 Previous 20 | Showing 21-33 of 33 news posts. Most recent first
Preserving Pitt Rivers' Bronze Age Pots in Wiltshire
A major conservation project by Wiltshire County Council and two Wiltshire museums to preserve over 100 Bronze Age pots has reached the halfway point.
More than a hundred pots were discovered near Stonehenge, Avebury and other historical sites across Wiltshire by the Victorian archaeology pioneers, Sir Richard Colt Hoare, William Cunnington and General Augustus Henry Lane-Fox Pitt Rivers.
More with pictures at....
http://www.24hourmuseum.org.uk/nwh/ART14495.html
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Branksome Stone Saved
http://www.poole-libdem.fsnet.co.uk/Wards/Bourne_Valley/bourne_valley.htm
One of the worries about the move of Branksome Library was the future of the Branksome Stone. The Branksome Stone is a neolithic relic that has been housed in the grounds of the library for a number of years and is the oldest known item in the history of Poole. Thanks to concerned residents, Poole Council and the East Dorset Housing Association, the new owners of the site, this important artefact from the past will remain available to the people of Poole.
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Stonehenge Tunnel Wins Instant Welcome From Archaeologists
http://news.scotsman.com/latest.cfm?id=5513829
Proposals to divert through a tunnel the busy road currently running alongside Stonehenge were today welcomed by archaeologists.
Archaeologist and broadcaster Julian Richards, who was at the World Heritage Site this afternoon to hear more about the plans, said today's announcement was extremely welcome news.
"This is a great step forward. We can put Stonehenge back into a more natural setting so people can appreciate what a wonderful site it is.
"You can stand here today and hear the traffic all around you – hopefully that will all change."
Chris Jones, leading the project for the Highways Agency, said it was a "historic day for the stones".
Environmental issues were a primary concern when considering the options and a bored tunnel would help to make sure the archaeology was undisturbed, he said.
"It is restoring the landscape to its particular historic context," he added.
Professor John Barrett, head of the department of archaeology and prehistory at Sheffield University, said the option chosen was better than alternatives of a tunnel cut from above or a highly expensive, longer bored tunnel.
"Stonehenge and its landscape allow us to encounter something of the mystery and power of the prehistoric world. This proposal opens the way for a far greater appreciation of that world," he added.
Arts minister Tessa Blackstone welcomed today's announcement, saying: "It will ensure Stonehenge is reunited with its surrounding monuments in their natural downland landscape setting, protect the site from heavy traffic and make possible the construction of a world class visitor centre."
Sir Neil Cossons, chairman of English Heritage which runs the site, said: "Today's news is a monumental moment in Stonehenge's 5,000 year history.
"It means that Stonehenge gets the dignified setting it so justly deserves, the roads are made safer and the core area of the World Heritage Site landscape is reunited."
English Heritage, the National Trust, the Highways Agency and local authorities are now expected to work on the tunnel's detailed design before publication of Draft Orders in the Spring
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Moor dig finds Roman iron factory
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/2279227.stm
A huge Roman iron factory has been unearthed at a remote spot on the southern edge of Exmoor.
Scientists believe the site near Brayford would have supplied markets right across the Roman Empire.
Archaeologists have found furnaces and equipment buried which would have been used to smelt hundreds of tonnes of iron nearly 2,000 years ago.
Preparations are being made to carry out further excavations.
Was it being operated by the Roman imperial army or being run by a local entrepreneur?
Dr Gill Juleff
A team of 20 students and staff from the University of Exeter's archaeology department, plus local volunteers, have been carrying out the dig.
The team has dug a trench over 10 feet (3 metres) deep across a platform and through a heap of discarded iron slag.
The trench has revealed the scale of iron production on the site.
Pottery fragments found within the trench have also indicated that much of the activity at the site took place during the second and third centuries AD.
Supplying markets
Excavation director Dr Gill Juleff said: "One of the questions the team will be addressing is if the Roman army were overseeing and directing iron production.
"Was it being operated by the Roman imperial army or being run by a local entrepreneur, supplying iron to markets throughout the Roman Empire?
"Certainly the amount of metal produced here was far greater than would have been needed locally."
The four-year project is being funded by English Heritage and run by the Exmoor National Park Authority, the University of Exeter and the National Trust.
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Unearthed, the prince of Stonehenge
A prehistoric prince with gold ear-rings has been found near Stonehenge a few yards away from the richest early Bronze Age burial in Britain.
Earlier this year, archaeologists found an aristocratic warrior, also with gold ear-rings, on Salisbury Plain and speculated that he may have been an ancient king of Stonehenge.
The body was laid to rest 4,300 years ago during the construction of the monument, along with stone arrow heads and slate wristguards that protected the arm from the recoil of the bow. Archaeologists named him the Amesbury Archer.
see the full story at.......
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2002/08/21/nskul121.xml&sSheet=/news/2002/08/21/ixnewstop.html
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Rescue begins for seabed relics from 6000BC
http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk_news/story/0,3604,722701,00.html
Maev Kennedy, arts and heritage correspondent
Monday May 27, 2002
The Guardian
A time capsule from the stone age, described by English Heritage chief archaeologist David Miles as unique in Britain and of international importance, is threatened by a combination of changing sea levels, dredging and trawling, and the wakes of boats and ferries crossing the Solent straits between the Hampshire coast and the Isle of Wight - as well as the effects of the weekend's gales.
Parts of the site lost six inches of protective silt and peat this winter alone.
On the sea bed, which was dry land until 6,000BC, prehistoric stone tools still lie where they were made or dropped, among the roots of giant oak trees. The first finds, including flint arrows and knives, recently brought up by archaeologist divers, are so perfectly preserved they look like modern replicas.
The first excavators were blue lobsters, which archaeologists gradually realised were kicking out ancient man made stone tools, as they dug themselves into the muddy seabed.
Tree roots and branches have come up with the marks of stone tools. Finds of organic material, including timber, leather, and animal and possibly human remains, are confidently expected, preserved in the deep layers of silt and peat.
Further surveying and excavation work planned by the Hampshire and Wight Trust for Maritime Archaeology has become a giant piece of rescue archaeology, as material is laid bare by every tide: once exposed to air, any organic material starts decaying instantly.
Archaeologists had believed all trace of human habitation had been swept away in the inundation which created the Isle of Wight. Recent discoveries prove that the land flooded more gradually, as the sea broke in through the sand bars protecting the salt marshes. However, the flooding was fast enough to force the rapid abandonment of habitation sites, flint working sites, and killing sites where prey species were trapped, slaughtered and butchered for thousands of years: the date of the finds ranges from stone hand axes 30,000 years old, to the flint tools made by the last inhabitants before the water broke through.
On the Isle of Wight, county archaeologists Frank Basford and Rebecca Loading are patrolling hundreds of endangered sites in the inter-tidal zones, recording and recovering artefacts which include ancient causeways and fish traps, and a tangle of Roman rope in the mud of a modern harbour.
More modern objects from countless shipwrecks are also at risk. Recent finds include a syringe from the medicine chest of a 17th century ship's surgeon, for injecting mercury into the urethra of any luckless sailor who had contracted syphilis.
English Heritage will be monitoring and grant aiding the work, as an Act of Parliament, which becomes law on July 1, extends its powers to cover maritime archaeology.
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Sacred pool ringed by totem poles in Scotland's ritual glen
British Archaeology news
Issue 64, April 2002.
An early Bronze Age timber circle containing an inner ring of totem poles set around a deep, sacred pool is thought to have once stood at the head of the Kilmartin Valley in Argyll, site of one of Scotland's richest concentrations of prehistoric ritual monuments.
Post-excavation analysis of the pits and postholes found when the site was excavated in the 1990s (BA November 1997) has concluded that the timber circle was far more unusual than was initially thought. The circle stood on a terrace overlooking the valley; and at its heart was a large hollow nearly 7 metres wide and 2 metres deep. Now full of peat, the hollow must have contained standing water over a long period of time.
Around this pool was an inner ring of post-holes, thought to have once held totems. At the base of one was a cremation burial under a stone. From the outer ring of 30 oak posts, some 47 metres in diameter, a timber-lined processional avenue appears to have snaked down to the valley floor.
Clare Ellis, in charge of post-excavation at the Edinburgh firm AOC Archaeology, said the pool was likely to have been a 'votive pool' - a phenomenon thought to be unparalleled at any other known stone or timber circle in Britain. No metalwork was found in the pool, but offerings of 'organic materials' such as sacrificial animals could have been made, from which no evidence has survived. Traces of wood in the pool may have belonged to a fence.
In and around the timber circle were six contemporary cyst burials. In one, a woman in her 20s or 30s was buried with a decorated food vessel. The decoration on the pot had been created by pressing a fingernail repeatedly into the wet clay.
Traces of much earlier monuments were also found underlying the circle. One end of an early Neolithic cursus - a ritual procession monument - was uncovered at the edge of the terrace, a place with a magnificent view across the Kilmartin Valley. The massive structure, some 45 metres wide, was defined not by banks and ditches but by hundreds of close-set oak posts. By the time the circle was built some 1,500 years later, these posts had no doubt disappeared; but the memory of the sacred importance of the site had probably survived. Also found were a number of late Mesolithic cooking pits containing charcoal dated to about 4,500 BC, perhaps marking the site of an overnight camp.
Surviving monuments in the Kilmartin Valley include a 'linear cemetery' of Bronze Age cairns, several standing stones, a stone circle and numerous elaborate rock art panels.
http://www.britarch.ac.uk/ba/ba64/news.shtml#item3
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Concrete for a new footpath to the top of Glastonbury Tor
Wednesday, 2 January, 2002, 13:06 GMT
Trust defends Tor work
The National Trust has defended a decision to use concrete for a new footpath to the top of Glastonbury Tor, Somerset.
More than £300,000 has been found to pay for the restorations at the Tor.
Huge visitor numbers have led to erosion on the existing route up the hill - the Isle of Avalon of ancient legend.
But conservationists say the path should be re-laid with wood chippings, not concrete.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/hi/english/uk/england/newsid_1738000/1738766.stm
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Deep road tunnel
Stonehenge hopes for deep road tunnel
By Ben Webster, Transport Correspondent
THE Government will consider making a road tunnel near Stonehenge much deeper than originally planned to avoid damaging neolithic and Bronze Age remains.
The Highways Agency, which manages England’s trunk roads, has admitted that its previous proposal to excavate and then cover a 1.2-mile ditch only 200 yards from the stones could damage burial mounds and medieval field boundaries in the area. Ministers pledged three years ago to bury the A303, the heavily congested holiday route to Devon, where it passes the World Heritage Site. In 1989 the Commons Public Accounts Committee described Stonehenge’s traffic-snarled setting as a national disgrace.
Stonehenge lies between the A303 and the A344, close to the junction of the two roads. Under the plan for the site, the A344 would be closed, the visitor centre relocated out of sight of the stones and the A303 turned into a dual carriageway.
The “cut and cover” tunnelling method was chosen because it was estimated to be £20 million cheaper than boring a much deeper tunnel. Under the original plan, engineering works so near to the standing stones would have blighted the area for three years. However, the Highways Agency has now agreed to reconsider the costs and benefits of boring the tunnel and has asked the contractors Costain and Balfour Beatty to produce a report by July.
“It would be cheaper to do a ‘cut and cover’ but there is an issue over the extra environmental gain from a bored tunnel,” Ed Bradley, the Highway Agency’s project manager, said. He added that evidence was emerging that bored tunnels were cheaper than originally thought, and that the extra cost was likely to be closer to £10 million than £20 million.
However, the Highways Agency is resisting pressure from heritage and environmental groups to make the tunnel twice as long as planned because this could double the overall cost of £125 million for the seven-mile project.
Kate Fielden, an archaeologist advising the Council for the Protection of Rural England, said that a “cut and cover” tunnel could destroy a group of burial mounds at the western entrance to the tunnel. She said: “‘Cut and cover’ would change the landscape right beside Stonehenge. A bored tunnel would be better but the one currently proposed is far too short.”
Ms Fielden said that Stonehenge was a national treasure, but the Government wanted to do a cheap deal for a new dual carriageway even if it meant damaging two thirds of the historical area around the stones.
A public inquiry into the scheme is likely to be held next year and construction could start in 2005, with the tunnel and new Winterbourne Stoke bypass opening in 2008.
http://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/0,,2-258161,00.html
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A white horse, 100 metres high, is to be carved into the chalk downs at Folkestone
Turf war over Byers' white horse
http://politics.guardian.co.uk/localgovernment/story/0,9061,675788,00.html
A white horse, 100 metres high, is to be carved into the chalk downs at Folkestone to greet Channel tunnel users because Stephen Byers, the transport secretary, believes it will "boost local pride".
Objections by environment groups, including the government's advisers English Nature, were brushed aside because Mr Byers considers the horse would have an emotional and symbolic value for the town.
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Irish farmer discovers 1,500 years old tunnels (souterrains)
The following story was reported at..
http://www.unison.ie/corkman/stories.php3?ca=40&si=673169&issue_id=6727
A KILNAMARTYRA farmer got a little more than he bargained for when he discovered two underground tunnels last week whilst making a gallop to train his greyhounds.
The tunnels situated directly beside a ditch are over a meter in height and particularly well preserved.
“I was told the tunnels were over 1,500 years old. I plan to make the tunnels safe and leave them there for future generations.
“I have marked the tunnels into a map and the Archeologists are sending me out a plaque to erect near the tunnels,” said John.
Ursula Egan, of the Cork Archeological Survey group, which is based in University College Cork, visited the site.
Ms Egan described the tunnels as ‘souterrains‚, the French word for an underground chamber.
“They are in a remarkable condition and probably date back to the time of Saint Patrick making them about 1,500 years old.
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Aubrey Bailey, 'Mr Stonehenge' dies
Daily Telegraph Obituaries
(Filed: 22/12/2001)
AUBREY BAILEY, who has died aged 89, was perhaps best known for the work he directed at Stonehenge between 1958 and 1964
The work involved re-erecting, in their original position, stones that had fallen or become dislodged within recorded history - the earliest record dating from 1690.
The main "Trilithon" stones, weighing some 45 tons, had to be encased in a further 15 tons of steel so they could be lifted into position. To do this, one of Britain's largest cranes - designed to lift aircraft - was borrowed from the Ministry of Defence. Bailey's work at Stonehenge brought him to public attention and he was amused to receive a letter from an admirer in America addressed simply to "Mr Stonehenge, London". The nickname stuck for many years.
Thomas Aubrey Bailey was born on January 20 1912 at Hanley, Staffordshire.
In 1953 he was promoted head of the Ancient Monuments branch, with a staff of 1,400. Boundlessly enthusiastic, he led by example, and combined his love of motoring (he owned a series of Armstrong Siddeleys) with his work by travelling to the 300 ancient monuments in his care as often as he could.
Full account
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Previous 20 | Showing 21-33 of 33 news posts. Most recent first |
Born in Cornwall 1966.
Main interests include Hillforts and barrows. I try to cover mainly Cornish sites but about five times a year get to visit Dorset where my wifes family live. Fairly keen on folklore and earth mysteries etc.
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