Another update on Flag Fen:
Eight Bronze Age boats discovered in a deep Cambridgeshire quarry are much older than it was first thought, carbon-dating research has revealed.
Latest News
September 8, 2013
September 4, 2013
A friend in the Ramblers sent me this earlier today – am a bit gutted as have been known to use this service to walk up to Wayland’s Smithy.
“Thamesdown Transport’s route 47 between Swindon and Lambourn, via Bishopstone and Ashbury, is to be withdrawn. This will leave several villages without a bus service and make it more difficult to do linear walks along that part of the Ridgeway. At the time of writing it is unclear whether the Ridgeway Explorer bus X47, which runs only on Saturdays, will continue.”
I despair!
September 3, 2013
Human remains more than 2,500 years old have been found in the UK’s largest Iron Age hill fort in Somerset.
Archaeologists from Cardiff and Cambridge universities began excavating Ham Hill two years ago when a trial dig revealed an Iron Age skeleton.
The latest remains have been found near the edge of the hill fort, revealing signs of violent conflict.
And other bones and skulls found in the interior section mainly belonged to young women in their 20s.
The project is in its third and final year and the excavation is due to finish in mid-September.
The dig area is in the centre of the hill fort, also known as the enclosure, and two trenches around the perimeter where there are earthen ramparts [defences].
Dr Marcus Brittain, from the Cambridge Archaeological Unit, said of the centre of the hill fort: “There’s an enormous amount of bodies starting to emerge, many of which are young ladies in their 20s.
“There’s a lot of human heads as well which is rather unusual – there are five so far.
“We’re starting to think these bodies are associated with funerary practice but also at a particular time in the hill fort’s history when conflict was rife.
“It was gruesome to imagine that people would have had daily, probably unavoidable contact with the remains of the dead – quite possibly of friends and family members.”
The remains were excavated from grain pits but are not thought to be complete skeletons.
Other remains were found near the ramparts.
The ramparts date back to about 1,000BC, but archaeologists have dug back to the layer which equates to 100BC, when the Romans first started invading Britain.
“The human remains which we are starting to find, they’ve got cut marks.
“They’re very fine cut marks but it is potentially illustrating that there has been some unpleasant and violent conflict in that transitional period between the inhabitants and perhaps the incoming Romans,” Dr Brittain said.
They have also found metal arrowheads and body armour dating back to Roman times.
Once the dig is complete, the human remains will be taken to the Cambridge Archaeological Unit for further research.
An open day for the site is planned for 7 September
bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-somerset-23928612
Also of course Past Horizons.....
August 31, 2013
Peru and Bolivia Megalithic Exploration in November
megalithomania.co.uk/peru2013.html
Join stars of History Channel David Hatcher Childress, Brien Foerster & Hugh Newman, with guest dowsers Glenn & Cameron Broughton to be part of a ground breaking travel/research experience as we follow the Path of Virococha – an alignment taken by the legendary ‘creator god’ Virococha, where most of the major megalithic sites exist, including Ollantaytambo, Machu Picchu, Cuzco and more.
What connects these places and what qualities do they possess? On our journey we’ll be visiting a variety of ancient sacred sites and spending quality time there. Everyone is welcome whether you dowse, tune into energies or just want to learn and experience Peru for yourself. There will be some evening presentations by your experienced tour leaders.The tour is in three sections as shown on the banner, so if you cannot join us for the full adventure, feel free to join us for the main Peru tour and one or two add-on’s if you can.
Oct 26-30: Nazca, Paracas, Ica, Elongated Skulls
Oct 30-Nov 8: Lima, Cuzco, Macchu Pichu, Sacred Valley & more
Nov 8-12: Lake Titicaca, Tiwanaku, Puma Punka, La Paz
See full itinerary here:
megalithomania.co.uk/peru2013.html
August 30, 2013
ARCHAEOLOGISTS are claiming a highly significant discovery in the Highlands in the form of a 4000-year-old sheepskin that is believed to be the earliest surviving example in Britain.
It was recovered from a burial cist in Spinningdale, on the east coast of Sutherland, which was discovered when a septic tank was being installed in 2011. Since then archaeologists have been undertaking a sophisticated analysis of what they found and are only now publishing the resulting data.
Glasgow-based Guard Archaeology, which provides commercial archaeological services, found a Bronze Age burial site containing a skeleton in a crouched position, with the remains of a sheepskin that may have been wrapped around the body.
It was found in a stone cist, built within a substantial pit. The skeleton was that of a middle-aged adult female, aged 35-50 and with signs of spinal joint disease.
Iraia Arabaolaza, who led the Guard team, said: “A radiocarbon date of 2051-1911 BC and 2151-2018 BC was obtained from a bone and charcoal fragments respectively, placing the cist in the early Bronze Age period.
“A tripartite food vessel urn, of Early Bronze Age date, was placed to the west of her skull, but what made this burial a particularly extraordinary site was the discovery of sheepskin and wool recovered from under the skeletal remains.
“The sheepskin around the left arm is the first sample of this kind in Scotland and is the first known example discovered from a Bronze Age burial in Britain.
“There have been two other samples of Bronze Age wool found in the British Isles, but none of potential sheepskin are known. Findings of hide or fur are few and far between in Britain but are often associated with ‘rich burials’ of adult inhumations.”
It is believed the sheepskin survived because the depth of the pit had put it under or near the water table, allowing the material to survive as it had not been exposed to a greater degree to the air..
Ms Arabaolaza said the radiocarbon dating of the cist corresponded with the date of the food urn buried with the body. The vessel contained carbonised material of non-botanical origin, unidentified cremated bone and part of a small ring.
He added: “These were probably placed to assist the individual’s journey into the next world and indicate belief in the afterlife.”
heraldscotland.com/news/home-news/earliest-bronze-age-sheepskin-is-found-in-the-highlands.22000015
August 29, 2013
A new long barrow !
A planning application has been submitted to the local authority in Wiltshire to build a modern burial mound.
Developer Tim Daw wants to construct a new “long barrow” mound near All Cannings to give people another place to leave cremated remains.
Melting ice in Norway has revealed an Iron Age tunic.
Amazing preservation.
Great photo on BBC web site.
August 21, 2013
Evidence has been uncovered of a huge tsunami, which cut Britain off from the rest of Europe 8,000 years ago.
Excavations at Low Hauxley, near Druridge Bay in Northumberland, have unearthed material, which experts say, was deposited by the giant tidal wave.
The dig is part of a £300,000 project investigating a Bronze Age burial mound – or cairn.
Lead archaeologist, Dr Clive Waddington, described the site as a “staggering find”.
During the Mesolithic period – in about 6,100 BC – Britain broke free of mainland Europe for good, after landslides in Norway triggered a huge tsunami.
The water struck the north-east of Britain and travelled 25 miles (40km) inland, turning low-lying plains into what is now the North Sea.
‘Catastrophic event‘
Dr Waddington said the Low Hauxley site was the most southerly point on the British Isles where evidence of the tsunami had been found.
He said: “The deposits we have found are in a gravel-type layer with quite large blocks of stone dating back about 8,000 years.
“This material was dumped by the sea in what was a catastrophic event at the time.
Dr Clive Waddington Dr Clive Waddington said the site was a “staggering find”
“We hope this discovery will flesh out the story of how Britain became an island as well as tell us about what the environment was like at that time here in Druridge Bay.”
The project is a partnership between the Northumberland Wildlife Trust and Derbyshire-based Archaeological Research Services Ltd (ARS), with funding from the Heritage Lottery Fund.
Philippa Cockburn, of ARS said the deposits amounted to “impressive new evidence” of how Britain was formed.
She said: “The deposits are in the form of water-rounded pebbles and rocks which are below Mesolithic soil at Low Hauxley.
“The soil contains thousands of flint tools which, based on their shape and method of manufacture, date to around 6,000 BC. This means that the tsunami debris situated below it must date to immediately before this period.
“Prior to this event, Britain was connected from an area around the Wash over to the low countries. But due to the effect of the tsunami in combination with rising sea levels, Britain became an island.”
August 17, 2013
Oldest North American Stone Art Discovered
Dated to between 10,200 and 14,800 years ago...
Some pictures at:
An Iron Age settlement unearthed in Devon has been described as one of the most important finds of its kind.
More Here:
August 13, 2013
Many of you have visited this this site and I thought you should see this breaking news. The site is unique, it is large, impressive, and has features which are not found on any other Iron Age site anywhere. It is not too strong to say that it is among the UK’s top 5 Iron Age sites and is of international importance. Despite being very close to the town and visible from the A5, by a happy accident of topography, it has a strong sense of isolation.
BUT, it is under threat from housing development. The man who owns the land which skirts the fort to its south east, has proposed it for development and there is imminent danger that the site will be included in the local SAMDev document.
If you want to know more, then you might like to visit: oswestry21.com/?p=8959 and follow the internal links
If you feel strongly enough about it you might like to sign the petition at: change.org/petitions/shropshire-council-withdraw-proposals-to-build-houses-alongside-old-oswestry-iron-age-hillfort?utm_campaign=autopublish&utm_medium=facebook&utm_source=share_petition
August 12, 2013
Visit South East Cornwall has announced details for its, The Hurlers: Mapping the Sun event from the 16-23 September 2013 -
“For the first time in nearly 80 years we have the chance to carry out archaeological work on the Hurlers Stone Circle at Minions on Bodmin Moor.
As well as the actual dig there will be plenty of events taking place that the public can get involved in.
“16th September
Astronomy workshop 2 hour
With Roseland Observatory
Mapping the Sun, Archaeological Field Trip – Minions area – 2 x 2 hour
field trips- am and pm Jacky Nowakowski open to all. Minions
landscape – Hurlers, Rillaton, Barrow, Stowes Pound etc.”
Details and full itinerary here – visit-southeastcornwall.co.uk/whats-on/the-hurlers-mapping-the-sun-p1580203
August 8, 2013
Small fry compared to the West Kennet Avenue dig but I found this quite at exciting.
Started a walk today from the church at Ogbourne St Andrew – a couple of archaeologists from Cranfield University were in the church-yard undertaking a geo-phys and mapping exercise of the Bronze Age mound which is in the churchyard. Apparently a small history group in the village had invited them in. I do hope the results will be published.
Although news of the latest dig at Avebury failed to make it to the TMA in real time, you can catch up with some of the events here......
West Kennet Avenue Settlement Site – ntarchaeostonehengeaveburywhs.wordpress.com
August 7, 2013
Today the site has produced its first carved stone ball, ironically found by a non-drinker as the discovery prize is whisky. I’m sure the excavation blog will mention it, so look on Orkneyjar tonight I guess. It follows the usual Orcadian form and has round bossed faces.
They still have a long way to catch up to the ‘domestic’ Skara Brae settlement with over half-a-dozen. Elsewhere three were found at the Hillheads in St Ola (one from the circular enclosure/fort) and one each from Sanday, the Links of Noltland in Westray (last year), Orphir (thought to be from Bu [geophys found a double ring feature in the Bu area]), an unidentified Bignor in Stenness itself, and lastly one at Tamaskirk in Rendall.
swindonadvertiser.co.uk/news/10594307.The_hills_have_eyes____and_a_spear/
“.... it can be revealed that for the best part of 3,000 years a hillside near Swindon was the site of an epic chalk carving of a giant spearman.
The 130ft high hill figure at Foxhill near Wanborough is believed to have been maintained for generations, almost certainly in honour of pagan gods worshipped throughout the centuries.”
August 5, 2013
Plans for, “…a three-lane bypass that would run within half a mile of the 175ft horse, a 35-acre business park and 550 new homes on Green Belt land.”
More here – theheritagetrust.wordpress.com/2013/08/05/view-of-westbury-white-horse-under-threat-from-bypass/
August 3, 2013
New tests on the remains of a preserved body found in a Co Laois bog have revealed that it is the oldest bog body ever discovered in the world.
The body was found by a Bord na Móna worker milling peat in 2011.
It was initially believed that the remains were those of a young female which were around 2,500 years old.
However, a series of recent tests have revealed that it is the body of a male, which dates back as far as 2000 BC.
More here:
August 1, 2013
“An intricately-inscribed stone described as potentially the finest example of Neolithic art found in the UK for several decades has been found in Orkney.
Archaeologists working at the Ness of Brodgar excavations made the discovery.....”
BBC News Link
bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland-north-east-orkney-shetland-23529871
Site Dig Link at
orkneyjar.com/archaeology/nessofbrodgar/
July 31, 2013
Thursaday 8.00 in the St Magnus Centre on Palace Road, Kirkwall – results of this year’s dig including tomb. Free talk ‘’Snatched from the Sea : Excavations at Swandro, the story so far.’‘
July 24, 2013
Stonehenge & Avebury combined research agenda.
Devils Den Rocks.
Including walks from Avebury and Marlborough, and live music.
July 23, 2013
July 22, 2013
Ancient farmers manured the land
‘We’re increasingly realising that there was a lot of violence in these early farming communities – they weren’t peaceful hippie types,’ says Amy Bogaard an archaeologist at the University of Oxford.
From Planet Earth Online
Europe’s first farmers used sophisticated muckspreading techniques to keep their land fertile some eight millennia ago, according to new research. And this revolution in agriculture may have played an important part in the genesis of the violence between communities that’s blighted human society ever since.
It seems people were manuring and watering their crops as long as 6000BC. Until recently, the consensus has been that farmers only started using animal dung during Iron Age or Roman times, and that more ancient farmers of the Neolithic used a slash-and-burn approach involving working a patch of land for a few years and then moving on once they’d exhausted its nutrients.
But a team of researchers has analysed charred pulse seeds and cereal grains from 13 Neolithic sites around Europe, looking at the relative proportions of several different forms of nitrogen, known as isotopes. They looked in particular at the relative abundance of the heavier nitrogen-15 isotope relative to its lighter sibling nitrogen-14.
Experiments on modern farms show that the more muck you spread on a field, and the more often you do it, the higher the ratio of N-15 to N-14 climbs. In crops across Europe, the paper’s authors found clear evidence of that the locals were spreading the dung of goats, cattle, sheep and pigs on their fields much earlier than we’d assumed.
This suggests they understood how important the land’s fertility was and tried to preserve or even increase it for the next generation, having noticed that animal dung let them grow bigger, healthier plants. This involved long-term investments of the time and effort needed to collect, transport and spread manure that would then slowly release its nutrients over years and decades.
This could have led to important social transformations; as farmers started to pass down fertile land to their children, some of the earliest divisions between rich and poor might have started to emerge. If heavy manuring had made one group’s land unusually fertile, their neighbours might have been tempted to resort to violence to get it.
‘The fact that farmers made long-term investments such as manuring their land sheds new light on the nature of the early farming landscapes in Neolithic times ,’ says Dr Amy Bogaard, an archaeologist at the University of Oxford and lead author of the paper, published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
‘The idea that farmland could be cared for by the same family for generations seems quite an advanced notion, but rich fertile land would have been viewed as extremely valuable for growing crops,’ she adds. ‘We believe that as land was viewed as a commodity to be inherited, social differences in early European farming communities started to emerge between the haves and the have-nots.‘
She cites the example of the Neolithic mass burial at Talheim in Germany, which holds the remains of a whole community who were massacred – men, women and children – with blows to the head from the stone axes that farmers used to clear land, arguing that this could have resulted from a raid intended to seize the community’s land. ‘We’re increasingly realising that there was a lot of violence in these early farming communities – they weren’t peaceful hippie types,’ says Bogaard. ‘Some of that violence was probably in the form of sporting or ritual contests between communities. But some of it was very deadly, like what we see at Talheim, where it looks like the attackers went in by night and killed everyone.‘
The 124 samples of charred barley, wheat, lentils and peas the team examined came from harvested crops that were stored in buildings that then burned down. They came from sites dating from between 6000BC and 2400BC, and are taken from places across Europe including Hambledon Hill in Dorset and Lismore Fields in Derbyshire.
The NERC-funded study even suggests farmers understood which crops would benefit most from manure and concentrated their resources on them, leaving relatively hardy crops unfertilised; in one site in southern Greece, naked wheat had been heavily manured while barley had received very little fertilisation. Pulse crops, meanwhile, had received both manure and lots of water. ‘Subsistence farmers are very observant of what we would see as very small differences in plant growth,’ Bogaard explains. ‘They would have noticed quickly that their middens and dung heaps produced much bigger, healthier plants, and later realised that certain crops benefited more from manure than others.‘
July 20, 2013
Early results from an archaeological dig at an Iron Age fort in Cardiff suggest it may have been the region’s centre of power, experts have said.
A team from Cardiff University has spent the last month excavating Caerau hill fort near Ely.
It is smaller than its contemporaries at Pentyrch and Pontprennau and had been thought to be inferior in status.
But structures and artefacts so far unearthed suggest the fort remained important well into the Roman era.
Until now it has been thought that the fort was purely a stronghold of the Silurian tribe who inhabited this part of Wales from around the 5th Century BC, falling into disuse once they were finally defeated by the Romans, circa 75 AD.
However the initial dig this summer has uncovered a considerable amount of new information, including three Iron Age roundhouses and a stone-built pathway that runs around the edge of the hill fort, suggesting to the experts a possible domestic and/or political dimension.
Also, the mix of Silurian and Roman artefacts may indicate that the fort was occupied much later than had been thought, and that the two groups might have mingled there.
Dr Oliver Davis, from the university’s School of History, Archaeology and Religion, said: “People think of these sites as defensive structures, but our attention is turning to whether the people who lived there were actually developing a community or collective identity for themselves.
“Our community excavations show that occupation at the site continued until at least the third century AD, well into the Roman period.
“Domestic life is indicated by the discovery of simple tools and ceramics from all periods.
“A glimpse of the personality of the inhabitants is provided by the discovery of a glass bead of Iron Age date and an enamelled disc brooch of Roman date.
“Both these objects indicate that individuals were concerned with their appearance, and that life in the past was a little more colourful than we sometimes think.
“Over the past month the team has also examined the inner of the three ramparts that surround the hill fort. These ramparts and their associated ditches were unlikely to have been built just for defence.”
But as well as colour from the past, Dave Horton, of the community organisation Action in Caerau and Ely, said the way local residents have had a hand in the discoveries has also lent a little colour to the present.
“The last few weeks have seen a whirlwind of activity in Ely and Caerau focused around our beautiful iron-age hill fort,” he said.
“Literally hundreds of local people have visited the site and have dug together, learned new skills, shared local knowledge, and have celebrated together with a fantastic Iron Age hog roast.”
“We have all walked down the hill to our homes with a different perspective. We have found new pride in the history of our community.”