United Kingdom

The University of Central Lancashire has announced the discovery of 11000 year human remains in Heaning Wood Bone Cave near Great Urswick, Cumbria.

From the 14th of January, Kirkleatham Museum will be hosting an exhibition, entitled Megaliths.

This collaborative exhibition, a mixture of paintings and photography, will showcase the work of Gavin Parry and Tony Galuidi, both of whom share a passion for ancient standing stones.

The exhibition will go on display from January 14th – March 8th at Kirkleatham’s stunning Bellamy Pavilion.

All of the paintings and photographs are available for sale and the artist proceeds will be donated to The Trussell Trust, which supports foodbanks throughout the UK.

For more information, please visit ? redcarcleveland.co.uk/enjoy/kirkleatham-museum/

For the first time, a detailed online atlas has drawn together the locations and particulars of the UK and Ireland’s hill forts and come to the conclusion that there are more than 4,000 of them, mostly dating from the iron age.

You can access this new database at

https://hillforts.arch.ox.ac.uk/

The Festival is a huge celebration of our incredible history here in the UK, and you don't have to be an archaeologist to join in. It's a chance for everyone to explore and uncover the past, see archaeology in action, and bring the history on your doorstep to life. We look forward to seeing you there.

Find out what's going on near you during the Festival of Archaeology!

archaeologyfestival.org.uk/whatson

Use the form to search all our events nationwide. Choose from over 1,000 events across the UK hosted by more than 400 organisers. You can sort your search by region, keyword (including county), event period or type.

Find out what's open in your local area – Every where listed is free for the day!

heritageopendays.org.uk/directory/advanced-search

For more information about the European Heritage Days, visit www.ehd.coe.int

In the UK, there are altogether five open day schemes that are part of European Heritage Days:

England: Heritage Open Days (11-14 September 2014)

London: Open House London (20-21 September 2014)

Scotland: Doors Open Days (every weekend in September)

Wales: Open Doors (every weekend in September)

Northern Ireland: European Heritage Open Days (13-14 September 2014)

Heritage Open Days was established in 1994 as England’s contribution to the European Heritage Days.

A joint action by the Council of Europe and the European Commission, the scheme was initiated in 1991 by the Council of Europe to raise appreciation for Europe’s rich and diverse cultural assets and their need for care and protection. The central principle was as simple as it was compelling: to throw open the doors to historic monuments and buildings, in particular those normally closed to the public. One of the key requirements was to offer free access to all properties taking part in the European Heritage Days.

Today, European Heritage Days are held annually in September in 50 signatory states to the European Cultural Convention. From the Baltic to the Balkans, from Iceland to the Iberian Peninsula, thousands of events not only highlight the dazzling diversity of Europe’s heritage, but also its intercultural links. As varied as the cultural landscapes are the approaches in putting the idea into practice.

http://heritagetogether.org/?lang=en

"HeritageTogether is an AHRC-funded project run by Bangor, Aberystwyth and Manchester Metropolitan Universities in conjunction with Gwynedd Archaeological Trust. Our aim is to use photographs of our heritage to create 3D models using a process called photogrammetry. We want to create an online library of our heritage, preserved digitally and accessible to everyone.

The project aims to provide new information about megalithic sites and their locations using 3D digital models, which can be generated from digital photographs.

The project aims to incorporate research by members of the public; we hope people will contribute to the project by uploading digital photographs of sites that they visit. Provided that the photos are taken in the correct way, from the images that people load up, we will be able to generate 3D models.

The “citizen science” aspect of the project will allow us to produce 3D models from a wide range of monuments from across North Wales. We hope that this way of gathering data will help us produce a representative (and perhaps comprehensice) catalogue of the heritage of North Wales, provide new research into the state of monument preservation, provide new views of monuments, and provide new evidence for monument use (in the form of rock art for example).

At the end of the project, the 3D models will be freely and publicly available to provide a research resource for members of the public and researchers, though the Historic Environment Record and via the Archwilio platform.

We will acknowledge the contributions of all individuals to the project, and contributors will be invited to the project exhibition, which will present the 3D modelling results. At the exhibition we will acknowledge a number of citizen scientists who we feel have made outstanding contributions to the project. "

British Rock Art Collection (BRAC) – back Online

ukra.jalbum.net/brac

Quite a few people will hopefully remember BRAC – the online image gallery covering British rock art sites. It was originally setup in 2004 by the Dutch rock art enthusiast Jan Brouwer (alias Rockartuk on TMA) and his friend Gus Van Veen. Over several years Jan went on to expand the collection to well over 18000 images, covering 1200 sites.

Sadly, in 2011 Jan Brouwer became ill and passed away, a great loss to all his family and friends.

Around this time Fotopic (the internet company hosting the BRAC gallery) also closed down and so the rock art collection was lost too. The online nature of Fotopic meant that gallery owners had no real back up of their sites. Attempts to contact the company drew a blank until early 2013 when the old Fotopic servers were brought temporarily back online to allow customers to retrieve their images. At this point Jan’s friends took the opportunity to rescue the collection.

Unfortunately the old BRAC website no longer existed and only the images were available for download, so these images have now been compiled into a new website using Jalbum photo gallery software.

As with the original BRAC site, this new version consists of photographs from Jan Brouwer’s own collection and those of his many friends, who provided copies for inclusion in the BRAC. Other images were used with permission from the owners, but as Jan is no longer with us it is difficult to know what the arrangements were for every single image.

Many filenames include the name of the contributor so it has been possible to compile a ‘credits list’ on the new site to both acknowledge and thank those who contributed to the collection. As would be expected there are quite a few TMA members listed (some simply by their usernames) so we are hoping these people are still happy for their images to be part of the British Rock Art Collection.

At the present time BRAC is effectively an archive of all the images brought together by Jan Brouwer and it still forms a useful resource for anyone interested in British rock art. In the future new sites could be added to it, but it will be hard to match Jan’s dedication in this respect.

Please take a look at the new BRAC. It’s a kind of tribute to Jan’s interest and passion for these ancient rock carvings and also his wish to share this with everyone.

As BRAC was and still is a collaborative effort we hope it can continue to be the largest website dedicated to UK rock art on the net.

Following on the from ITV's "Britain's Secret Treasures" programme, the Council for British Archaeology have issued an excellent, unequivocal statement on their website.

"The Council for British Archaeology has been working in collaboration with ITV, the British Museum and the Portable Antiquities Scheme on Britain’s Secret Treasures to ensure that everyone fully understands all the issues involved in the search for 'treasure' and can seek expert advice and guidance.

That way we can all share our fascination for the history and heritage of the UK and pass on our knowledge and understanding to future generations, whilst protecting the remains in the ground, which are best left undisturbed.

So, if you are thinking of rushing out to buy a metal detector to search an area near you and seek out your very own 'treasure', CBA Director Mike Heyworth explains why you should think again."

new.archaeologyuk.org/news/archaeology-is-about-knowledge-not-treasure

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-12989605

A large gap in pre-history could signal that Britain underwent an economic downturn over 2,500 years ago.

In history lessons, the three ages of pre-history – Stone Age, Bronze Age and Iron Age – seem to flow together without a gap.

But there is a 300-year period in British history between around 800 BC and 500 BC where experts still struggle to explain what happened, where bronze is in decline and iron was not widely used.

"By 1000 BC the bronze axe had become almost a proto-currency," says historian and presenter Neil Oliver.

"It was wealth that was divorced from its use as a metal. And, a little like economic bubbles that we see today, it spelt danger."

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Interesting piece from the BBC that seems to be a promo for A History of Celtic Britain

From PlanetEarth online

What were Britain's primordial forests like before humans started tampering with the environment? The latest clues from a study of fossil beetles suggest that the ancient forest was patchy and varied in density across Britain.

Scientists have long debated the nature of Europe's ancient landscape and hesitated between a nightmarish, close-canopied forest and a pasture woodland of oak and hazel trees, similar to the modern New Forest, which is kept open by grazing animals.

This is not just an academic question. 'If we want to manage our forests and species to keep them as natural as possible, we have to know what natural is,' says Dr Nicki Whitehouse, a palaeoecologist at Queens University Belfast.

'The traditional view is that the original Holocene woodland in Europe was quite dense with a closed canopy,' she says. 'But this is probably too simplistic and nowadays the debate is more about the degree of openness of the ancient forest and the role of grazing animals in maintaining this structure.'

Together with Dr David Smith, a specialist on environmental archaeology at the University of Birmingham, Whitehouse decided to look for clues in an overlooked source: ancient beetle remains.

Beetles are a good source of environmental data because it's easy to tell species apart and each type of beetle is specific to a given habitat. Some thrive in dense forests, others prefer sparse woodlands and grassland areas, while dung beetles are usually found in areas grazed by large herbivores. The proportion of beetle species in a given period of time 'allows us to reconstruct past habitats with detail,' explains Whitehouse.

Whitehouse and Smith looked at 26 beetle assemblages from different parts of Britain, from Thorne Moors in Yorkshire to Silbury in Hampshire, and looked at how beetle communities changed over 7000 years, since the end of the Ice Age until 4000 years ago.

They found that the history of the original British forest is not as straightforward as previously thought.

Between 9500 and 6000 BC, the fossils were mostly from open and pasture beetle species, with moderate contributions from forest types and hardly any dung beetles. This suggests open patches of oak, hazel, birch and pine forests of variable tree density, similar to modern pasture woodland.

Around 6000 BC forest beetles become more abundant, grassland species decline and 'we see an overall closing of the forest canopy in the insect record,' says Whitehouse.

By 4000 BC, everything changes. This was the time that humans started pursuing an agricultural way of life, raising animals for meat and dairy products. Dung beetles become more abundant, while the other types of beetles decrease.

'The transition to the Neolithic was rather abrupt,' says Whitehouse. The dense forest gave way to pasture woodlands and open landscapes, kept open by the increasing number of grazing animals feeding on saplings.

The beetles turn the history of the British forest into a complex tale. Instead of a continuous closed canopy forest, Britain was covered by uneven patches of forest, with different levels of openness driven by local phenomena such as storms, forest fires or floods. But grazing animals apparently did not play a role until the beginning of agriculture.

The beetle findings, published last week in Quaternary Science Reviews, largely agree with the data collected from the study of ancient pollen. But 'pollen studies have probably over-estimated the abundance of closed canopy trees and under-estimated the more heterogeneous nature of the landscape at this time,' says Whitehouse. 'The Holocene forest was probably patchier than we though: open areas were of local significance and important features of the landscape.'