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THE WILTSHIRE ARCHAEOLOGICAL AND NATURAL HISTORY MAGAZINE 



But we are given some indication of how they 

 divided their labours. In Ben Cunnington's obituary 

 we are told: 



His was not, perhaps, the mind that leapt first to 

 the meaning of the evidence exposed, nor his the 

 hand that drew the plans or built the sherds into 

 cups and pots before the winter fire. But his was the 

 hand that welcomed you to the garden room in Long 

 Street, or to the tent pitched in the summertime 

 beside a remote earthwork in the downs, and his 

 was the voice that greeted you so cheerily. (Anon 

 1950, 499-500) 



R.H. Cunnington gave a fuller picture of their 

 partnership during the late 1920s: 



At that time their respective roles were well defined. 

 He would engage the diggers, never more than half a 

 dozen, and organise the work to economise labour as 



much as possible but without scamping it fhe] 



would usually act as a pioneer, with one of the men 

 opening up the ground for subsequent excavation... 

 ...Maud's part was to decide what should be dug, 

 and in what order, and to exercise general 



supervision Neither actually dug unless to take 



out some ticklish object needing special care... 

 ...When anything of special importance appeared, 



W.E. V.Young, the foreman digger who was very 



skilful and experienced, was called upon to take over 

 with the trowel. (R.H. Cunnington 1954, 229-30; and 

 see also Cunnington 1908a, 2) 



After excavation Maud was again firmly in 

 charge. She studied the pottery and other finds, 

 drew up the records and wrote the excavation 

 report. It is strange that it was Maud not Ben who 

 wrote the reports, given that Ben had worked as a 

 journalist with the Central News Agency, and 

 continued to write on historical topics. R.H. 

 Cunnington suggested that Ben's forte was as a 

 raconteur rather than as a writer, although he did 

 scrutinise the reports: 



...but only to correct the style, not the matter: his 

 admiration for her and her work was too deep to ever 

 call that in question (1954, 230) 



This was an admiration that R.H. Cunnington 

 obviously did not share, since although he praised 

 the completeness of Maud's excavation reports he 

 stated that she 'had no gift for writing' (1954, 230). 

 This judgement seems overly harsh and does little 

 justice to the swiftness with which her writing style 

 and archaeological knowledge developed. 



Manton Barrow and All Cannings 

 Cross 



Manton Barrow, an Early Bronze Age burial mound 

 excavated in 1906, was the first report that Maud 

 Cunnington wrote. This report (Cunnington 1908a 

 and b) covered the main points of the excavation: 

 the size of the trenches; the location of finds; a 

 description of the interment; notes from specialists; 

 and detailed descriptions of the grave goods. 

 However, there were no plans or sections, or 

 informative photographs of the trenches. The 

 interpretation was minimal and the writing style 

 was flowery and verbose: 



..there are the flint tools of mysterious palaeolithic 

 men from the gravels of Savernake Forest, the 

 stupendous and no less mysterious Avebury temple 

 and Silbury Hill, the cromlechs and the barrows - 

 derelicts stranded from the unfathomed depths of 

 time. It is the human element in these relics of the 

 past that make them of surpassing interest - even of 

 fascination to us; they are the labours of human hands, 

 the creation of human brains, the embodiment of the 

 ideas and of the aspirations, the hopes and the fears 

 of men and women like and yet unlike ourselves - our 

 predecessors in the land, if not actually our ancestors. 

 (Cunnington 1908b, 1-2) 



In Maud Cunnington's defence, this was her 

 first report and all its faults are those common to 

 excavation reports in county journals of the time. 

 It would seem that she herself was dissatisfied with 

 her presentation of the evidence. Her next report, 

 on the Iron Age site of Oliver's Camp, was published 

 in the same volume of WANHM (Cunnington 

 1908c) and the style had changed dramatically. 

 Rather than evoking the shades of the Bronze Age 

 folk, Maud Cunnington presented a history of 

 antiquarian interest and conjecture about the site, 

 before turning to the work of Pitt-Rivers for 

 guidance (1908c, 416-7). Ken Annable suggested 

 that these references to Pitt-Rivers are the key to 

 the change in her style. She had met Pitt-Rivers 

 during his excavations at the Wansdyke some years 

 earlier (R.H. Cunnington 1954, 229), but Ken 

 Annable feels that between the Manton Barrow and 

 Oliver's Camp excavations, Maud Cunnington had 

 read Excavations in Cranborne Chase and realised 

 that her own style was too romantic and 

 insufficiently scientific (pers. comm.). Certainly, in 

 the Oliver's Camp report she included plans and 

 sections (Figures 2 and 3) and, unusually for 



