Orkney Riddle
By Jeffery Nicholls
How did Neolithic Orcadians travel to Orkney in large numbers to build the cairns, henges, and settlements that we visit today.
thesweetcheat
Stone Free: a quarter of scheduled monuments off-limits in England
Lovely piece from Texlahoma in TGO following up the BBC article from the other week.
Scanned index card of Fred Coles’ 1909 sketch and plan of the circle. The fence bisected the circle back then, too.
Canmore page with a scan of an index card containing Fred Coles’ disputed 1909 plan of the stones of the southern ‘circle’.
Video showing the restoration of the fallen lintel at Higher Boden Fogou earlier this year.
Dig One (2021) at Boden Fogou.
Webpages dedicated to the ongoing excavations at Boden Fogou. We were treated to a tour of the site today.
I hadn’t realised that the resurrected Time Team did a dig there in 2021.
Brief Statement on Rescue Recording of an Eroding InterTidal Peat Bed Containing Prehistoric Worked Timber and Human and Animal Footprints
February 2011
Staff from Archaeological Research Services Ltd undertook recording of an inter-tidal peat deposit at Low Hauxley, Northumberland, between the 21st and 23rd December 2010. The work comprised the cleaning (using hand tools) and planning of an area of footprints of both animal and human origin, along with extensive digital photography of the deposit and its context.
Panoramic diagram of all the hills you can see from the Wrekin.
Extensive photos of the excavation of the Braich y Dinas hillfort before it was completely destroyed by quarrying in the 20th century.
Excellent website detailing the caves on Great Orme.
Unfortunately it indicates that the cave shown in the images on TMA is Elephant’s Cave rather than either of Kendrick’s Caves.
Comprehensive survey of prehistoric monuments of Denbighshire and East Conwy.
Opens a pdf.
New 3D exploration app for Maes Howe from Historic Scotland.
The List of Historic Place Names of Wales is a groundbreaking and innovative resource that contains hundreds of thousands of place names collected from historical maps and other sources. It provides a fascinating insight into the land-use, archaeology and history of Wales.
Annotated 3D model of Caer Drewyn by Mark Walters
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Lovely barbed and tanged arrowhead found on Hay Bluff/Pen y Beacon and recorded and shared by PAS.
“A field guide to accessible sites
This is an online guide to accessible monuments in Cornwall, compiled by the Strategic Historic Environment Service of Cornwall Council. It is aimed at anyone with an interest in the countryside, heritage and culture of Cornwall, who wish to get out and experience the wealth of the county’s remarkable sites and monuments.
The range of monuments that can be visited in Cornwall encompass every period of history and prehistory, and reveals insights into changing patterns of agriculture and subsistence, ritual and religion, industry and transport – in short, all facets of human culture over a timespan exceeding 10,000 years.
New sites will be added periodically, so please check back in the future for any newly added sites. Any new additions will be highlighted as such on this page.”
Website dedicated to Hembury fort, including details of conservation and management.
Analysis of the possible origins of the cultivation terraces on Markinch Hill.
Latest updates from Ffion Reynolds on the 2016 season landscape project, including excavation of Bronze Age cairn close to the chambered tomb and new cupmark discoveries on the ridge.
Detailed report based on evaluation and excavation at Tinkinswood, including the “quarry” area and Bronze Age barrow, led by CADW’s Ffion Reynolds.
Site devoted to the caves of the peninsula, with a gazetteer of sites.
Blog about the well, with photos, directions and some folklore.
“The first British Neolithic representational art? The chalk engravings at Cissbury flint mine”
Article by Anne M. Teather
Deer antler found on beach at Tywyn thought to be 6000 years old.
Blog focussing on the Sarn Cynfelyn causeway, a shingle and boulder bank stretching out 7 miles into the sea from Wallog, and in folklore a causeway leading to Caer Wyddno.
Folklore associated with the drowned forest.
Like Coflein? Impressed by Archwilio? Well now you can enjoy the data from both of them together. In one place. On a high quality mapping layer.
That’s the end of sleep and bedtime for me then.
Excellent photo of the exposed chamber during excavation. Only the roofing slabs and passage lintels can be seen now.
A plan and description to help make sense of the jumbled stones of this monument.
Brian John’s (Mountainman) excellent website, with lovely pictures of the exposed timbers of the submerged forest.
More on the lost stone circle on Salakee Down (on page 6).
Lots of fascinating stuff, including names of rocks, legends, interesting stones, etc.
Stay in the reconstructed roundhouse at Bodrifty.
Description of this impressive site, occupied from the early Iron Age into the Middle Ages and boasting huge defences but badly threatened by erosion. Some typically excellent aerial photos too.
Time Team report on the Gateholm dig.
Description of the site with some great aerial photos.
Great Castle Head is on a cliff-girt headland, roughly 160m north-south by up to 260m. It is divided from the mainland to the north by a line of two ramparts with a medial ditch, some 150m in length. Recent structures within this area include defence installations, a lighthouse and a possible folly.
Site description and some excellent aerial photos.
An enclosure complex, extending about 120m NNW-SSE by 60m, the various features being defined by low (up to 0.4m high) stony banks; at the centre of the complex, as mapped by RCAHMW (1979), is a circular structure, some 8.0m across, opening into a roughly 17.5m diameter enclosure on the east: examination of the latter enclosure showed that it had been constructed over an earlier shell-midden (Benson 1978); the site has produced much worked flint, along with iron-slag & possibly spindlewhorls: the complex, occupying a north-facing promontory, can apparently be linked to a wider pattern of relict field enclosure, although this is not certain.
Great aerial photos of the site, showing the earthworks and setting.
Extensive site description with lots of pictures.
The site was surveyed in detail by RCAHMW in 2009.
Coflein has a picture.
And a description from David Leighton’s visit in 1991, not much has changed:
A much denuded round cairn located close to field walls is represented as a stony area about 18m in diameter with a height of up to 0.4m at the edges.
The Lydstep pig – missing meal or ancestral offering?
Photo of hut circle on Canmore.
On a terrace on a S-facing slope at the SW end of Gleann Bianasdail, beside the footpath to the summit of Slioch, there are the bracken-covered remains of a hut-circle, overlain by a shieling-hut and a small pen. The hut-circle measures 8.6m in diameter within a wall spread to 1.3m thick. No outer face is evident, but parts of the inner face survive, especially on the W and N, consisting of edge-set sandstone blocks up to 0.6m high, while a robber trench marks the line of that face on the S and E. Within the hut-circle there are the footings of a subrectangular shieling-hut, aligned NNW-SSE, and immediately beyond the robbed SSE arc of the hut-circle there is a small pen constructed of large stones.
Exploring the submerged landscapes of Prehistoric Wales.
Description and photos of the stone, possibly associated with stone circle and nearby cairn.
Aerial photos showing the landscape setting of the hills above the cave system.
Fine overview (with pictures) of the cairns on the main uplands either side of the Rhondda valleys.
Our entire back catalogue is available through our bookshop.All out of print titles are now available as eBooks via Google Play with inventories published before 1965 being free of charge.
Essential information for a non-abseil visit. Times are for Mumbles (a little way up the coast), so add 15 minutes approx for Paviland.
Plan and description of damaged cairn, containing a probable robbed cist.
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