Helen of The Roads An engineered road thought to have connected the Wrekin and Old Oswestry hillforts pre-dates R*man construction by several hundred years according to a summation of excavation newspaper reports (regarding Bayston Hill quarry) in the new Fortean Times, FT279
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Season 2 now online Already up to day 2 on 360 Productions' YouTube channel (see links).
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Colin Renfrew lecture this Saturday September 18th in Kirkwall Rown Hall
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Forteviot cemetery Had been thought to be Bronze Age but according to Dr. Kenneth Brophy in a talk tonight the C14 dates came back Fiday and place it in the Neolithic with dates in the range 3000-2800 B.C.E. pre-dating the henge and the timber circle
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funding for underwater archaeology Orkneyjar's report here http://ow.ly/1eGbP - much clearer pics than "The Orcadian".
As the only other NMRS for Damsay is a site the excavator thought to be a Norse castle but is now believed to have been a broch it is probable that the orthostats in one photo could relate to this. Though a short talk was given on preliminary Rising Tide findings beside these nowt has appeared in print or in the report, so from memory the Bay of Firth has in it likely chambered mounds and (one or more) stone circles
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a Wideford Hill site re-discovered ? "Orkney Today" and "The Orcadian" of June 4th 2009 report the discovery of a potential tomb at Heathfield, beehive shaped and built straight into the bedrock. There is a lintelled space opposite the corbelled cell. Way back "The Orcadian" of March 1st 1864 reports that drainage works on a new Wideford Hill farm revealed a large coverstone in the cut with cells beneath. A roughly 2½' long 2' wide central passage, blocked with stones at the northern end, ran NNW/SSE The southern end widened out, opening into two chambers in opposite directions, the southern one with a floor 4" above both the northern one and the passage. Edge-set slabs form the sides and ends of the northern chamber, which measures 4" by 2½" and some 2'2" high and has a reduced entrance some 2½' across . Except for one edge-set slab at the back the southern chamber is of walling, and it measures 3½" by 2'10" by 2' and the passage enters directly into it. George Petrie took measurements and made a plan of it. As with the present site nothing marked the site on the surface.
If, as seems likely, this is the same site then there is less potential for new finds here.
Caroline Wickham-Jones differs "as this is away from the farm and not related to any previous drainage" and asks "whether there is more than one of these in the vicinity"
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Late Sea Ingress
A radically different picture of the prehistoric landscape around Orkney's World Heritage Site is beginning to emerge – a landscape which perhaps didn't feature the Stenness and Harray lochs.
Preliminary results from an archaeo-environmental project indicate that, prior to 1500BC, the Stenness loch was an area of wet marshland surrounding small pools or lochans.
http://www.orkneyjar.com/archaeology/sealevel2008.htm
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Silsbury pill Geophysics has revealed that thiis is not a chambered cairn but more like Silbury Hill, as with a site at Dunragit in Dumfries and Galloway, the BA cist and animal bones from ?feasting towards the top being later additions http://www.orkneyjar.com/archaeology/saltknowe.htm
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Unemployed and so plenty of spare time for researching contributors' questions and queries and for making corrections. Antiquarian and naturalist. Mode of transport shanks's pony. Talent unnecessary endurance. I love brochs.
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