July 17th to August 22nd (sic)
Latest News
January 17, 2013
January 14, 2013
January 12, 2013
Avebury is number two and the only stone circle to make it into Which? Magazine’s Top Ten Heritage destinations.
which.co.uk/news/2013/01/worlds-best-heritage-sites-revealed-by-which-304494/
January 11, 2013
“Brilliant news! We have just been notified that the Planning Inspector has dismissed Investates appeal to build houses on the historic Wincobank Hill. The land will remain green open space and an important part of the setting for the iron age hill fort which is a scheduled ancient monument.
A big ‘thank you’ to all of you who signed the petition, it really did make a difference.”
January 8, 2013
ANCIENT remains dating back more than 7,000 years have been discovered near Newport.
Researchers from the University of Reading have uncovered 7,500 year-old worked flint ‘tools’, bones, charcoal and hazelnut shells while working at Goldcliff in September of last year.
The finds show that Stone Age people were more than just hunter-gathers, using fire to encourage the growth of plants, such as hazelnuts, crab apples and raspberries. The researchers believe these were all eaten.
Over the last two summers researchers have found Stone Age footprints at Goldcliff and new archaeological finds, including footprints of animals and birds, are constantly being made in the Severn Estuary.
Professor Martin Bell, head of the University of Reading’s department of Archaeology, said: “The 7500 year-old footprint trails show how the activity areas represented by flint tools and bones articulated together as parts of a living stone age landscape.”
He added: “The footprints include those made by children, which is extremely exciting as the role of children tends not to be visible in the archaeological record.”
“They show youngsters as young as four were actively engaged in the productive activities of the community.”
January 6, 2013
Analyses of Stone Age settlements reveal that the hunters were healthy and would gladly eat anything they got their hands on, including carbohydrates – contrary to the modern definition of Paleolithic, or Stone Age diet.
More info :-
December 25, 2012
German Archaeologists Discover World’s Oldest Wooden Wells
7,000-year-old water wells unearthed in eastern Germany suggest that prehistoric farmers in Europe were skilled carpenters long before metal was discovered or used for tools, made water wells out of oak timbers.
The finds, reported in a paper in the journal PLoS ONE, contradict the common belief that metal tools were required to make complex wooden structures.
The wooden water wells discovered in Germany by the team led by Dr Willy Tegel of the University of Freiburg are over 7,000 years old, and suggest that early farmers had unexpectedly refined carpentry skills.
“This early Neolithic craftsmanship now suggests that the first farmers were also the first carpenters,” the archeologists said.
These first Central European farmers migrated from the Great Hungarian Plain approximately 7,500 years ago, and left an archeological trail of settlements, ceramics and stone tools across the fertile regions of the continent, a record named Linear Pottery Culture.
Full news story from Sci-news here
Original article on PLoS ONE here
December 15, 2012
7,000 years before campervans pulled on to the West Cliff, it has emerged that Whitby was a popular tourist destination among cavemen.
Following recent investigations a team of archaeologists have discovered litter from a prehistoric campsite near Goldsborough that suggests tourism may actually be Whitby’s oldest industry.
Rachel Grahame, from Tees Archaeology, said 450 flint fragments were uncovered at the site when it was visited in September. She explained that many of the finds were burnt, suggesting they were probably used in a campsite by an ancient tribe who were passing through the area.
“Mesolithic people have always been thought of as nomadic and in many places the only sign of their presence is tiny fragments of flint,” said Rachel.
Recent discoveries such as Star Carr near Scarborough have given the Yorkshire coast a reputation as a hotbed for prehistoric finds. Fieldwalking and geophysical survey have been used to identify the site at Goldsborough and it is proposed to carry out limited excavations in the spring to look for more evidence of hearths and buildings. Rachel added: “It’s very exciting to think that we may find similar archaeological remains here.”
Over 7,000 years ago the people who lived in the area survived by moving around, hunting and herding animals, catching fish and living off fruits and anything else they could find. They probably revised some locations time and time again. The evidence of the activities of these Mesolithic people is difficult to find and usually comprises the remains of the flint and wooden tools they used to hunt their prey and work skins.
The project is being carried out by Tees Archaeology and the North York Moors National Park Authority with the help of local volunteers and funding from English Heritage.
Regular updates about the project can be found on the Tees Archaeology website, www.teesarchaeology.com
whitbygazette.co.uk/news/local/real-life-flintstones-visited-goldsborough-1-5227808
December 13, 2012
In search of the world’s oldest cave etching
“I’M DRIVING across South Australia’s featureless but iconic Nullarbor Plain when suddenly the red earth falls away into a black abyss. “Dramatic really is the word for it,” says Keryn Walshe.
Fifty metres wide and 25 metres deep, the sinkhole is a gateway to the mysterious Koonalda caves.Walshe, an archaeologist from the South Australian Museum, is leading a group of researchers and members of the Mirning people, the traditional Aboriginal owners of the land, into the caves. It has taken us 6 hours to drive here, after flying in from Adelaide, the nearest city, 900 kilometres away.
We have come to see strange wall markings that may have been a tactile code left by flint miners during the last ice age. The mine might be among the oldest in the world, as may the markings. The flint has clearly been cut away in numerous places and worked into tools, and ash deposits from fires show people have been coming here for tens of thousands of years....”
newscientist.com/article/mg21628954.700-in-search-of-the-worlds-oldest-cave-etching.html
New light on the Nazca Lines
Archaeologists gain insight into ancient desert drawings – by walking them
The first findings of the most detailed study yet by two British archaeologists into the Nazca Lines – enigmatic drawings created between 2,100 and 1,300 years ago in the Peruvian desert – have been published in the latest issue of the journal Antiquity.
As part of a five-year investigation, Professor Clive Ruggles of the University of Leicester’s School of Archaeology and Ancient History and Dr Nicholas Saunders of the University of Bristol’s Department of Archaeology and Anthropology have walked 1,500 km of desert in southern Peru, tracing the lines and geometric figures created by the Nasca people between 100 BC and AD 700.
The confusing palimpsest of ‘geoglyphs’—desert drawings—has attracted a host of theories purporting to explain them ever since they were discovered during the 1920s – including the bizarre ideas of Erich Von Däniken who supposed they were made by visiting extra-terrestrials.
Professor Ruggles, Emeritus Professor of Archaeoastronomy at the University, and Dr Saunders combined the experience and knowledge gained by walking the lines with scientific data obtained from satellite digital mapping, studying the layering where designs are superimposed, and examining the associated pottery. The result is the most detailed such study to date.
In the midst of their study area is a unique labyrinth originally discovered by Ruggles when he spent a few days on the Nazca desert back in 1984. Its existence came as a complete surprise. Professor Ruggles recounts: “When I set out along the labyrinth from its centre, I didn’t have the slightest idea of its true nature. Only gradually did I realize that here was a figure set out on a huge scale and still traceable, that it was clearly intended for walking, and that I was almost certainly the first person to have recognized it for what it was, and walked it from end to end, for some 1500 years. Factors beyond my control brought the 1984 expedition to an abrupt halt and it was only 20 years later that I eventually had the opportunity to return to Nazca, relocate the figure and study it fully”.
Invisible in its entirety to the naked eye, the only way to become aware of the labyrinth is to walk its 4.4km length, experiencing a series of disorienting direction changes and other expected features.
As Professor Ruggles explains: “The labyrinth is completely hidden in the landscape, which is flat and virtually featureless. As you walk it, only the path stretching ahead of you is visible at any given point. Similarly, if you map it from the air its form makes no sense at all.
“But if you walk it, ‘discovering’ it as you go, you have a set of experiences that in many respects would have been the same for anyone walking it in the past. The ancient Nasca peoples created the geoglyphs, and used them, by walking on the ground. ‘Sharing’ some of those experiences by walking the lines ourselves is an important source of information that complements the ‘hard’ scientific and archaeological evidence and can really aid our attempts to make anthropological sense of it.”
The arid conditions have ensured the remarkable preservation of Nazca’s fragile geoglyphs for a millennium and a half. Nonetheless, segments of nearly all of the lines and figures—including the labyrinth—have been washed away by flash floods that occurred from time to time in the past. And, of course, people through the ages have walked across the desert plateau to cross from one valley to another.
Professor Ruggles and Dr Saunders have studied the integrity of many lines and figures within their 80km2 study area. Dr Saunders says: “Meandering and well-worn trans-desert pathways served functional purposes but they are quite different from the arrow-straight lines and geometric shapes which seem more likely to have had a spiritual and ritual purpose. It may be, we suggest, that the real importance of some of these desert drawings was in their creation rather than any subsequent physical use.”
Certainly, the pristine state and well-preserved edges of the labyrinth suggest that it was never walked by more than a few people in single file. In fact, the survival of many geoglyphs seems remarkable given the proximity of the area to the pilgrimage centre of Cahuachi, in the nearby Nazca valley, and the fact that people carried on walking across the pampa during the ensuing centuries right up to modern times.
Even if the labyrinth was not unique when it was built, it may well be the only such construction whose integrity has been preserved to the extent that it still can be recognized in today’s landscape. As Professor Ruggles observes: “Excavations commonly uncover objects undisturbed for centuries and even millennia. But it is hard to conceive many places on the planet were you could still “discover” a human construction that has lain hidden on the surface of the ground for as long as 1500 years, simply by walking along it and seeing where your feet take you.”
Issud by University of Leicester Press Office on 10 December 2012
December 12, 2012
Remnants of an Iron-Age feast, including cattle skulls and 13 cauldrons, have been unearthed in Chiseldon, United Kingdom, according to a report in the latest British Archaeology
The discovery marks the largest grouping of early cauldrons ever found in Europe. One cauldron features a handle plate in the form of a cow’s head; zoomorphic decoration is otherwise unknown on a British cauldron.
“Analysis of the interiors of the cauldrons has even revealed traces of animal fats, a tantalizing suggestion that these objects might have been used in cooking and serving meat-rich stews at Iron-Age feasts over 2,000 ago,” Julia Farley, curator of European Iron Age collections at the British Museum, told Discovery News.
Farley’s colleague Jody Joy, as well as Alexandra Baldwin and Jamie Hood from the museum, are still studying the artifacts, which were found buried in a 6.6-feet-wide pit. The cauldrons were made from iron and copper alloy in the second or first century B.C.
Each was built to last, with an iron rim and band supporting circular suspension handles. The main body of the cauldrons consisted of a central band and bowl of sheet copper alloy riveted together. “The iron rim and handles gave strength and rigidity, while the copper-alloy bowl acted as an excellent heat conductor,” the researchers note.
When the cauldrons were buried, nearby Barbury Castle still might have been occupied. Another hill fort, Liddington Castle, likely had been abandoned. Nevertheless, given the possible fort protection and open space, “Chiseldon looks to be an ideal meeting place,” the researchers believe.
What the cauldrons were last used for is a bit of a mystery, but Joy and team suspect “large quantities of food and drink were probably consumed.” Feasts at the time “would have marked significant events in the calendar or special occasions, such as marriages.”
Beef was the star attraction at the last big feast involving the cauldrons, the evidence suggests. The two cattle skulls, cow cauldron decoration and traces of animal fats all theoretically point to beef.
But the experts say it’s too soon to make that conclusion.
Archaeologist Mike Pitts, who also edits British Archaeology, told Discovery News that “notwithstanding the cattle skulls, it might well have been pork. Pigs were important animals in feasting. Of course, whatever was in the cauldrons was boiled.”
While the British are now renowned for beef dishes, with the Tower of London ceremonial guardians even known as Beefeaters, beef wasn’t always so popular and widely available, Pitts said.
“Roast beef as a national dish really took root in the 18th century, which is also when ‘les rosbifs’ apparently became popular in France as a nickname for the English,” he said.
Farley agreed, saying, “Iron Age people also ate pig, sheep, and occasionally horse. Indeed, pork seems often to have been favored for feasting.”
DNA testing of the lipids in future could solve the mystery.
(Images: British Museum, John Winterburn, Wessex Archaeology; Stephen Crummy)
news.discovery.com/history/evidence-for-huge-meaty-bc-feast-found-in-england-20121212.html
A Bronze Age standing stone that was knocked down by a reversing car last year has been returned to its original position in Pembrokeshire.
The Bedd Morris stone on Dinas Mountain near Newport has been a landmark for around 3,500 years.
Standing at 6ft (1.8m) it is thought the vehicle accidentally knocked over the stone, crushing a fence.
Full story from the BBC
December 10, 2012
December 4, 2012
I had added this strange little news item a week or son ago but it has disappeared. Perhaps it was thought to be of little interest, but I feel this is important.
This appears to be a personal excavation by Brian Robertson (no Thin Lizzy connection) on a site covered by Historic Scotland and RCAHMS. The excavation does not appear to have been carried out by either of these organisations. This is a rock art site of national importance. From the picture the turf appears to have been stripped back substantially and from the text appears to have involved weeks of “digging”... mibbe with a spade?
I am sure if a local well-meaning individual decided to strip back the turf on Priddy Henges or Stonehenge we would all be reading about it here. Especially if they found that people had been burying treasure “caches” there in recent years.
arranbanner.co.uk/2012/11/16/mairis-treasure-unearthed-near-brodick
Mairi’s treasure unearthed near Brodick
on November 16th,2012
Brian Robertson of Brodick has unearthed an interesting little treasure cache just outside the village. For some weeks he has been clearing a prehistoric Neolithic cup and ring site in Stronach Wood and has found some buried treasure no more than seven years old.
He said:‘ On the fourth day I came across this small plastic box. ‘When I took it home and opened it I found nine coins,one of each denomination and the newest being dated 2005.
‘There was also a small decorative dolphin,a piece of agate and a heart-shaped stone,plus a small card with red ink writing. ‘It was addressed to ‘Miss Mairi Dare,with bunches of love’,and said inside:‘Well done Mairi! You’ve found the treasure. Now give your Mum and Dad a kiss. Much love from Great Aunty Fiona xxx’.’
Do you know who Great Aunty Fiona or Mairi? Read the full story in the Arran Banner edition of November 17 2012,or on line at www.arranbanner.co.uk/digital and let us know if you know who these people are.
arranbanner.co.uk/2012/11/16/mairis-treasure-unearthed-near-brodick
December 2, 2012
“An entire hill, famed for its archeological heritage and geological significance, is to be removed from the Scottish skyline to make way for a quarry under plans being considered by West Dunbartonshire Council.
Sheep Hill, in the Kilpatrick Hills on the Clyde, is the site of ancient Bronze and Iron Age forts which local residents and experts say will be destroyed by the expansion of a stone quarry.....”
November 30, 2012
Interesting article in December’s edition of Antiquity “The Giants of Wessex: the chronology of the three largest mounds in Wiltshire, UK” – by Jim Leary and Peter Marshall
November 27, 2012
US scientists say they can track early human movements by analysing molecules in ancient faecal matter.
Researchers were able to use prehistoric poo to establish the presence and size of a population dating back over 7,000 years.
They argue the method could be used to distinguish human from natural impacts on past environments.
Details have been published in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
November 26, 2012
Ice Age art – arrival of the modern mind
An exhibition 40,000 years in the making
7 February – 26 May 2013
Discover masterpieces from the last Ice Age drawn from across Europe in this ground-breaking show. Created between 40,000 and 10,000 years ago by artists with modern minds like our own, this is a unique opportunity to see the world’s oldest known sculptures, drawings and portraits.
On the trail of ancient Slavs
Interesting article in The Moscow News about burial mounds. “Only” 1000 years old, but there seem to be a lot of parallels with the kind of older mounds we’re more used to.
https://themoscownews.com/local/20121126/190913724.html
There’s also a video here.
November 22, 2012
Lost but not forgotten....
A BRONZE Age monument has been commemorated after a long-running campaign.
The 4,000-year-old Quernhow burial mound, which was obliterated by the upgrading of the A1(M), has been marked with a plaque and stone by the Quernhow Café, near Ainderby Quernhow, by the Highways Agency.
Archaeologists say the site was “of primary importance in prehistoric times” as it stood on the plain between the three great henges of Thornborough to the north and those on Hutton Moor to the south, accompanied by a number of other tumuli nearby.
When it was unearthed in the 1950s, archaeologists found an imposing flat-topped stone cairn with four small pits in its centre, a number of small cremations and broken remains of pottery, human bones and foods vessels.
Near the centre of the cairn, which was initially damaged by roadworks in the 1950s, was a “curious four poster” of upright stones placed near to its north, south, east and west points.
Former Quernhow Café owner Bryan Lye, said he was delighted to the agency, which completed its £318m Dishforth and Leeming motorway upgrade scheme earlier this year, had agreed to mark the site.
He said: “Quernhow will always have a special place in my heart, but more importantly I am delighted the rich local history now has public recognition and can be remembered for generations to come.”
Archeologist Blaise Vyner said the mound was important as few Bronze Age sites of this kind have been found in the Vale of York.
He said: “There are a large number on the North York Moors and in the Dales, but not here because the population was presumably a lot thinner.
“We know they were used between approximately 2200 BC and 1850 BC, but it’s difficult to say exactly when, how many people were buried, or whether these were only for people of a higher social standing.
“That’s what the food vessels that were found indicate, but it’s a fascinating area to explore.”
A Highways Agency spokesman said: “We share the passion of Bryan and Blaise to ensure local history isn’t forgotten, and we hope the commemorative stone triggers interest and makes café visitors think about who may have stood there before them 4,000 years earlier.”
thenorthernecho.co.uk/news/local/bedale/10062125.Ancient_Quernhow_monument_commemorated/?ref=rss
The Warebeth area of Stromness parish has its history pushed back into the Neolithic, my suspicions about a knoll in the feld right of the road coming down to the cemetery/broch proved right. In this natural mound archaeologist potter Andrew Appleby has found the remains of a tomb, a situation resembling that of Crantit (thanks to the farmer this will remain undug for future generations).
November 1, 2012
“Remains of a prehistoric enclosure have been discovered by archaeologists in Truro, Cornwall.
It is understood the enclosure was built during the early Neolithic period (3800 BC to 3600 BC).
Archaeologists say it was built at the same time as Carn Brea, a tor enclosure near Redruth.
The team will now take samples to verify the date of the enclosure, before re-burying the site, in line with national guidelines.”
October 31, 2012
Oldest Prehistoric Town Found – Bulgaria
Sofia – archaeologists in eastern Bulgaria say they have unearthed the largest prehistoric town ever found in Europe.
More info :-
news24.com/SciTech/News/Oldest-prehistoric-town-found-20121031
The extensive sand dunes of Druridge Bay on the Northumberland coast are a veritable of Britain’s history, from the Ice Age to to day.
Archaeologists say there is a danger of the natural world losing tangible evidence of it’s history.
More info :
