'Sarsen stones in Wessex': a society of antiquaries project contextualised and renewed

This paper reviews the Society of Antiquaries’ Evolution of the Landscape project, which started in 1974, and the project’s Sarsen Stones in Wessex survey. The survey was an ambitious public archaeology project, involving c 100 volunteers led by Fellows of the Society during the 1970s. Its aims, objectives and outcomes are described. The survey’s unique dataset, produced for the counties of Wiltshire, Hampshire and Dorset, has now been digitised. Drawing on the dataset, the paper situates the Evolution of the Landscape project in the context of later-twentieth century British archaeology. It demonstrates the importance not only of individual Fellows, but also contemporary movements in academic and development-led archaeology, to the direction of the Society’s activities in this formative period for the discipline today, and shows how the Society’s research was engaged with some of archaeology’s most pressing cultural resource management issue

Particular thanks and obligations’: The communications made by women to the society of antiquaries between 1776 and 1837, and their significance

This paper brings together the evidence bearing on the relationship between the Society of Antiquaries and the women who contributed to it during a significant period when archaeology, through the work of such men as Samuel Lysons and Richard Colt Hoare, was beginning to emerge as a distinct field with its own conceptual and technical systems. It takes its departure from the first substantial appearance by a woman in the Society's publications in 1776, and continues until the accession of a female monarch, Victoria, in 1837, a period of just over sixty years. It explores what women did and what reception they received and assesses the significance of this within the wider processes of the development of an understanding of the past and the shaping of gender relationships through the medium of material culture, in a period that saw fundamental changes in many areas of intellectual and social life, including levels of material consumption and the sentiments surrounding consumerism

A Classical Tour through Italy and Sicily

After the death of his wife, antiquarian Sir Richard Colt Hoare (1758–1838) left his only child in England and embarked on a series of journeys through continental Europe in pursuit of 'novelty, pleasure and information' in order to assuage his grief. At the end of the 1780s he deliberately diverged from the more conventional tourist trail in favour of a route through the then less-documented areas of Italy and down into Sicily, using classical authors as his guides. This work, first published in 1819, draws heavily on his daily journal entries to elucidate areas and points of interest that he felt had been overlooked in previous guides to Italy. Quotations from Horace, Tacitus and Pliny pertaining to ancient sites and practices are frequently included in Hoare's narrative, and he meticulously recreates the journey from Rome to Brundisium described by Horace in his Satires.</jats:p

VIII. <i>Account of Antiquities found at Hamden Hill, with fragments of British Chariots: by Sir</i> Richard Colt Hoare, <i>Bart. F.R.S. &amp; S. A. In a Letter to</i> Nicholas Carlisle, <i>Esq. F.R.S. Secretary</i>

As every new discovery relating to British Antiquity must prove interesting to your Society, I beg leave to send you an account of some discoveries which were made within these few years on Hamden Hill; and which I should have transmitted to the Society long ago, had I not hoped that some more able Antiquary would have given you notice of them.</jats:p

IV. <i>An Account of a Stone Barrow, in the Parish of Wellow, at Stoney Littleton in the County of Somerset, which was opened and investigated in the Month of May</i> 1816. <i>Communicated by</i> Sir Richard Colt Hoare, <i>Bart. F.S.A.</i>

In my introduction to the Ancient History of South Wiltshire, I have endeavoured to investigate with accuracy and minuteness, the various barrows with which our chalk hills particularly abound. I have stated their forms, construction, and contents. Those which occur most frequently, may be divided into four classes. I. The long barrow. II. The bowl-shaped barrow. III. The bell-shaped barrow. IV. The Druid barrow. The two first, from the general simplicity of their structure, appear to be the most ancient; for in No 3 we find a great degree of symmetry in the design, which corresponds with the figure of a bell: and No 4 varies materially from all the preceding. I know not from what circumstances the learned Dr. Stukeley appropriated these low tumuli to the British order of Priests called Druids I am rather inclined to think, from the result of our own researches that they were destined to receive the bones and the ashes of the female tribe of Britons; for the articles generally found within them both with regard to size and quality, have been such as were more becoming to a lady than a priest. But the most inexplicable of all the barrows, and the most distinguished by its size and construction, is the Long Barrow, consisting of an immense long ridge of earth, pointing most frequently from East to West; and rising to a higher degree of elevation towards the former aspect. These are the barrows which the Northern Writers ‘describe as ship barrows—carinœ instar.</jats:p

VI. Observations upon four Mosaic Pavements discovered in the County of Hants; by Sir Richard Colt Hoare, Bart. F.R.S. and S.A. in a Letter to Nicholas Carlisle, Esq. F.R.S. Secretary

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The land transfer question : containing suggestions supplementary to the writer's plan for a general register.

Mode of access: Internet

Sir Richard Colt Hoare to Aylmer Bourke Lambert

Note this letter was originally sent to Aylmer Bourke Lambert. Lord Bath [Thomas Thynne, 2nd Marquess of Bath (1765-1837)] to be a "Linnean". A 'Geranium' on sale in Bath for £500