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 Head To Head The Modern Antiquarian Silbury Hill Forum | Start a topic | Search |
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| I was lucky enough to get a freebie to Current Archaeology Magazine's 2008 conference at the British Museum this weekend and amongst the speakers I managed to catch was Jim Leary with an overview of the preliminary findings of the Silbury Hill rescue/excavation. Without descending into the much covered quagmore of the hows, whens and shoudl have beens there were a few bits of info that I had not previously been aware of. It seems they found an initial mound (and forgive the errors of memory as I forgot to take something to take notes with) of gravel that was only about 1m high, these gravels may have come from the Kennet Valley and certainly weren't dug from the surroundings. It was strange to see a photo of the edge of this mound petering out to nothing onto the natural land surface. They have also discovered there may well have been, not just one but, a number of closely spaed mounds in this initial phase. The other 'new' thing that was clarified for me was the idea of the top being lopped off in mediaval times. Even if the site was kept 'clean' it is highly unlikely that a site that was built in pre-historic times and was the centre of, and maybe the focus of, a large Roman settlements would have nothing pre-mediaval on the summit unless the upper parts had been removed. The geophysics of the Roman occupation was astounding, this was what Atkinson (i think) had dismissed as a roadside pub based on his coin scatter/hoard. It will be fascinating to see the full results. And whilst the debate about the methods etc. will rage on a massive amount of new stuff has been learned about Silbury. I also attended Tim Darvill's 'Stonehenge: a stairway to heaven' talk, in which he invoked the Zep with the gatefold of Led Zepplin IV on his title page and a photo of their Stonehenge stage set in conclusion. He also expanded on his work in the Preselli Hills and the similarlities between the first bluestone phase and Gors Fawr amongst other things. A chap called Nick Card did a dully presented but very interesting presentation on the huge amounts of settlement evidence that have been found on the Ness of Brodgar and a chap from Glasgow talked about an enourmous timber enclosure/avenue excavated last summer at Forteviot in central Scotland. And a got to see Julian Richards and Mark Horton off of Coast (and it was very interesting that he pointed out that about 85% of coast is actually archaeology, which they sneaked in even though the BBC had a ban on new archaeology shows when it was commissioned!), he also had some stills from an upcoming archaeo-drama called Bonekickers, which looked er...interesting... Sure I'll remember some other bits but in the meantime question away! Reply | with quote |  11th February 2008ce 15:33 |
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