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This years Bronze Age Forum - Southampton
The Bronze Age Forum
13th & 14th NOVEMBER 2004
CALL FOR PAPERS
The fourth Bronze Age Forum will be held at the University of Southampton on Saturday 13th & Sunday 14th November 2004. This meeting is open to anyone with an interest in Bronze Age archaeology and short papers are invited on any aspect of the period. We are especially interested in topics relating to recent discoveries and original research and it is also hoped to have one session devoted to work in Southern England.
Please contact us with your proposals and abstracts at the following address: [email protected]
For all information regarding the meeting please visit our website at: www.soton.ac.uk/~baforum1/
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Conference - Object-Excavation-Intervention: Dialogues between Sculpture and Archaeology
Conference - Object-Excavation-Intervention: Dialogues between Sculpture and Archaeology, at the Henry Moore Institute, Leeds 3-5 June 2004.
This 3 day international conference is dedicated to the intellectual, historical & methodical crossovers between sculpture & archaeology from prehistory to the present. It looks at the myths & metaphors of archaeology & their sculptural currency, the archaeological & sculpural status of the fragment, at the philosophy of place & questions of site-specificity, at the political apprpriation of archaeology by sculptors & writers, and the notion of the artist as archaeologist.
Cost £30 (£15 concessions).
Contact Liz Aston; tel:0113 246 7467
e-mail [email protected]
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Bronze Age Discovery - Finest in Scottish Borders
Experts from the National Museum are rushing to the Borders after a rare piece of treasure was unearthed near Yetholm.
Local historians are already describing the find as one of the most important ever in the south of Scotland.
And if their early calculations are right – the object may be a 3,000 year-old mirror.
Historical author and broadcaster Alistair Moffat was given a sneak preview of the object this week. He said: "I was absolutely astonished when I saw it. This has to be the find of a lifetime.
Full story here:
http://www.borderstoday.co.uk/ViewArticle2.aspx?SectionID=968&ArticleID=768320
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Dales History
Archaeology buffs are invited to a presentation on the Yorkshire Dales next month. The presentation, by local expert Alex Eckford, will be at the next meeting of Bedale Archaeology and History Society on February 3 at Bedale Hall from 7.30pm. Admission £2 for non-members. For more information contact programme secretary Patricia Tricker on 01677 450176
Source
The Evening Gazette 24-01-03
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Rock Carvings of North and West Europe Symposium
A symposium organised by the British Academy in association with the Royal Swedish Academy of letters History and Antiquities.
Venue
The Royal Academy
Date
15-16 April 2004
More info
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Road Team Unearths Bronze Age Site
I'm not sure which Irish paper this appeared in , I was handed a photocopy of the article by a bloke who knew I was interested in such things. The article is by Sean O'Riordan and was published on 19-11-03
"Archaeologists have discovered a Bronze Age settlement and a number of other significant finds on the proposed route of a multi-million euro bypass in County Cork.
National Roads Authority project archaeologist Ken Hanley confirmed yesterday that they had made a very exciting find near the village of Rathcormac.
Pottery found on the site at Ballybrowney lower, one mile west of the village indicates it was inhabited around 1,600BC.
The site had three large enclosures and was surrounded by timber defences which were probably around 10ft high.
"A site of this type was unknown in Cork before this," Mr Hanley said.
Inside the defences there is evidence of a home which was lived in by a high ranking person, he said. A detailed report has been sent to Duchas who will decide where to extend the excavations. Some of the 65 archaeoilogists who worked on the project believe the site could be considerably larger. The site has been preserved in case of future research.
A number of other discoveries have also been made along the 17km route of the bypass which will link Watergrasshill and Fermoy.
The oldest site uncovered is Neolithic and dates from around 3,000BC. This was discovered at Curraghprevin, just south of Rathcormac.
There archaeologists found what appeared to be a temporary enbcampment occupied by "a small hunter-gatherer unit". Mr Hanley said pottery had been discovered in pits and these items had been sent to specialists for analysis. Cooking pits were also found during the excavations.
A total of 15 of these cooking pits or Fulachta Fiadh have been identified along the bypass route.
"The vast majority are Bronze Age and radio carbon date from 1,800BC to 800BC" Mr Hanley said.
Evidence of a Bronze Age cremation and burial was also found on a hill slightly south of the town of Fermoy."
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A Good Time To Seek Out Rock Art On Brow Moor
A massive blaze has devastated a large area of the North York Moors near Whitby.
An ecological expert fears the moorland at Fylingdales could be a barren wasteland for years.
More than 50 firefighters from across North Yorkshire – a quarter of the county's force – tackled the blaze, which covered an area of about four square miles.
WhitbyToday
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Bronze Age village found with buried megalith
This is quite old news but I'd not read about it before and thought it may be of interest. It comes from British Archaeology Magazine, Issue 59, June 2001.
A complete Middle Bronze Age village has been excavated in Essex. Such settlements are very rare in East Anglia, where the shortage of building stone has meant the survival of few substantial prehistoric remains.
At the heart of the village was a massive, imported standing stone that had been ceremonially buried next to what seems to have been the settlement's main public building.
The rectangular village enclosure, defined by hedges, contained a number of timber-post roundhouses and rubbish pits, clustered around a large circular building some 15m in diameter which was entered along a long corridor of timber posts. Next to this possibly ceremonial building was a large pit containing a huge, 1-tonne sandstone megalith.
No clues were found to where or when the stone had originally been erected - perhaps in the Neolithic - and it may have been transported to the settlement over some distance. The nearest standing stones known today are several miles to the north in Cambridgeshire. 'What is particularly interesting is that the stone was ritually decommissioned,' said site director Nick Shepherd of Framework Archaeology. 'It is very enigmatic.'
The Bronze Age settlement lay at the heart of a well-populated landscape of smaller, less well-defined settlements and may have acted as a kind of ceremonial and social 'capital' of the region. Less than a mile away was a contemporary cremation pyre site by a stream. Its surrounding ditches were filled with charcoal and bits of human bone. Between the pyre and the settlement lay a cremation cemetery which was not well preserved.
The site was found as part of an unusually large-scale excavation project covering some 57 acres (23 hectares) in advance of carpark construction at Stansted airport. The project has shed light on the intensity of landscape occupation in the Middle Bronze Age, when settlements were spaced at roughly one-mile intervals, and again in the Mid-Late Iron Age. Previously, the low-lying claylands of southern Essex were assumed to have been densely wooded right up to the Roman period.
According to Mr Shepherd, occupation seems to have fallen back dramatically in the later Bronze Age, when climatic conditions worsened, and again in the Saxon period following the collapse of the late Roman rural economy. 'The soils here are heavy and difficult to work,' he said. 'The evidence implies that settlement in this marginal area was only worthwhile when conditions were good.'
Framework Archaeology, a joint venture between Wessex Archaeology and the Oxford Unit, was set up to undertake commercial excavations within a 'research framework', and the Stansted excavation is being conducted accordingly. Instead of sampling the whole site, in the normal manner, and analysing the finds only at the end of the excavation, finds are studied as they come out of the ground. Decisions on where to excavate next are then taken on the basis of new questions that need to be answered. 'At a normal dig, you find you collect masses of material that turns out to be worthless. That is not happening here,' Mr Shepherd said.
The buried megalith is likely to be re-erected close to its burial site at the entrance to one of the airport carparks.
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Human Sacrifice in Kettlewell
From the Yorkshire Post 03/01/03
Child in prehistoric grave 'may have been sacrificed'
THE remains of a child who could have been a human sacrifice have been found in a prehistoric graveyard unearthed in the Yorkshire Dales by Leeds University archaeologists.
The bones of the child, aged about four and thought to have lived in the Bronze Age about 3,000 years ago, were discovered in a stone-lined hollow – one of eight sets in the ring cairn near Kettlewell in Upper Wharfedale.
The unique discovery of the remains along with prehistoric cattle bones, pottery and an arrow head, suggested the cairn was used for rituals as well as a burial site, said Roger Martlew, who made the find with a team of students from Leeds University's school of continuing education.
Dr Martlew said: "The site is full of features which, although found individually at different ring cairns around Britain, have not been found together in one place before.
"It could show that the Dales, which had been thought to be a bit of a backwater at the time, actually had wider connections to other parts of the country.
"What is unique is that we have a mixture of two elements – we have got different ritual activity but we have got burials as well."
He said he had not expected to find the remains of the child because it was usual for Bronze Age ring cairns to be ceremonial and not actual burial sites.
Some ring cairns – circles of underground stone-lined hollows – found across England and Wales contain nothing but pits of pure charcoal that suggest the cairns were used for some ceremony not necessarily connected with burial.
Dr Martlew added: "We have taken a quick look, and the bones seem to be of a child aged four although we haven't determined yet whether it was a boy or a girl.
"There is a suggestion elsewhere that children were offered as human sacrifices and that is a possibility here.
"We think there may well be more bodies to be found, as there generally tends to be an important primary burial of some sort and this is not it."
The discovery is the culmination of a two-year project by Dr Martlew and his team of mature students which began as a field survey of the area.
The excavation has already provided the focus for archaeological field courses run by the school of continuing education, and funding has also been obtained from the Centre for Field Research in the US. Work will continue to unravel the complexities of the site over the next year.
[email protected]
02 January 2003
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Bronze Age Forum 15-17th Nov
Bronze Age Forum
Newcastle Friday 15–17 November 2002
Museum of Antiquities
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Conference
14th -16th March 2003
Society of Antiquaries of Scotland, National Museums of Scotland, and the Neolithic Studies Group
CONFERENCE
SCOTLAND IN ANCIENT EUROPE: THE NEOLITHIC AND EARLY BRONZE AGE OF SCOTLAND IN THEIR EUROPEAN CONTEXT
Royal Museum, Edinburgh
Key speaker - Richard Bradley
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