godhyan in 1953.
Stannon stone circle is a stone circle located near St. Breward on Bodmin Moor in Cornwall, England.
Church Coombe is a hamlet in the parish of Redruth, Cornwall, England. Church Combe is situated 1 mile (1.6 km) south-west of Redruth and lies in the Cornwall and West Devon Mining Landscape which was designated as a World Heritage Site in 2006. It is in the civil parish of Carn Brea.
Helman Tor is a granite hill in mid Cornwall, UK with several separated tors, and is designated as a (non-statutory) County Geology Site. The hill also has a Scheduled Ancient Monument. Helman Tor is also the name of the largest nature reserve managed by the Cornwall Wildlife Trust which includes Breney Common and Red Moor. The Wildlife Trust aims to rewild the reserve, including potentially releasing beavers, as well as long-horn cattle and Cornish black pigs. Helman Tor, along with Breney Common, Red Moor and Belowda Beacon, is part of the Mid Cornwall Moors Site of Special Scientific Interest. It lies on the Saints' Way, a long-distance footpath completed in 1986.
Cornish promontory forts, commonly known in Cornwall as cliff castles, are coastal equivalents of the hill forts and Cornish "rounds" found on Cornish hilltops and slopes. Similar coastal forts are found on the north–west European seaboard, in Normandy, Brittany and around the coastlines of the British Isles, especially in Wales, Scotland and Ireland. Many are known in southwest England, particularly in Cornwall and its neighbouring county, Devon. Two have been identified immediately west of Cornwall, in the Isles of Scilly.
Alan Saville was a British archaeologist and museum curator.
The Cornish Bronze Age is an era of the prehistory of Cornwall that spanned the period from c. 2400 BCE to c. 800 BCE. It was preceded by the Cornish Neolithic, and followed by the Cornish Iron Age. It is characterized by the introduction and widespread use of copper and copper-alloy (bronze) weapons and tools.
The prehistory of Cornwall spans an extensive timeframe from the earliest evidence of archaic human presence in Cornwall, perhaps c. 225,000 years ago, to the Roman conquest of Britain c. 43 CE, encompassing the Palaeolithic, Mesolithic, Neolithic, Bronze Age, and Iron Age periods. Throughout this era Cornwall underwent significant cultural and environmental changes, evolving from a sparsely-populated hunter-gatherer society reliant on rudimentary stone tools to an agricultural society characterized by developed metallurgical practices, expansive trade networks, and emerging social complexity.