Bronze Age spearhead found at Cirencester sewage works
A rare Bronze Age spearhead has been found by workers while developing a wetland in Gloucestershire.
Experts discovered it at Cirencester Sewage Works, near South Cerney, earlier this year and on 10 May estimated it is about 3,500 years old... continues...
BU archaeologists uncover 6,000-year-old long barrow in the Cotswolds
A 6,000-YEAR-OLD PREHISTORIC BURIAL MONUMENT HAS BEEN UNCOVERED NORTHEAST OF CIRENCESTER IN THE COTSWOLDS BY ARCHAEOLOGISTS FROM BOURNEMOUTH UNIVERSITY... continues...
A new attraction which offers visitors the chance to experience life as an Iron Age villager opens this weekend. The Cinderbury settlement near Coleford in the Forest of Dean, includes several roundhouses, an iron smelting furnace, pottery kiln and clay-domed bread oven... continues...
A team of university archaeologists has uncovered the remains of an Iron Age settlement in the grounds of a Gloucestershire castle.
The group, from the University of Bristol, found fragments of human bones and prehistoric flint tools in the gardens of Berkeley castle... continues...
Gloucester Archaeology Unit is threatened with closure. Gloucester City council are currently considering a number of ways to save money for next year, and the Archaeology Unit is a prime target... continues...
There are two round barrows here (you'll have to look carefully though, as they are less than half a metre high), set close to the crest of a hill, and they were found to conceal some interesting burials. The smr record on 'Magic' says:
One of these barrows was partially excavated in 1847, when eight skeletons were found, lying in seven stone-lined graves arranged in a circle around the circumference of the mound. One of the skeletons was accompanied by a spearhead. Three feet below the top of the mound was another skeleton. Finds from the barrow included about 30 yellow glass and amber beads, several iron spearheads, a shield boss, a saucer-brooch, the decorative plates from three brooches, silver earrings and a bronze ring. The site was re examined in 1869 by Playne, who claimed that the centre portion of the barrow was undisturbed,
and reported finding charcoal, bones, potsherds and worked flints at ground level.
This doesn't really enlighten us as to when the burials were made? It sounds rather like reuse of a bronze-age barrow?
What's it like living in an Iron Age village? How did they keep warm and make tools? Did they live more rewarding lives? A re-created Iron Age village [at Cinderbury] allows visitors to stay and find out.
Bill Thayer has put the text of this Victorian antiquarian's book onto the internet. In places he has kindly linked back to this site. Though I don't think George Witts himself thought of this.
[With thanks to Bill Thayer himself for updating this link].
Mystified by the appearance of a stone pillar protruding slightly through the earth as he was preparing a new layout for the lawn in front of the premises, Mr C.J. H. Lucy, of Teddington Cross Hands Garage, consulted an old ordnance map and realised he had made a discovery. When the earth around the column was removed to a depth of six feet - as yet it is not known how far the pillar is still further embedded - it was seen that the stone was 56 inches in circumference at the top and 70 inches lower down, and was deeply pitted with holes indicating that it may have borne projecting signs at an earlier date.
According to the map, it is named "Tibble Stone," and Mr D.W. Herdman, curator of the Cheltenham Museum and Art Gallery, who has made a careful examination, states that local folklore records that a giant at the back of Dixton Hill is said to have thrown this huge stone towards the Severn at Tewkesbury. His foot slipped, says the legend, and the mark remains on the side of Dixton Hill, the stone falling at Teddington Cross Hands.
Mr Herdman told the "Chronicle": "Mr Lucy is very anxious that the discovery should be dealt with sympathetically and I have suggested to him that the stone should be kept exactly in situ and raised so that it may stand prominently in the centre of what is to become the lawn in front of his garage."
[...] On reference to Bryant's Map of Gloucestershire, published in 1824, the theory [of the stone as boundary-stone] is confirmed as the stone is at the boundary of Tibaldstone Hundred.
From the Cheltenham Chronicle, 17th April 1948.
Why does this look much bigger than the existing stone (if it does?)?