Charles Green (archaeologist)

Charles Green (1901–1972) was an English archaeologist noted for his excavations in East Anglia, and his work on the Sutton Hoo ship-burial.[1] His "signal achievements" were his East Anglian excavations, including four years spent by Caister-on-Sea and Burgh Castle,[1] and several weeks in 1961 as Director of excavations at Walsingham Priory.[2] Green additionally brought his "long experience of boat-handling" to bear in writing his 1963 book, Sutton Hoo: The Excavation of a Royal Ship-Burial,[1] a major work that combined a popular account of the Anglo-Saxon burial with Green's contributions about ship-construction and seafaring.

Green began his career in archaeology as an assistant at the Salford Royal Museum, and in 1932 was named curator of The Museum of Gloucester. Much of East Anglian work was carried out in the 1950s and 1960s on behalf of the Inspectorate of Ancient Monuments at the Ministry of Works.[3][1] Green was also a member of the National Executive of the Council for British Archaeology, a one time President of the Norfolk Research Committee, and, at his death, the President of the Great Yarmouth Archaeological Society and Vice-President of the Norfolk and Norwich Archaeological Society.[1]

Career

Charles Green was born in Lancaster, England, in 1901. His archaeological career began with a position of assistant at the Royal Museum in Salford, Greater Manchester, and in 1932 he was appointed curator of The Museum of Gloucester. There he studied the region's prehistory, undertaking a study of Roman Gloucester and publishing several papers, including an important 1949 note on the burials found in Birdlip, Gloucestershire.[1][4] The Royal Air Force took Green under its wing during World War II; he served in the photographic and intelligence branches, befitting his archaeological interest in air photography.[1]

In 1951 Green arrived in East Anglia, which would become the site of his "signal achievements", to excavate the Roman town at Caister-on-Sea, close to Great Yarmouth and across from Burgh Castle.[1] Green spent four years continuously excavating there, from the summer of 1951 to January 1955,[5] chronicling the rise and fall of the town.[1] This work gave him experience with the fluctuations of the North Sea, leading to his contribution to the 1960 book The Making of the Broads.[1][6] In the following decade he published at least four papers in Norfolk Archaeology.[1] He was credited with "a far-seeing interdisciplinary approach" for A Human Skull from Runham, Norfolk (1961) and Broadland Fords and Causeways (1961), "historical topography" in The Lost Vill of Ness (1969), and "emergent industrial archaeological considerations" for the "entrancing" Herring-Nets and Beatsters (1969).[1]

During part of the 1950s Green carried out many excavations for the Ministry of Works, understaffed and difficult work. One 1958 to 1960 excavation,[7] of a nearly plough-destroyed barrow cemetery in Shrewton, a village near Stonehenge, led to a paper read to the Prehistoric Society in 1960,[1] and a posthumous publication in 1984.[8]

Since 1964 Green was the Vice-President of the Norfolk and Norwich Archaeological Society. He was formerly the President of the Norfolk Research Committee, and President of the Great Yarmouth Archaeological Society; he was also an early member of the National Executive of the Council for British Archaeology, helping guide it when new.[1]

Green died in 1972. Shortly before his death he had been undertaking a work on early sea-travel, especially the raids along the coasts of Roman Britain made by the Picts in their curraghs.[1]

Sutton Hoo

Green published Sutton Hoo: The Excavation of a Royal Ship-Burial in 1963,[9] considered a major work about the Sutton Hoo ship-burial.[1] It benefited from his considerable experience in boat-handling along Western Ireland and the entirety of the North Sea, giving him a realistic perspective on the capabilities of Anglo-Saxon ships, and was said to reflect "adventurous, though scientific, sea-faring."[1]

Sutton Hoo: The Excavation of a Royal Ship-Burial was reviewed as a popular account of the excavation,[10] that offered "a convenient peg on which to hang the more original chapters of the book".[11] The first half of the work retold the story, published elsewhere and in more detail, of the burial; as the archaeologist Brian Hope-Taylor noted, "it is as though the British Museum's Provisional Guide, which most of us have known since it was so-thick, has suddenly filled out on reaching its middle teens",[12] and as another reviewer said, "[t]here is no originality in his conclusions that the burial took place in the third quarter of the seventh century, and that the person it commemorates was a prominent member, indeed almost certainly a king, of the East Anglian royal family."[11] Green "claim[ed] no originality for these chapters of his book";[13] his original contribution came in the second half of the book, where he discussed ship-construction from the fall of the Roman Empire to the Viking Age, and the problems of navigating the North Sea in keelless boats such as the Sutton Hoo ship.[11] Green concluded that the Sutton Hoo ship was not as well constructed as were later Viking ships, could not have supported a sail, and could not have safely withstood open sailing in the North Sea.[14] Travel from East Anglia to Schleswig, near modern day Denmark, would have required hugging the coastline, he suggested,[11] resulting in a trip that could have taken up to two months.[15]

Publications

  • Green, Charles (1949). "The Birdlip Early Iron Age Burials: A Review". Proceedings of the Prehistoric Society. Prehistoric Society. XV: 188–190. doi:10.1017/S0079497X00019289.
  • Green, Charles & Hutchinson, J. N. (1960). "Archaeological Evidence". In Oddy, William Andrew. The Making of the Broads: A Reconsideration of Their Origin in the Light of New Evidence. Royal Geographical Society Research Series. 3. London: John Murray Ltd. pp. 113–146.
  • Green, Charles (1963). Sutton Hoo: The Excavation of a Royal Ship-Burial. New York: Barnes & Novle.
  • Green, Charles; Rollo-Smith, Stephen; Crowfoot, Elisabeth & Wells, Calvin (December 1984). "The Excavation of Eighteen Round Barrows near Shrewton, Wiltshire". Proceedings of the Prehistoric Society. Prehistoric Society. 50: 255–318. doi:10.1017/S0079497X00007556.

References

  1. 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 A. 1973.
  2. ↑ Agutter 2011.
  3. ↑ Johnson 1983, p. 1.
  4. ↑ Green 1949.
  5. ↑ Darling & Gurney 1993, p. xvi.
  6. ↑ Green & Hutchinson 1960.
  7. ↑ Green et al. 1984, p. 255.
  8. ↑ Green et al. 1984.
  9. ↑ Green 1963.
  10. ↑ Griffin 1964, p. 1443.
  11. 1 2 3 4 Myres 1965, p. 572.
  12. ↑ Hope-Taylor 1964, p. 67.
  13. ↑ Fisher 1964, p. 337.
  14. ↑ Strayer 1964, p. 121A.
  15. ↑ Glass 1965, p. 304.

Bibliography

  • A., P. (1973). "Charles Green (1901–1972)". Norfolk Archaeology. Norfolk and Norwich Archaeological Society. XXXV: 515–516.
  • Agutter, Doreen M. K. (2011). "Archaeology at Walsingham Priory 1853–1961". The Walsingham Archives. Retrieved 13 June 2017.
  • Darling, Margaret J. & Gurney, David (1993). "Caister-on-Sea: Excavations by Charles Green, 1951–55" (PDF). East Anglian Archaeology. 60. ISSN 0307-2460.
  • Fisher, Douglas John Vivian (1964). "Review: Sutton Hoo: The Excavation of a Royal Ship-Burial". History. 49 (167): 337–338. JSTOR 24404435.
  • Glass, Sandra A. (December 1965). "Review: Sutton Hoo: The Excavation of a Royal Ship-Burial". Archaeology. Archaeological Institute of America. 18 (4): 302, 304. JSTOR 41667571.
  • Griffin, James B. (December 1964). "Review: Sutton Hoo: The Excavation of a Royal Ship-Burial". American Anthropologist. American Anthropological Association. 66 (6): 1443–1444. JSTOR 668039.
  • Hope-Taylor, Brian (March 1964). "Review: Sutton Hoo: The Excavation of a Royal Ship-Burial". Antiquity. XXXVIII (149): 67–68. doi:10.1017/S0003598X00068824.
  • Johnson, Stephen (1983). "Burgh Castle: Excavations by Charles Green 1958–61" (PDF). East Anglian Archaeology. 20. ISBN 0-905594-07-X.
  • Myres, John Nowell Linton (July 1965). "Review: Sutton Hoo: The Excavation of a Royal Ship-Burial". The English Historical Review. Oxford University Press. LXXX (316): 572–573. JSTOR 561915.
  • Strayer, Joseph R. (March 1964). "Review: Sutton Hoo: The Excavation of a Royal Ship-Burial". American Scientist. Society of the Sigma XI. 52 (1): 120A–121A. JSTOR 27838975.
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