Lecture Programme
Autumn/Winter
24-25

3rd October 2024

​

Dr Andy Seaman
Lecturer in Early Medieval Archaeology, SHARE, Cardiff
University

​

Excavations at the Llancadle South II Cemetery
and the Early Medieval Landscape of the
Fonmon Castle.

​

This talk will present initial results from the first 4 years of
the Fonmon Castle Landscape Archaeology Project,
focusing on excavations at the Llancadle South II early
medieval cemetery. The cemetery forms part of a wider
complex of early medieval activity within the demesne of
the later medieval castle, and displays unusual features,
including multiple enclosures, a diversity of burial practice,
and high-status material, including imported glass.

​

​

17th October 2024

Dr Timothy Penn
Faculty of Classics, University of Oxford.

Towards an archaeology of board games in
Roman society.

Board games are not a new phenomenon: they originate at
least as early as ancient Egypt, but they’ve only started to
be studied seriously by archaeologists relatively recently.
This means we’re now starting to learn lots of interesting
new things about the ways that Roman people played
games and had fun. This talk considers some of the most
exciting lessons that emerge from looking at the
archaeological evidence for board games in Roman society.

 

 

31st October 2024

Sam Wilson
Archaeologist, Waterloo Uncovered.

Waterloo Uncovered: Combining world-class
archaeology on the Waterloo battlefield with
veteran care and recovery.

Waterloo Uncovered is a registered UK charity that
combines a world-class archaeology project on the
battlefield of Waterloo with a support programme for
veterans and the military community. Working in
partnership with some of Europe's top universities, and through the unique perspective of a team comprised of
archaeologists, veterans and serving soldiers, Waterloo
Uncovered aims to understand war and its impact on people
- and to educate the public about it.

​

​

14th November 2024

Dr Henry Bishop Wright
Research Associate, SHARE, Cardiff University.

Beyond Egypt’s Southern Frontier: Nubia and
the Kingdom of Meroë.

Throughout the history of pharaonic Egypt, the area of
present-day Aswan marked the frontier with Egypt’s
southern neighbour, Nubia. By the end of the 1st
millennium BC, the northernmost stretch of Nubia was the
primary commercial corridor linking Ptolemaic Egypt with
the independent Kingdom of Meroë (c. 300 BC – AD 350)
that controlled the Nile Valley to the south (present-day
Sudan). This talk provides an accessible introduction to the
archaeology of Meroë and explores the results of its
interaction (material-cultural) with Egypt and the wider
Hellenistic-Roman worlds.

​

​

28th November 2024

Professor Howard Williams BSc MA PhD FSA
Professor of Archaeology, University of Chester.

Once were Vikings?: New Archaeologies of
Today’s Viking Worlds.

The ‘Vikings’ remain a topic of popular public enthusiasm
and academic contention and implicate a wide range of
archaeological research and heritage sites, monuments and
landscapes. This presentation will explore recent debates
surrounding the interpretation of the Viking Age and their
use and misuse in politics and popular culture. I will argue
for the need for a systematic overhaul of both (a) how we
conduct our academic interdisciplinary research in the
public gaze and share our results about the Viking period, as
well as (b) how we investigate contemporary Viking
receptions and engage with public debates on the
significance of the Vikings today. Both dimensions have
ethical and socio-political ramifications and involve actively
combating old and new misinformation and actively
promoted disinformation about ‘the Vikings’ in
contemporary society via sustained and responsible
strategies. I’ll use a range of case studies of how we might
do this better.

​

12th December 2024 ZOOM ONLY

Dr Toby Driver, FSA
Senior Investigator (Aerial Survey) , Royal Commission
Wales.

Landscapes of fear and respect : exploring the
hillforts of Iron Age Wales.

This lecture will look at the people, landscape and
monuments of Iron Age Wales, including the design and
construction of the great hillforts and defended farms which
dotted the countryside. The Iron Age in Wales was a time of
innovation and international contacts, and the talk will also
look at some of the key finds from the period.

 

2025

​

 

9th January 2025

Professor George Nash
Associate Professor in Geosciences Centre at Coimbra University, Portugal and Honorary Researcher within the
Department of Archaeology, Classics and Egyptology,
University of Liverpool.

Making sense of engraved rock art in the later
prehistoric ritualised upland landscapes of
South Wales.

Based on current regional and national databases in Wales,
the valleys of South Wales has around 22 rock art sites, the
majority of which are constructed using the humble
engraved cupmark. This motif is used extensively across
much of the so-called Atlantic Facade, from the Iberian
Peninsula to Southern Scandinavia. This lecture will discuss
the various sites and recent discoveries within the Valleys'
catchment area and suggest that they sit within a
landscape/monument pattern that is repeated across much
of Continental Europe.

 

 

23rd January 2025

Richard Clammer
Author, The Tidenham Historical Group.

Sudbrook, its Shipyard & South America.

This talk will tell the fascinating story of Sudbrook village in
Monmouthshire, its forgotten shipyard and the many
vessels built there as well as providing personal and
professional biographies of T.A. & C.H. Walker who, despite
being two of Britain's foremost civil engineering contractors
of their age and responsible for several major projects in
South Wales, have never previously received the

recognition they deserve. It explores the Walkers' world-
wide achievements, Sudbrook's surprising links with South

America, and the continuing existence of a second Walker
company village in Uruguay. Clear remains of the shipyard
survive on the Sudbrook foreshore and deserve further
archaeological investigation.

​

​

6th February 2025

Dr Graeme Lawson
Archaeologist with a special interest in music and tradition.

Sound Tracks: the Crwth and the Lyre, 1000 BC
to AD 1000.

No-one familiar with the cultural traditions of Wales can be
unaware of the musical phenomenon known as the crwth.
It is, and was, a Welsh stringed instrument with a
fingerboard, played latterly like a violin, with a bow, and its
image and name can be traced back to the Middle Ages and
even beyond. While only a handful of historic crwths have
been preserved, and only two of those remain in Wales,
'crowthers' are mentioned in the household accounts of
princes, including (in the early years of the 14th century)
'Audowen le Crouther' a minstrel to Edward of Carnarvon,
son of Edward I; and similar instruments can be seen in
early medieval images. With little surviving of their
repertoire, the source of the crwth's appeal is unclear, and
its origins are likewise shrouded in mystery: the documents
and images only take us so far. To get to the heart of the
riddle we need archaeology. With the aid of replicas of
actual finds, this talk will tell the story (so far) of the quest
for solutions, through archaeological collections here in the
West of Britain and across the continent of Europe.

​

20th February 2025

Tom Hicks
Experimental Archaeologist, CAER Heritage Project.

Learning Through Doing:
Experimental Archaeology
 

Partnerships that build learning opportunities for the
community of Caerau and Ely are to be kick-started in latest
developments at the CAER Heritage Centre. Taking the
Pathway to Archaeology in Lifelong Learning in 2015, Tom
Hicks (BA 2018, MA 2023) progressed to an undergraduate
degree at the university before completing his Master’s
degree in Archaeology. Now Tom returns in his new role
creating community partnerships at the award-winning
centre, and he will speak to the Society specifically on his
experimental archaeology work there.

​

 

13th March 2025
(N.B. Three Weeks Later)

Annual General Meeting.

​

​

​

​

​

​​

 

​

​

​

​

​

​

​

​

​

​

​

​

​

​