Time Team find tile in Colworth ...

This fragment of tile was found by Time Team and shown during their 2009 season. It's from a Roman site in Colworth, Bedfordshire. It's very clear from the photograph that the tile is made from a common shelly fabric, well known by those who work on tile down south.

http://www.channel4.com/history/microsites/T/timeteam/2009/colworth/colworth-found.html

Leeds International Medieval Congress - 13th July

Brick and Tile in the Middle Ages
Monday July 13, 2009
Leeds University

Web: http://www.leeds.ac.uk/ims/imc/index.html

Brick and tile were extensively used in the middle ages in north-western Europe both in cities and in rural buildings. Dating techniques are becoming more sophisticated and two of the papers look at the relatively new technique of optical luminescence and the insights this provides into the dating of early brick in England.

Sponsor: British Brick Society

Speakers:
Luminescence Dating of Medieval Essex Brick Thomas Gurling, Luminesence Laboratory, Department of Archaeology, Durham University

The Origin of Ceramic Building Materials for the Early Medieval Church at Chipping Ongar, Essex: A Case Study of Thermoluminescence Dating Applied to Building Archaeology Sophie Blain, Université de Bordeaux

Roof Tile and Brick in Medieval York Sandra Garside-Neville

British theses online - ETHos

The British Library are hosting a PDF download service for British doctorates. Quite a few are available for free, some are charged for, and a minority will charge for digitising costs; it depends on the University supplying it. Some universities (eg. Oxford) have not signed up to the service, and need to be contacted direct for supply.

However, this means that some 'classic' brick and tile doctorates are now very easily available, for example Betts' brick and tile in york up to the 18th century, and McWhirr's Roman brick and tile. These are already scanned in, and available for download straightaway. Others have yet to be scanned and it will take BL at least 30 days, if not more, to do it. But at least it's opening up access!

The service is available at: http://ethos.bl.uk/

Recreating Roman Building Materials

Over on Roman Army Talk, a couple of members have been re-creating Roman building materials for their displays at shows:

http://www.romanarmytalk.com/rat/viewtopic.php?f=20&t=26666&p=239920#p239920