Thynghowe Viking Site Sherwood Forest: Revealing the Environmental History

By Stuart Reddish

Taking environmental samples from trench 1 Thynghowe Viking Assemble Dig Site 2016,
Photo Credit Mercian Archaeological Services CIC

I have just read an interesting academic paper on local insect fauna and seeds 'Caught in a trap: landscape and climate implications of the insect fauna from a Roman well in Sherwood Forest' (Buckland, P.C., Buckland, P.I. & Panagiotakopulu, E. Archaeol Anthropol Sci (2016). doi:10.1007/s12520-016-0338-8). This research is based on samples dated from around the Roman period of occupation in Sherwood and provides evidence of an enclosed landscape beginning in the pre-Roman Iron Age and continuing through the Roman period.

As we await the results of the samples taken from the Thynghowe archaeological dig site last year (2016) Buckland's (et.al) paper details the complexity of the work involved in profiling of the environmental history data of a site.  However, there is interesting link between the two sites. Rye seeds. Rye seed is among the first samples to have been positively identified from the Thynghowe community dig.

I reported on this at a recent public lecture at Saint Mary's University:

Let us return to our Danish Viking Farmer .... Rye seeds .... why is that special at the end of all this research ...... Rye started to make an appearance in Denmark in the late Bronze Age. The cereal probably came from the south with seed corn, and spread as a weed in the cornfields, before becoming accepted as bread grain. During the Iron Age, both climate and agriculture changed - and in the Viking Age, rye became the predominant type of grain. It is much more resistant to the winter cold, damp and drought than other types, and can be grown on less fertile soil or sand.

(Mallett & Reddish DOI: 10.13140/RG.2.2.29950.18246)

The section of the paper below by Bucland (et. al) therefore has some relevance to the Thynghowe site as it also mentions the significance of Rye seeds in the Sherwood Forest area:

Whilst the emphasis again seems to be on pastoralism, there are indications of arable in the presence of pollen of both Triticum and Secale cereale. The trace of the latter, rye, in Smith’s well-dated Hatfield and Thorne Moors diagrams, begins in the Roman but only becomes continuous in the medieval period (Smith 2002, Figs. 21, 22, and 33). Although there are earlier pollen records (Chambers and Jones 1984), it is probably a Roman introduction as a crop plant in Britain (cf. Helbaek 1952; Hillman 1981; Monckton 2006). Its tolerance of poor, acid sandy soils (Cappers and Neef 2012, 269) would have made it an ideal crop for the Sherwood Sandstone and adjacent Drift sands and gravels. It occurs as a macrofossil, along with barley, spelt and bread wheat, at the most extensively excavated settlement associated with the Nottinghamshire field systems at Dunston’s Clump (Jones 1987). More plant macrofossil and pollen work is needed, however, before reliable conclusions can be drawn on the agricultural history on these crops in this region'.

The full paper 'Caught in a trap: landscape and climate implications of the insect fauna from a Roman well in Sherwood Forest' (Buckland, P.C., Buckland, P.I. & Panagiotakopulu, E. Archaeol Anthropol Sci (2016) can be found here:

http://link.springer.com/article/10.1007%2Fs12520-016-0338-8