Winchester Studies

3 total works

The Pre-Roman and Roman Winchester

by Giles Clarke and etc.

Published 28 February 1979

Outside the north gate ofVenta Belgarum , Roman Winchester, a great cementary stretched for 500 yards along the road to Cirencester. Excavations at Lankhills from 1967 to 1972 uncovered 451 graves, many elaborately furnished, at the northern limits of this cemetery, and dating from the fourth century A.D. This book, the second in a two-part study of iVenta Belgarum, which forms the third volume of Winchester Studies, describes the excavations of these burials and analyses in detail both the graves and their contents - perhaps the richest single group of fourth century objects yet found in Britain. There are detailed studies and important re-assessments of many categories of object, but it is the information about late Roman burial, religion, and society which is of special interest.

Artefacts from Medieval Winchester

by Martin Biddle and etc.

Published 25 October 1990

Over six thousand objects were recovered during the Winchester excavations of 1961 to 1971 - by far the most extensive corpus of stratified and datable medieval objects yet presented from a single city. Martin Biddle and the team of eighty-three contributors assembled by the Winchester Research Unit have used this material to investigate not only the industries and arts, but the economic, cultural, and social life of medieval Winchester. Their findings are being published in two parts: the first part, by Katherine Barclay, will deal with the pottery remains; and this second part in two volumes by Martin Biddle covers all the objects from the finest products of the Anglo-Saxon goldsmith's skill to the iron tenter-hooks of the cloth industry. Martin Biddle's study of the objects identifies change through time, and traces variation across the broad social scale - from cottage to palace - represented in the excavated sites.
Using the objects as evidence for the economy of the medieval city, it also throws new light on some of the great questions of medieval industry and artistic production: amongst them the development of the textile industry, the origins of wire-drawing and the manufacture of pins, the beginnings of window-glass production, and the earliest glass painting. These objects are an essential part of the evidence for the development and changing character of the excavated sites to be published in forthcoming volumes of Winchester Studies on the Minsters. To ensure complete integration between the objects and the sites, every object in this volume is related to the context in which it was found and a concordance provides a detailed conspectus phase by phase of each of the twenty sites excavated between 1961-71, and of the objects found in each phase.

Venta Belgarum: Prehistoric, Roman, and Post-Roman Winchester

by Francis M Morris and Martin Biddle

Published 28 December 2023

This is a detailed study of the archaeology of Roman Winchester—Venta Belgarum, a major town in the south of the province of Britannia— and its development from the regional (civitas) capital of the Iron Age people, the Belgae, who inhabited much of what is now central and southern Hampshire. The archaeology of the Winchester area in prehistory is considered, and so too is the later evidence from the town, between the end of organized Roman life shortly after 400 and the foundation, c.650, of the church later known as Old Minster. At the heart of this account is the publication of the relevant phases of the sites excavated in 1961–71 by the Winchester Excavations Committee, and of the finds recovered from these excavations.

Volume 1 (Excavations) outlines previous work of relevance, and describes the WEC excavations and the post-excavation analysis of the discoveries, including full reports on the prehistoric, Roman, and post-Roman (to c.650) phases of the 14 sites excavated in 1961–71, with gazetteers for Roman Winchester, listing and describing all significant observations of the defences, and the streets and buildings within the walls.

Volume 2 (Finds) presents about 4000 of the finds from the excavations of 1961–71, with additional significant objects from earlier excavations in Winchester or other Winchester collections. Finds are described and discussed by era and type, with coins and selected pottery followed by objects grouped by industry or purpose. Concordances list these finds by site and phase or by material.