Tintagel

Interim statement on the 1990s research excavations at Tintagel Castle and Tintagel Churchyard, Cornwall, UK. Significant new evidence of early burial  was found during a first season of excavation in the churchyard in 1990 which links the  mainland with the 5th and 6th century settlement on Tintagel headland.

Illustrated account of a second season of the research excavations at Tintagel Churchyard, North Cornwall, UK in 1991. Significiant new discoveries were made revealing an early cemetery and later burials as well as the foundation walls of an early pre-Norman church. The importance of the early graves indicate a site of major importance linked to the post-Roman setttlement on Tintagel headland and the implications of an early Christian site are discussed. The project was the 1990 Winner of a British Archaeological Award for Best Sponsorship of Archaeology and the educational outreach programme which took place during fieldwork.

Illustrated account of season one of a research excavation of Mound C in Tintagel Churchyard, North Cornwall, UK, in 1990. Preliminary results discovered an important early cemetery at this location with links to the 5th and 6th century settlement on Tintagel headland. A second season in 1991 is reported in a report published in 1992.

On his final visit to Britain, Rudolf Steiner’s schedule of lecturing was hectic. He delivered three lectures a day during the Anthroposophical Society’s Summer School at Torquay (11-22 August 1924) - but that is another story. Steiner took one day out of that busy schedule to be a tourist for a day. The decision took him as far west as he ever ventured in his lifetime - to the west cost of Cornwall. Tintagel is the legendary home of King Arthur, Merlin, the sword Excalibur, the Lady of the Lake, the Knights of the Round Table, Sir Lancelot, Queen Guinevere, and the court of Camelot. Ashley dates the Arthurian period as between 400-600 AD but there is no extant documentation to distinguish between myth, legend, and veridical history. Midway through the Torquay Summer School, on Sunday August 17th, Rudolf Steiner declared “I want to go to King Arthur”.  A cavalcade of three cars ventured forth from the southern beachside resort town of Torquay, across the verdant moors of Dartmoor, to the spectacularly positioned Tintagel, on the west coast of Cornwall. The journey took them through the centre of Dartmoor to Tavistock, then across to Boscastle, and down to Tintagel). It is today a drive of 69 miles and of two and a quarter hours.

'Welcome to Tintagel, the birthplace of King Arthur' is a phrase often repeated at this small village on the north coast of Cornwall where legend, childhood stories and merchandise all serve to attract thousands of visitors per year. As 'a place to go', the area provides stunning coastal scenery, a romantic ruined castle and a highly commercialised village. Tintagel Island, owned by the Duchy of Cornwall but managed by English Heritage, plays centre stage as the 'birthplace' in question. On-site, the character of Arthur is largely debunked as a literary phenomenon and, furthermore, a survey of day-trippers revealed that visitors were left in an interpretive limbo — arriving with ideas of Arthur and leaving knowing little about Tintagel.

Whilst the aesthetics of the castle and scenery go some way towards mitigating against disappointment, on site encounters with kitsch representations of the past combine with more amorphous senses of pseudo-spiritual atmospheres as well as experiences of walking, eating and drinking to ultimately provide a 'grand day out'. The marketing ephemera and heritage presentation all serve to create, reinforce and suppress different identities of place which are revealed as being a fairly cohesive package of Celtic-Arthuriana. This paper questions the ways in which visitors' expectation and imagination are mediated through experience of place.

Charles Thomas (1928-2016) was a Cornishman and archaeologist, whose career from the 1950s spanned nearly seven decades. This period saw major developments that underpin the structures of archaeology in Britain today, in many of which he played a pivotal part. He campaigned for the Chair of Cornish Studies at the University of Exeter, which he then held from 1972 until retirement, after teaching
archaeology at Edinburgh and Leicester Universities.
The ‘Intellectual Adventure in Archaeology’ was to Charles the mental stimulation of developing narratives for the past, especially in the areas in which he was a leading authority, including the early church in Britain,
the early medieval period more generally, and Cornish studies. The contributions to this volume demonstrate the extent to which his scholarship and character has underpinned the work of others, in Cornwall and beyond. Contributions come from life-long friends and
from archaeologists at all of stages of their careers.Their subjects are predominantly Cornish, Gwithian, Tintagel and Scilly, but also range from Scotland to Southern France. The whole is brought to life by a series of Charles’ watercolours, previously unpublished.
The volume should appeal to all those interested in the development of archaeology in the later 20th century and of Cornwall from prehistory to its distinctive present.

This paper examines the key construct of an identity through images by looking at monuments and sculptures of pictorial representations within cultural heritage, by using the partial defacement of the recent construct Merlin statue by the organisation English Heritage at Tintagel Castle in May 2016, which was the first part of their Visitor Improvement Project.

Through examining previous acts of iconoclasm and the motives such as the Bamiyan Buddhas and the Pentascosa Rock art, this paper has compared the similarities behind the motives, such as an obtrusion of a cultural identity and the question over ownership of the object or site. In addition, personal observation including the author’s companion, have been made based on fieldwork taken in August 11th, 2016 at Tintagel Castle in order to gain some personal insight.

Through examining three viewpoints based on the issues and themes surrounding iconoclasm, such as authenticity and identity, heritage management, and lastly, the aesthetic experience through rockart, one has been able to create a critical evaluation on all three viewpoints within the paper. Through the concept of nationalism, the paper has been able to exemplify the motivations behind these iconoclastic acts, such as concern over ownership within the sector, and English Heritage’s previous protests by Cornish protest groups, who have objected previously against the organisation in the past. By examining the planning application, previous visitor numbers, and the commercialism of Tintagel Castle and through briefly examines the concept of authenticity, with regards to the Cornish-English divide, this paper has determined that the construction of such tangible objects within the heritage sector, represents an obtrusion of an ideological sense of a cultural identity, hence why these vandalistic acts occur.

A recent assessment of the evidence, old and new, for the nature and dates of the main sites within the Tintagel complex appeared first in Antiquity (Thomas 1988a). The paper ended by stating that ‘properly planned and rigidly controlled excavation … is not just desirable, but overdue’, and a second article (Thomas 1990) demonstrated that the large quantity of finds from the post-Roman occupation on Tintagel Island can now be related to structured commerce, linking Ireland and Atlantic Britain to several regions in the Mediterranean during the 5th and 6th centuries AD. During 1988/9 Tintagel Castle (that is, the Island and the mainland wards) as a Property in Care administered by English Heritage moved up to 7th place in the table of visitor-numbers, with a total of 140,000 and a combined admissionsplus-retail income of £162,000 (source: E.H. Marketing 1989). However, since it is abundantly clear that the archaeological importance of the whole site-complex must outrank the commercia...