moss

Jersey is probably best known for its sun-kissed beaches, new potatoes, the doe-eyed, fawn-coated cattle which produce those creamy dairy products, and the hit 1980s TV series Bergerac.

Most of Jersey’s holiday attractions are therefore firmly out-of-doors, and it claims in its advertising to be the UK’s warmest spot. But I discovered a much darker, hidden side to the famous holiday island just 14 miles off the Normandy coast on a recent visit.

Underground Jersey offers a far more enigmatic glimpse into the island’s turbulent ancient and not-so-ancient history, but one which repays exploration.

And the one site which encapsulates Jersey’s amazing continuity of history extending over an astonishing 6,000 years is the enigmatic Neolithic passage grave of La Hougue Bie, near Grouville in the south east of the island.

Jersey certainly didn’t rank among the nation’s hotspots on the day I visited La Hougue Bie (pronounced La Hoog Bee).

Stinging showers of icy rain were lashing down as I crept, bent double, into the claustrophobic space of the four feet high and three feet wide stone-lined passageway. The cramped corridor led 30 feet into the echoing darkness of the huge, grass-covered mound.

As my eyes became accustomed to the dark, I could make out the smoothly carved granite of the columns which lined the tunnel and, looking back, light streamed in, illuminating the pebbled floor.

It was only in 1996 that reconstruction archaeologists saw for the first time in five millennia that at the spring equinox, the sun’s rays extended the length of the passage and onto the back wall of the inner sanctum in the heart of the mound.

Reaching the 6½-foot-high oval central chamber, I could at last stand upright and look around what had been the holy of holies – the centre of the unknowable ritual activities which took place here.

It was a moving, slightly spooky, experience and I’m sure that the chill which ran down my spine was not caused solely by the weather.

Outside again, I climbed the winding, spiral pathway to the top of the mound, where the simple apsed chapel of Notre Dame de Clarte was built in the 12th century – probably in an attempt to reclaim the ancient pagan site for Christianity.

A small sepulchre was built into the mound by the mystic Dean Richard Mabon in the 16th century, designed to replicate the Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem, and he apparently regularly performed ‘miracles’ there.

Then in 1792, Phillipe d’Auvergne built a mock medieval castle known as The Prince’s Tower over the chapel, and it became a major tourist attraction and pleasure ground for visitors in the 19th century, complete with hotel, summer house and screaming peacocks. But the Tower fell into disrepair and was finally demolished in 1924.

However, the long story of La Hougue Bie doesn’t end there. Following the German occupation of the island in 1940, soldiers of the 319 Infantry Division built their eastern command bunker into the western side of the mound. Over the next two years around 70 trenches were dug in Phillipe d’Auvergne’s pleasure grounds, no doubt causing even more archaeological damage........

tinyurl.com/5vskyaa

An ancient Leicestershire hillfort will reveal some of its historic secrets over the next month, as archaeologists from the University of Leicester welcome the public to visit the second season of major excavation of the site.

Situated on the Jurassic scarp with commanding views of the surrounding countryside, Burrough Hill near Melton Mowbray is one of the most striking and frequently visited prehistoric monuments in central Britain.

Despite the site’s importance, relatively little is known about its ancient past. Last year a team from the University of Leicester began a five-year survey and excavation of the site, with support from landowners the Ernest Cook Trust (a national educational charity), English Heritage and Leicestershire County Council.

Trenches dug within the fort last summer revealed part of its stone defences, along with a cobbled road, a massive timber gateway and a ‘guard’ chamber built into the entrance rampart. This room remarkably still had surviving Iron Age floors, complete with its hearths an incredibly rare find (www.le.ac.uk/departments/archaeology).

The most surprising discovery so far is evidence of a further large Iron Age settlement just outside the hillfort that was discovered by geophysical survey, suggesting that the hillfort community may have been even larger than thought.

This year the team is revisiting the massive eastern entrance to expose the remainder of the chamber and reveal clues as to what it was used for. Another area will target several roundhouses in the settlement outside in order to find out when and why so many people lived here.

The excavations will take place between 13th June and 15th July and will aim to add to results from a successful first season of excavation in 2010.

A public open day on Sunday June 26th (11am to 4pm) will include guided tours of the excavations and a display of archaeological finds, as well as a chance to meet an ‘Iron Age warrior’ and learn about life in a roundhouse. Many of these activities are funded by the Southeast Leicestershire Treasure Project which has made another wonderful Leicestershire Iron Age find, the Hallaton Treasure, available to the public. A guided walk around the hill fort will also be held at the end of the dig on Monday 18th July as part of the national Festival of Archaeology.

The University of Leicester is also organising a summer school for local pupils. Funding from Aimhigher in the East Midlands will enable 16 year 11 pupils from backgrounds under-represented in higher education to benefit from a residential experience, including working on the dig at Burrough Hill and skills development work with the Department of Archaeology.

Funding from the Ernest Cook Trust (www.ernestcooktrust.org.uk) has enabled the University to employ an outreach worker and create resource packs for schools, making the most of the site’s education potential.

Byron Rhodes, Leicestershire County Council’s Cabinet Member for Country Parks said:

“Burrough Hill Country Park is one of the most striking and historic features in the landscape of eastern Leicestershire. The well-preserved Iron Age hill fort dramatically crowns a steep-sided promontory of land with superb views. A prominent landmark and ready-made arena, the hill has long been a place for public recreation.

“I am delighted that the County Council is working in partnership with the University to delve deep into the parks history and I’m looking forward to seeing what further discoveries are made. The open day will provide the opportunity to showcase some of the amazing finds for the very first time and I would urge people to come along.”

Dr Patrick Clay, Co-director of University of Leicester Archaeological Services added:

‘This is a great opportunity to examine the development of this remarkable monument. Our understanding of Iron Age sites has increased enormously in the last 20 years but this has mainly been through examining lowland farmsteads and a few larger settlements. This work will help our understanding of the role of ‘hillforts’ and their relationship with the smaller surrounding settlements’.

24dash.com/news/education/2011-06-21-Ancient-Leicestershire-hillfort-to-reveal-ancient-secrets

University of Leicester webpage on excavations taking place at Burrough Hill.

www2.le.ac.uk/departments/archaeology/research/projects/burrough-hill-iron-age-hillfort

Maev Kennedy in the Guardian.............

A new scientific dating technique has revealed there was a building spree more than 5,500 years ago, when many of the most spectacular monuments in the English landscape, such as Maiden Castle in Dorset and Windmill Hill in Wiltshire, were built, used and abandoned in a single lifetime.

The fashion for the monuments, hilltops enclosed by rings of ditches, known to archaeologists as causewayed enclosures, instead of being the ritual work of generations as had been believed, began on the continent centuries earlier but spread from Kent to Cornwall within 50 years in about 3700 BC.

Alex Bayliss, an archaeologist and dating expert at English Heritage, said: “The dates were not what we expected when we began this project but prehistorians are just going to have to get their heads around it, a lot of what we have been taught in the past is complete bollocks.”

Bayliss worked on the new dating system with Professor Alasdair Whittle of Cardiff University and other experts, combining hundreds of thousands of scraps of dating evidence, obtained from the last century of excavations, on Cardiff’s computers. They matched notoriously imprecise carbon-14 dates from organic remains – which can have a margin of error of centuries – with all the other evidence from archaeological finds, narrowing the dates for sites from centuries to decades.

“The old techniques gave us such imprecise results that it’s like taking the Napoleonic wars, the first world war, the second world war and the computer revolution and insisting that they’re all contemporary.

“Now we can narrow that down dramatically. You take a granny with a good long life living near Windmill Hill in Avebury, she could have seen her family start the enclosure as a child, see it fall out of fashion and them turn to building barrows, and then return to do more work on the enclosure, all in her lifetime.”

Although some sites were used for generations, the evidence suggests others were built with enormous effort, and then used only once or on a handful of occasions.

“Their construction may have been sparked by a critical mass of population, power and goods to trade around 3700 BC. It’s the Swinging Sixties, everything changes – new wealth, new goods.”

Bayliss added: “We began by looking at the evidence from the causeway enclosures but then to get the story into which they fit, we ran every other carbon date taken for the period. What we found is that the spread of agriculture was far more rapid than we had believed.

“It took two centuries for agriculture to reach Cheltenham from London – and then just 50 years to get from Cheltenham to Aberdeen.”

guardian.co.uk/science/2011/jun/06/archaeology-dating-property-boom-3700bc

Satellites using infra-red imaging are disclosing hidden archaeological treasures such as entire ancient Egyptian cities

Archaeologist Sarah Parcak says she has discovered thousands of ancient sites in Egypt, from pyramids to a detailed street plan of the city of Tanis, an A-to-Z of the region’s northern capital – all thanks to images from satellites orbiting 400 miles above the Earth. The infra-red pictures are capable of tracing structures buried deep in the sand. “It just shows us,” she adds, “how easy it is to underestimate both the size and scale of past human settlements.”

Parcak had studied at Cambridge and taught in Swansea before returning to the US, where she is now at the University of Alabama at Birmingham. Her special interest is analysing satellite images for unseen archaeological remains, and she’s on to a winner. In theory there’s not much you can see from a satellite that you can’t from an aeroplane – and with today’s technologies, there is a very great deal you can find from both. But in practice, the satellites, with publicly available image libraries, score in reduced cost and in reaching inaccessible areas, such as Egyptian deserts, Easter Island . . . and Wales.

Wales? In 2009 a stone-walled ancient fish trap was spotted on Google Earth in the Teifi estuary. The ancient landscape of Britain is laid out before us as never before. One of the first archaeological satellite studies showed prehistoric earthworks near Stonehenge; these had already been mapped, but we make real discoveries as we tour the globe.

In the near east and in Siberia, 3D images are helping to understand remote landscapes and archaeological sites. The roads on which the statues were moved across Easter Island have now been mapped. And in Peru vast ancient “geoglyphs” have been seen, land art in the form of animal shapes created when people moved earth and stones about. The last is a warning. Last year Amelia Carolina Sparavigna, a physicist in Turin, claimed to see birds and snakes outlined in the sinuous walls and field boundaries of ancient landscapes around Late Titicaca. These designs would never have been visible from the ground, and even from above require much faith as you pick along one wall and ignore many others to end up with a very wobbly looking fauna (mysteriously including a hedgehog).

Satellites are powerful tools. At the end of the day, though, you still need to get down on your knees before you can be really sure what you are seeing.

Mike Pitts is editor of British Archaeology.

guardian.co.uk/science/2011/may/25/satellites-uncover-ancient-past

Lovely article in the Guardian today by Hugh Thomson about ‘The Great Stones Way’ walk

A new walking path links Britain’s two greatest prehistoric sites, Avebury and Stonehenge, and is as epic as the Inca Trail.

The Great Stones Way is one of those ideas so obvious it seems amazing that no one has thought of it before: a 38-mile walking trail to link England’s two greatest prehistoric sites, Avebury and Stonehenge, crossing a landscape covered with Neolithic monuments.

But like any project involving the English countryside, it’s not as straightforward as it might seem. The steering group has had to secure permission from landowners and the MoD, who use much of Salisbury Plain for training. They hope to have the whole trail open within a year, but for now are trialling a 14-mile southern stretch, having secured agreement from the MoD and parish councils. The “Plain & Avon” section leads from the iron age hill fort of Casterley Camp on Salisbury Plain down the Avon valley to Stonehenge. Walkers are being encouraged to test the route, and detailed directions can be found on the Friends of the Ridgeway website.

It’s an area all but the boldest have avoided: negotiating the MoD areas needed careful planning. Few walkers come here and not a single garage or shop along the Avon valley sells local maps. The Great Stones Way should change that.

What makes the prospect of the Great Stones Way so exciting is the sense that for more than a millennium, between around 3000 and 2000BC, the area it crosses was the scene of frenzied Neolithic building activity, with henges, burial barrows and processional avenues criss-crossing the route.

At Casterley Camp, high on Salisbury Plain, it takes me a while to realise what is strange about the landscape, as wild and empty as anywhere in southern England, and with a large burial mound directly ahead. Then it hits me: this is perfect high grazing country, but there’s not a single sheep. Maybe they have read the MoD notice which points out that “’projectile’ means any shot or shell or other missile or any portion thereof”, and that over much of what you can see you’re liable to be hit by one. You can also be arrested without a warrant. But the trail cleverly and legally threads its way past the firing ranges towards a delightful and ancient droving road that plunges down between cow parsley to an old farm.
Read the full article here ..

guardian.co.uk/travel/2011/may/14/stonehenge-avebury-great-stones-way-walking-trail

ridgewayfriends.org.uk/

Why are there ten times as many ancient entrance graves on the Isles of Scilly as there are in the whole of the Cornish mainland and what treasures are still to be found in the waters around the archipelago?

These and a host of other puzzles will be under discussion as part of a six-year research programme looking into every aspect of Scillonian history.

Led by Charlie Johns, the senior archaeologist for historic environment projects at Cornwall Council, the aim is to create an academic assessment of the islands and create a strategy to ensure historic sites and artefacts are properly protected.

Mr Johns, who has been studying the history of the Isles of Scilly for more than 20 years, is holding a public information day at the Isles of Scilly Museum in Hugh Town today, when local people are invited to find out more about the project.

“This is a very important development because it will identify gaps in our knowledge about the Islands’ historic environment and guide the direction of future research,” he said. “We hope to involve interested local people in this process so that there is a sense of community ownership of the research framework.”

Work has already begun on the preparation of a Research Framework for the Historic Environment of the Isles of Scilly (SHERF), which was commissioned by English Heritage.

Mr Johns explained that although there is a research framework for the wider South West region, Cornwall Council and the Council of the Isles of Scilly felt that because the islands were a separate entity they needed special treatment.

“There are three stages of the project, the first being to gather what is already known and to identify the gaps. This is where the knowledge and assistance of local people will be invaluable. We are also receiving voluntary contributions from around 30 academics from all over the country.”

All aspects of Scilly’s past will be studied, from its buildings to marine archaeology, the Civil War to family history, seafaring and farming.

He added that the programme is considered important because although much of the islands’ history is documented, a great deal is not. Victorian amateurs taking holidays there simply dug up graves and extracted their contents with little regard for proper identification or preservation.Consequently many important finds are scattered or lost. Isles of Scilly Museum, the Royal Cornwall Museum at Truro and Penlee House in Penzance have good collections, but the location of many more items is not known.

It is hoped to complete a draft plan in time for a seminar in Exeter during the autumn, which will lead to the creation of a research strategy likely to last for five years.

thisisdevon.co.uk/comment/Solving-myriad-mysteries-archipelago-s-sunken-landscape/article-3541757-detail/article.html

To learn more about the 34,000-year-old remains of the Red Lady, our writer spent the night in the cave where his, yes, his bones were discovered in 1823.

It was probably more interesting 34,000 years ago. Then, from Paviland cave you would have seen mammoths, rhinos, oryx, vast herds of deer, even the odd sabre-toothed tiger, all roaming across the plain below. Now it’s just water – the Bristol Channel swashing against the jagged rock beneath the cave, Lundy Island in the distance, the coast of south-west England beyond that.

Paviland is only accessible for a couple of hours a day – unless you fancy a tricky climb – so I’ve decided to stay here for 24 hours, sleeping in the cave, sunbathing on the rocks, and wishing I’d brought some board games to play with my companions, local survival expert Andrew Price and photographer Gareth Phillips.

Cave life can be a little on the dull side.

Paviland cave, on the Gower peninsula in South Wales, is a crucial site for tracing the origins of human life in Britain. It was in here, in 1823, that William Buckland, the first professor of geology at Oxford University, excavated the remains of a body that had been smeared with red ochre (naturally occurring iron oxide) and buried with a selection of periwinkle shells and ivory rods. Buckland initially thought the body was that of a customs officer, killed by smugglers. Then he decided it was a Roman prostitute – he wrongly believed the iron-age fort on the hilltop above the cave was Roman. This misidentification gave the headless skeleton its name – “the Red Lady of Paviland” – and it is still called the Red Lady, even though we now know two things Buckland didn’t: the remains are those of a young man, probably in his late 20s, and they were buried 34,000 years ago. The Red Lady is the oldest anatomically modern human skeleton found in Britain, and Paviland is the site of the oldest ceremonial burial in western Europe.

To get in touch with this epic slice of pre-history I have chosen to sleep in the very spot where the Red Lady was discovered. I’m not sure what I expect to get out of this – a metaphysical connection with one of the first modern humans to come to these islands perhaps; the spiritual uplift pagans who visit this cave get when they come to pay homage to a figure they regard as a shaman. But in reality all I get is bitten on the hand by a spider. If Price had told me before the tide came in that there were spiders and bats in the cave, I probably wouldn’t have stayed.

Price has known the cave (called Goat’s Hole by locals) since he was a boy and is fascinated by the Red Lady. He likes to think spiritual significance was attached to the cave – larger than the others hereabouts, with an evocative, teardrop-shaped mouth – as a burial chamber. “I don’t think the aesthetics would have been lost on people then,” he muses. “And, even if you just look at it in practical terms, sitting up here gives you a great view of your hunting grounds.” Then, with global temperatures colder and sea levels lower, the estuary was miles back from the cave, and the plain teemed with the animals on which the small hunter-gatherer groups depended. They tracked herds of deer across hundreds of miles, and Paviland is likely to have been a stopping-off point on their annual round.

Excavators who came after Buckland found thousands of flints on the floor of the cave, suggesting it was in regular use, even though a few thousand years after the Red Lady was buried temperatures fell further, the ice advanced and Britain was abandoned by early man, leaving the cave’s occupant to lie alone for thousands of years.

As I struggle to get to sleep on the rocky, uneven floor of the cave, I try to dwell on his fate and conjure up the millennia, but all I can register is my tiredness and the constant boom of the sea as it penetrates the hollows in the cliffs.

Price believes the Red Lady was an important man. “Judging by the items that were found, I think he would have played a significant role. The ivory rods clearly had some ritualistic or artistic use. They weren’t hunting tools or anything like that, and that leads me to believe that his role in their society was of either religious significance or as a leader of some sort. I lean towards the idea that he might have been a mystic of some kind, or someone with a spiritual connection.”

What might be called the Welsh romantic view of the Red Lady is given academic backing by a monograph called Paviland Cave and the Red Lady: A Definitive Report, edited by archaeologist Stephen Aldhouse-Green and published in 2000. Aldhouse-Green argues that Paviland had been a “locus consecratus” – a sacred place – for more than 5,000 years. Unfortunately for the definitive report, the skeleton had been wrongly dated to 26,000 years ago, and the case for the symbolic importance of the cave and the possible shamanistic status of its occupant is now thought distinctly sketchy.

Marianne Sommer, in her book Bones and Ochre: The Curious Afterlife of the Red Lady of Paviland, makes the point that Welsh academics may have been seduced into making the Red Lady part of an indigenous cultural narrative. The fact that the Definitive Report opens with a poem called The Wind celebrating the “swift antiquarian/Who teaches me the antiquity of longing” and has a foreword by the then Welsh first minister Rhodri Morgan emphasises the significance accorded to the Red Lady in Wales and helps to explain why the remains have become, as Sommer is not afraid to pun, “bones of contention”.

A few days after my stay in the cave, I go to meet the Red Lady – or at least his bones, in the Oxford University Museum of Natural History. They are too fragile to be put on display, but in the office of museum director, Jim Kennedy, I am allowed to touch them, wearing gloves and terrified of dropping them. The bones, stained red, are laid out in boxes, but you have no sense of the body, which is reckoned to have been 6ft tall, narrow-hipped and gracile – more African than European in body type and typical of a man who had to cover huge distances on foot. The skeleton is missing the skull, the long bones of the right side and vertabrae, all of which were presumed lost, either because of human disturbance or the effects of the sea – the cave suffers occasional inundations.

Kennedy is not a romantic. He dismisses the notion that the Red Lady was a shaman and that the cave was a site for pilgrimage, seeing the burial as “a single event [of] a young man, for all we know a mammoth hunter, who got killed and was buried by his companions”. The rest, he reckons, should be silence, though it won’t be. “If people want to believe this is an important cultural site, they’ll believe it,” he says.

Kennedy’s views may be coloured by the battle he has fought against Welsh pagans and other campaigners who argue that the bones should be at a museum in Wales. Cyt ap Nydden, a druid based in Swansea (though he was originally an engineer from Birmingham called Chris Warwick) and a leading figure in the lobby group Dead to Rights, tells me that the ideal solution would be for them to be returned to the cave, where they could be exhibited under glass. He calls the removal of the bones “grave-robbing”, and says it would never have been permitted at the site of a Christian burial. Ap Nydden has also spent a night at Paviland, which he says was “warm and comforting” and exhibited none of the signs of spiritual disturbance he had expected.

He was clearly not bitten by a spider or bothered by bats.

At Oxford I also talk to Tom Higham, deputy director of the university’s radiocarbon accelerator unit, which redated the Red Lady to 34,000 years ago. “We found that instead of sitting where he had been before, in a cold period, it was actually in a much warmer interstadial [a relatively warm period within the ice age]. We think that’s why people were there. The pattern is emerging of people not really coming to the British isles unless it was warmer. You can imagine it being a peninsula [Britain was joined to the continent at that point] into which people didn’t go unless conditions were right.”

I ask Higham what we can deduce about the Red Lady. “This person probably had some kind of an accident. He’s a healthy person, not very old, doesn’t show any major signs of illness or disease. My guess is there was a hunting party, they were hunting in the environs of the site, there was an accident and the person was buried there.” The cave, in Higham’s view, was not a pagan cathedral but a convenient spot to leave a companion who had met an untimely end, and he says there is no evidence of subsequent pilgrimages, other perhaps than by doting druids and misguided journalists. His prosaic conclusion is unlikely to play well in the more poetic corners of Wales.

guardian.co.uk/science/2011/apr/25/paviland-cave-red-lady

Development never quite goes away, its often sneaked in under the door. There is an active FB page ....Save Bremore Heritage Group. NO PORT HERE! following the continuing saga..

Drogheda Port Company has re-submitted a major plan to extend the port’s boundary and develop a €300 million deepwater facility at Bremore in north Dublin.

The semi-state company made an earlier bid to develop the Bremore project, but critically it failed to obtain the approval of the former transport minister Noel Dempsey in 2009.

Any approval given to Drogheda’s plan might be seen to disadvantage Dublin Port, amid questions over whether the capital’s port should be expanded to meet future needs.

Drogheda Port Company is developing Bremore in a joint venture with Castlemarket Holdings, part of the Treasury Holdings Group.

The project would require a Ministerial Order from the next transport minister to sanction the widening of its boundary.

Drogheda Port Company carried out a public consultation in September 2009 on a proposed alteration of its harbour limits to include the area around Bremore.

No planning application has been made in relation to the project, but the joint venture partners are engaged in preplanning preparations.

Both Drogheda Port Company and Dublin Port Company are included on the list of semi-state bodies, including Bord Gáis and the ESB, whose assets and liabilities were the subject of a review by economist Colm McCarthy, with the potential for some of those agencies to be sold.

The previous bid to develop Drogheda Port boundary was complicated by legal concerns that were expressed by the Attorney General, Paul Gallagher.

Gallagher warned the government that it would be ‘’legally problematic’’ to extend Drogheda Port’s boundaries into north Dublin to permit it to develop the Bremore Port plan, given constraints that existed at the time on the powers which the minister possessed to make such a decision.

“However, the Attorney General’s concerns have been surpassed by the enactment of the Harbours (Amendment) Act 2009,which extended ministerial powers to alter a company’s harbour limits.”

Well I never, the word complicit comes to mind!!

thepost.ie/news/drogheda-port-company-revisits-e300m-expansion-at-bremore-54964.html

OLD Sarum will be closed to the public on weekdays for five months every winter under English Heritage cost-cutting plans.

The news comes as another blow to Salisbury’s tourism industry, which already faces the closure of the city’s youth hostel and cuts to the tourist information service.

Five jobs are affected, and consultation is taking place with staff.

The monument will remain open during February half-term, but will otherwise close from Monday to Friday between November 1 and March 31. The car park will also shut.

All but two English Heritage properties where entry fees are charged face similar closures. Stonehenge has escaped, because it is profitable all year round.

PCS union branch chairman Mike Hodgson said indiscriminate government funding cuts are to blame, rather than English Heritage management.

The organisation’s income is being slashed by £40milllion, or 32 per cent, over four years, with the brunt of the cut – £20million – falling in the first year.

The 62 sites affected lose a total of £7million every winter.

But Mr Hodgson said staff cuts will only save £928,000 nationally. Closed sites will have to be maintained and kept secure. They will also have to be opened up for pre-booked educational visits.

“For the sake of another £1million the government could keep the sites open,” he said.

“Most staff are only on £12,500 to £13,000 a year and they will lose five months’ pay.

“Our strategy is to put pressure on the government via local authorities to give English Heritage more money.”

MP John Glen is to raise the issue with English Heritage’s local project director.

He said: “The security of those employed at Old Sarum and the accessibility of the site should be sacrosanct. There are wider implications for Salisbury.”

Wiltshire Council’s Cabinet member for tourism, John Brady, is an English Heritage member. He believes some members will cancel their subscriptions because they are being devalued.

He described the closure as disappointing but said research shows that most people who go to Old Sarum are local and the impact on tourism will be marginal.

“People will still be able to walk round the rings,” he added, “and at least there will still be weekends, and Stonehenge won’t be affected.”

An English Heritage spokesman said: “Only four per cent of all our visitors come during the winter weekdays.

“Most of our 260 free properties, such as Woodhenge, will remain open throughout the winter.

“In light of the reduction in our grant, we believe that this option is the best one.”

salisburyjournal.co.uk/news/journalnewsindex/8955135.Old_Sarum_opening_hours_cut_to_save_cash/

A contentious plan to erect a wind turbine near a historic stone circle in Aberdeenshire will be considered by councillors today.

The proposed development at Newbigging Farm, Chapel of Garioch, near Inverurie, lies just north of the Easter Aquhorthies monument.

The stone circle is thought to be one of the earliest built in Aberdeenshire, and is classed as a scheduled monument, which is a protected site of national importance.

Historic Scotland has objected to the application to build the 150ft wind turbine, which it believes would have a “significant impact” on the setting of the circle.

In a letter to Aberdeenshire Council’s planning department, Historic Scotland’s inspector of ancient monuments Martin Brann states that the monument is “characteristic of the Neolithic and early Bronze Age in Grampian”.

He states that the proposed wind turbine would be about 2,000ft from the stone circle.

“In this location, the turbine will be prominent in key views to and from the monument and we consider that it will have a significant adverse impact on the setting of the scheduled monument.”

The monument consists of 11 stones up to 8ft high with a total diameter of just under 65ft. One large 12ft stone lies horizontally, or recumbent, flanked by two of the upright stones.

Stone circles are believed to have arrived in the Aberdeenshire landscape in about 2000BC, but this particular circle also has a dry stone wall, which is thought to be a more recent addition, in either the 1700s or 1800s.

The applicant, Alan Bruce, of Newbigging Farm, was previously granted permission for a smaller turbine to the north of the property.

The British Airports Authority (BAA) and the Civil Aviation Authority (CAA) were consulted by council officials, but did not object to the plan.

However, representatives of Nats, the National Air Traffic Service, initially objected before withdrawing after a detailed technical and operational assessment was conducted.

Council planners have recommended members of the area committee refuse planning permission on the basis that the turbine would “detract from the quality and character of the landscape.”

Read more: pressandjournal.co.uk/Article.aspx/2179091?UserKey=#ixzz1GhC06bbb

NEOLITHIC men, women and children buried in Orkney’s internationally-famous Tomb of the Eagles suffered serious violence and possibly died of it, according to new research.

Archaeologists studied all 85 skulls from in and around the 5,000-year-old tomb and found that 16 of them have “clear evidence” of trauma.

The skulls – both male and female, children and adults – showed injuries caused by one or more blows to the head inflicted by a weapon.

Some of these severe head wounds healed, leaving people with painful head injuries.

But Orkney-based archaeologist David Lawrence, who led the investigation and revealed his preliminary findings yesterday, said it was very likely that many died of their injuries.

The findings go against the long-held belief that the people who lived in Scotland in the New Stone Age were peaceful farmers and the human race did not turn murderous and become warlike until later in pre-history.

Mr Lawrence undertook the research in a collaborative project between the University of Bradford and Orkney Museum, funded by the Arts and Humanities Research Council.

He said: “By checking if the wounds were healed or not, we can see if someone suffered from severe head trauma just around the time of their death. To say with absolute certainty if they actually died from it is very hard, but some attacks were so severe that the whole skull split in two.

“Other wounds are very subtle and are most easily observed inside the skull, where splinters have been bent inwards.

“Some were caused by a blunt force, like a stone or a mace. Other cases were caused by pointed objects, like a bone-headed arrow and there were also traumas caused by edged objects, like an axe.

“Some wounds did heal. There is a skull of a woman that has three healed wounds which were caused by blows from a blunt object. She also had a dislocated jaw which was badly healed. She must have suffered terribly”

The study’s main finding – that Scotland’s early settlers were not the friendly farmers that historians had thought them – is in line with recent results from studies and finds in Europe.

“For a long time it was thought Neolithic people were friendly farmers, but in recent years it has been proven that this was not necessarily the case,” said Mr Lawrence. “My study shows this again, but this time on an apparently remote island.”

Mr Lawrence is convinced that the people in the Tomb of the Eagles were not ritually killed.

He said: “There was a great variety in the places where people were hit and the instruments used. There is no simple pattern. This variety makes it very unlikely that they were killed in some kind of ritual.
“Some wounds are too directed to be an accident. Some went straight through the skull. Many were very likely caused by a mace, or even just stones, but certainly caused with intent. I think it is very likely that some of the head injuries were suffered during fights face to face. I can’t say if they were fighting each other or different tribes.

“It is hard to tell who these particular people were, and why they were buried in this tomb. There is still a lot of carbon dating to do, but most of the bones seem to date from the fourth millennium BC.”

Background: Farmer’s grim discovery: 16,000 human bones and eagle talons

Isbister Chambered Cairn – better known as the Tomb of the Eagles – sits on the south-eastern tip of South Ronaldsay.

Alongside 16,000 human bones, 70 talons from the white-tailed sea eagle were found within it. It is believed the magnificent birds, once common in Orkney, might have been a totem of the people who built the tomb.

The tomb is 3.5m high and consists of a rectangular main chamber, divided into stalls and side cells. It was discovered in 1958 by farmer Ronnie Simison, while looking for stone to make corner posts for fencing.

After digging for ten minutes he found a dark hole and, using a cigarette lighter, he revealed a chamber containing skulls.

news.scotsman.com/scotland/Tomb-of-the-Eagles-gives.6730778.jp?articlepage=2

CONSTRUCTION OF the proposed Slane bypass in Co Meath could have implications for the world heritage status of Brú na Bóinne, the site that is home to the megalithic tombs of Newgrange, Knowth and Dowth, a planning hearing was told yesterday.

An international expert on heritage sites said construction of the bypass was likely to result in Unesco “monitoring” the impact on the world heritage site.

Dr Douglas Comer told the An Bord Pleanála hearing that “failure to maintain the outstanding universal value of a world heritage site can threaten its status as such”.

Meath County Council is seeking permission from the board to build the road and the oral hearing is expected to continue until early next month.

Dr Comer, an archaeologist and international expert on culture sites, said there could be “a very large adverse impact” on the site because of the proposed route of the road. He was asked by the council to prepare a heritage impact assessment of the road plan. He said “one might reasonably expect that the bypass will be seen as a further, incremental intrusion on the landscape”.

Dr Comer’s report said that if assurances are given that the bypass will not stimulate new construction in the vicinity of the heritage site and if it is only visible from the top of Knowth, then it would represent a minor change with a moderate/large adverse effect.

However, without such assurances and if the road can be seen from several locations in the Brú na Bóinne site, then it would have a “large/very large adverse impact”, he concluded.

The 3.5km dual carriageway would bypass Slane to the east of the village at a cost of €46 million and divert traffic from the village and Slane bridge where 22 people have died in traffic accidents in recent years.

Archaeologist Finola O’Carroll, who assessed the scheme for the council, said the new road would be visible from Knowth and Newgrange but the long-term impact of this was “in the visual and landscape assessment deemed respectively to be ‘medium and neutral’ and ‘low and neutral’.”

She said that the design of the bridge and the road seeks to minimise the visual disturbance in accordance with the principles of cultural heritage management.

Landscape architect Declan O’Leary said that to reduce the impact of the 200m long bridge, it is designed to sit within the existing topography. It will be 21m above the valley floor and made from a steel/concrete composite. Its crossing is set at a level to reduce the cutting into the valley sides, “limiting the impact on the Boyne valley”, he added.

irishtimes.com/newspaper/ireland/2011/0222/1224290514228.html

A building whose foundations were unearthed during an excavation at Marden Henge near Devizes last summer could have been a Neolithic sauna.

Archaeologist Jim Leary told his audience at Devizes town hall on Saturday that the chalk foundations contained a sunken hearth that would have given out intense heat.

“It brings to mind the sweat lodges found in North America,” he said. “It could have been used as part of a purification ceremony.”

Also found was a midden or rubbish heap with dozens of pig bones, some still attached, likely to be the remains of a huge feast that took place 5,000 years ago.

Mr Leary was supposed to give his talk at the museum, but such was the interest in his subject that it was transferred to the town hall. All 150 tickets were sold and people queued for returns.

Mr Leary said Marden Henge is the biggest henge in England but because it did not have a stone circle associated with it, tended to be overlooked. Before Professor Geoffrey Wainwright examined its northern sector in 1969, it had not been investigated since the early 19th century.

A huge mound, like a smaller version of Silbury Hill, named Hatfield Barrow, once existed there, but it collapsed after a shaft was dug through its centre and was levelled shortly afterwards.

The English Heritage team investigated that area as well as two sites further south, and it was at the area known as the Southern Circle that they made their most exciting discoveries.

It was in the bank of this henge within a henge that they found the chalk floor. Mr Leary described the dig as a work in progress. He said: “We are at a very early stage and there is a lot more to be found. But our fate is in the hands of the government cuts.

“Clearly there is more work to be done, at least another season, but we need funding to do any further investigation.”

thisiswiltshire.co.uk/news/headlines/8845131.The_heat_was_on_at_Marden_Henge/?ref=rss

When Warwick Peirson stumbled on markings on a stone highlighted by snow little did he know it was to spark a passion which would span more than 30 years.

A winter walk with his young son on Ilkley Moor drew his attention to one of the hundreds of carved rocks which have occupied a swathe of West Yorkshire upland for thousands of years.

Efforts to find out more about the curious carvings – which date back to the Bronze Age – led to a quest he is still pursuing more than three decades later.

“I always knew about the stones but about 30 years ago I noticed a stone on Ilkley Moor and the carvings stood out with the snow,” said Mr Peirson, who lives in Menston.

“I went down to the museum in Ilkley to try to try to find out more and I realised there was very little information about them.”

The novice began his own survey mapping out the carved stones and has continued to study the artefacts ever since.

Mr Peirson, 68, said: “I realised that they must be one of the earliest forms of communication of writing, being about 4.000 years old. That fascinated me.

“I have found them addictive. I wrote a letter to the Ilkley Archaeology Group asking for information and wrote, PS, didn’t they think that all the stones should bear a government health warning because they were extremely addictive.”

So when a call was put out for volunteers to help with a survey to investigate the hundreds of carved stones on Rombalds Moor, Mr Peirson leapt at the opportunity.

He is among a group of more than 30 volunteers who are spending three years surveying the stones on the upland that lies between the River Wharfe and the River Aire – collectively known as Rombalds Moor.

Last year Pennine Prospects was awarded a Heritage Lottery Fund grant and South Pennine Leader funding to run the Watershed Landscape Project which covers a range of smaller projects, including Carved Stone Investigation Rombalds Moor.

Gavin Edwards, community archaeologist for the Watershed Landscape Project, said: “The survey on Rombalds Moor will be the most comprehensive undertaken in over two decades, and at the end of the 36 months, with the help of the volunteers, we will have gathered very valuable information.

“Prehistoric carvings are a unique and valuable part of our heritage, providing a direct link with the people who lived here over 5,000 years ago. Although stone is a long lasting medium, it is, nevertheless, subject to erosion by wind and rain and the destructive effects of vegetation.

“It is important to try and capture a detailed record of the carved stones and their surrounding landscape both for current studies and to guide conservation management, so we can protect them for future generations.

Existing records indicate that more than 300 carved panels lie on the moors between the rivers Wharfe and Aire.”

Ilkley Moor has the highest number of carved rocks but they are also to be found at Bingley Moor, Addingham, Baildon and Burley In Wharfedale.

Varying from simple marks to elaborate patterns, the carvings have baffled people for generations and it is still not clear why so many occupy Rombalds Moor.

“They do cluster in different parts of the country but why that should be, we do not yet understand,” said Mr Edwards. “Clearly Rombalds Moor was treated differently to everywhere else. It must have been a special landscape in which these were made but what made it special we just do not know.

“These are marks that were made by the same people who were working that landscape all those thousands of years ago and it is a really tangible connection we have with the past.”

The work is initially focusing on Ilkley Moor where people can learn the craft of recording the stones. Volunteers will record those which are already scheduled monuments, which protects them by law.

Mr Edwards said: “Although they are already known, what we are concerned about is whether they are deteriorating. The survey is to get a detailed record of them as they are today so that we can then see just how much weathering and damage is being caused to them in the future.”

It is hoped that the work will not only record the rate of deterioration but also throw light on what can be done to slow it down – hence preserving the historic stones for generations to come.

The survey will also photograph the carved rocks with a technique called photogrammetry, which creates three-dimensional images that will help researchers in their studies.

yorkshirepost.co.uk/news/country-view/environment/rock_on_stalwart_s_long_quest_to_preserve_carvings_1_3072032

A 4000-year-old standing stone in Angus has fallen over due to severe winter weather.

The Carlinwell stone at Airlie, near Kirriemuir, toppled over as the snow, ice and frost from the long cold spell melted away.

The 7ft prehistoric unsculptured standing stone is situated on the crest of a knoll on a farm. Human remains were found underneath the scheduled monument at the end of the 18th century. It is one of a number of standing stones across the country.

Historic Scotland is now looking to carry out an investigative dig of the site, before reinstating the stone.

A spokeswoman said: “Carlinwell standing stone is a scheduled monument near Airlie, Angus.

“The stone fell over a couple of weeks ago when this winter’s heavy frost finally thawed. We were contacted by the landowner and had a meeting with him on Friday.

“Fortunately the stone was not damaged in any way and the owner has cordoned the stone off to protect it from grazing stock.

“Prehistoric standing stones such as this commonly have relatively shallow footings and two thousand years of soil erosion can result in instability. We will be investigating options for reinstating the stone.

“Historic Scotland is hoping to arrange for archaeological excavation around the base of the standing stone followed by its re-instatement.”

news.stv.tv/scotland/tayside/225279-prehistoric-standing-stone-falls-over/

A Guernsey park could be home to artefacts dating back to the Stone Age, according to a Bristol University archaeologist.

Dr George Nash has asked the States for permission to excavate an area of Delancey Park in St Sampson.

Dr Nash has already carried out some test digs in the area and believes a Neolithic gallery grave, with some intact artefacts, is located there.

If permission is given, work should start in June.

Dr Nash will work with the archaeology officer for Guernsey Museums, Phillip de Jersey, on the dig.

Mr de Jersey said: “The stone used to be upright, forming what is called a gallery grave.

“It is quite a rare type of Neolithic monument in the Channel Islands – there’s just this one on Guernsey and a couple on Jersey.

“We got a fair amount of pottery and flint from the trial pits that were dug last summer, and we’ve also got material in the museum’s stores from the excavation that took place here in 1922, so we can be fairly sure there is still material to be found.”

He said any finds would remain in the island and some could go on display in the island’s museum.

bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-guernsey-12334385

Update on Goff’s news May 2010 – one step nearer to getting a new centre built!

Plans for a visitor centre at a Dorset nature reserve have been submitted.

The borough council has been planning to create a £1m visitor centre at Hengistbury Head for the past 10 years.

People can comment until 3 December on plans to convert the thatched barn at the site to house displays about the area’s archaeology and wildlife.

The council said developers will provide £300,000 while an application for a £420,000 Lottery grant will be made in February.

‘One million visitors‘

The remaining money for the project could come through government funds.

If approved for funding, the new centre would be completed in 2012.

It will feature displays showing the nature reserve’s plants and animals and their habitats.

The centre will also have archaeology exhibitions about Hengistbury Head, chronicling its history from 60 million years ago when it was beneath a tropical sea, through to the Stone Age when humans hunted and camped there, to the Iron Age when it was an important trading port.

Sue Harmon-Smith, chair of the Hengistbury Head Supporter’s Group, added: “Steeped in history and wildlife, Hengistbury Head is one of the most popular and important nature reserves on the South coast with around one million visitors annually.

“It makes sense that we should have a visitor centre and education facility on the site that we can be proud of.”

bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-dorset-11811204

Hoards of Bronze Age weapons, pots still full of food and elaborate textiles have all been uncovered at an archaeological dig near Peterborough.

The unusually well-preserved finds are due to a fierce fire in 500BC, which caused the artefacts to sink rapidly into the peaty fen waters.

Archaeologist Tim Malim said: “It’s more impressive than Flag Fen.

“The textile finds are unique within England,” he continued. “We’ve never found anything from this date before.”

The archaeologists also quite literally walked in the steps of our Bronze Age ancestors – uncovering human and animal footprints in the mud.

Wooden Piles.

The dig took place at Must Farm, a quarry owned by Hanson at Whittlesey.

For around 15 years, the company has arranged for archaeologists to excavate sites ahead of its clay extractions.

But this dig almost did not take place.

A local archaeologist swam in the quarry pits as a child. He remembered seeing wooden piles in the water, so suggested Cambridge Archaeological Unit (CAU) should explore the site, which was not in the path of the next Hanson clay extraction.

Mr Malim is the head of archaeology for the environmental firm SLR Consulting. The company works closely with Hanson and CAU.

He explained that the settlement was unusual. Instead of being built on dry land, the buildings were attached to a large wooden platform balanced on thick, oak piles driven into the bed of the River Nene.

This helped preserve the finds when a fire broke out sometime between 700BC and 500BC.

‘Really intense heat‘

“Imagine a fire like the one at the pier in Weston-super-Mare,” Mr Malim said. “The wind acts under the supports to build up a really intense heat and incinerated the pier, and it was like that with this platform.

“As a consequence of that the buildings above, and all that was in them, burnt very quickly and dropped into the water where the fire was rapidly quenched and the contents preserved.”

As well as the textiles, rare pottery, wicker fishing traps, wooden walkways and bronze tools have been revealed.

The archaeologists also discovered glass beads previously unknown to this late Bronze Age, so they could be imports from Europe.

The contents of the 50 pots of food are awaiting analysis by experts.

The site is so significant that Hanson has ensured its preservation by building a bund around it to prevent it drying out.

Rising sea levels gradually flooded this part of Cambridgeshire from the late Bronze Age, causing people to retreat to the higher, drier areas, with wooden walkways linking them above the bogs.

Large-scale clay extraction in this area, known as the Flag Fen basin, has given archaeologists the chance to discover how the landscape developed and uncover the way people lived.

Now the Cambridge Archaeological Unit has moved on to another part of the quarry where two burial mounds, or barrows, cobbled tracks and fishing traps have been uncovered.

news.bbc.co.uk/local/cambridgeshire/hi/people_and_places/history/newsid_9168000/9168497.stm

Note; its probably within a few kilometres of Flag Fen

Prehistoric carvings on Ilkley Moor are to be preserved with help from the latest technology so future generations will be able to enjoy and study them.

Archaeologists hope to create digital 3D models of the carvings amid fears the originals could be eroded away.

Community archaeologist Gavin Edwards said this was an important development.

He said: “We have the opportunity to create three-dimensional models so they can be studied in the future as they exist in the landscape itself.”

Up until now the only way we have been able to represent them is in two dimensions.

It is thought they were made by some of the first hunter-gatherers to reach what is now Ilkley Moor – an area which now has the highest concentration of Mesolithic sites in the world.

Gavin Edwards explained: “What we have is a dense concentration of evidence telling us about how the very first people who moved back into this area were exploiting the landscape and how they were surviving.

“They are part of the story of how human interaction with their surroundings started to change the very appearance of the landscape.”

The Prehistoric Carved Rocks project has been launched by Pennine Prospects, an organisation dedicated to the regeneration of the South Pennines.

The project’s aim is to ensure that even if the original carvings erode away due to the effects of the weather they will still available for study in centuries to come.

Gavin Edwards said it was all down to the latest technology that the project could be launched.

He said: “Up until now the only way we have been able to represent them is in two dimensions.

“But a new technique has become available to us whereby we can photograph them with digital images.

“Then, then there is a very complicated piece of software which can combine the images to produce a three-dimensional model of the actual carvings.”

The ancient carvings can be seen in a number of places on Ilkley Moor
Volunteers are now being urged to come forward to join in the Prehistoric Carved Rocks project in Ilkley.

They will be given the chance to find out more about the project and register their interest.

Training sessions

In the coming months, training sessions covering surveying, recording and photographic techniques will take place.

It it is hoped volunteers will then be able to put all these skills into action on Ilkley Moor over the next three years.

Volunteer Eddie Nash said he thought it was well worth getting involved for a number of reasons.

He explained: “It is an interest I have. I find it fascinating looking back and trying to understand how our ancestors lived and developed and gave us what we have today.

“It is the usual situation where people do not understand and use what they have on their own doorstep.

“Once you start to make them aware of things, they are very surprised about what is to be found.”

news.bbc.co.uk/local/bradford/hi/people_and_places/history/newsid_9167000/9167130.stm

To add to Rockrich’s news........

Experts are hoping to set up a community team to help investigate ancient rock carvings.

The ‘CSI: Rombalds Moor’ project will look at the moor’s stone remains including the Twelve Apostles Stone Circle, the Swastika Stone and the cup-and-ring carvings known to archaeologists worldwide and the many walkers who visit the area each year.

But now the experts want to train a group of volunteers to take part in crucial work in recording vital information about the ancient sites.

The project is managed by rural regeneration enterprise Pennine Prospects. It is part of a wider Watershed Landscape scheme, which won almost £2million of lottery funding earlier this year to restore the landscape of the South Pennines uplands Next month the CSI: Rombalds Moor project will be launched in Ilkley, with workshops by experts and a guided walk to the archaeological sites.

Among the speakers on Saturday, November 6, will be community archaeologist Gavin Edwards who is known to many Ilkley people for his work at the town’s Manor House Museum and Art Gallery, and English Heritage’s head of metric survey Paul Bryan.

A team of consultants has been selected to lead the prehistoric carved-rocks project on the moor. In addition to making written records, it will involve photographing the rocks to create 3D images through the ‘photogrammetry’ process. The workshop will give more local people a chance to learn about the project and register their interest.

A spokesman for Pennine Prospects said: “Over the coming months a series of training sessions covering surveying, recording and photographic techniques will be organised for community volunteers to learn how best they can help undertake the work over the next three years.

“The project will also aim to ensure that the skills and knowledge gained during this time will then allow the work to continue and develop after the project has come to an end.”

The project launch and workshop will take place at Church House, next to All Saints Parish Church, in Church Street. The event will be open for registration and refreshments between 9am and 9.45am.

Anyone interested in taking part is asked to contact Gavin Edwards in advance at [email protected], leave a message at the Manor House Museum, Castle Yard, Ilkley, or telephone (01943) 600066.

thetelegraphandargus.co.uk/news/local/localbrad/8475971.CSI__Rombalds_Moor_project_launched/?ref=rss

A myth destroyed, they actually ate bread with their meat........

Starch residues on stone tools suggest early humans ate a balanced diet.

Ground grains found at Stone Age sites suggests early modern humans did not subsist on meat alone. Once thought of as near total carnivores, early humans ate ground flour 20,000 years before the dawn of agriculture. Flour residues recovered from 30,000-year-old grinding stones found in Italy, Russia and the Czech Republic point to widespread processing and consumption of plant grain, according to a paper published online this week in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences1.

“It’s another nail in the coffin of the idea that hunter–gatherers didn’t use plants for food,” says Ofer Bar-Yosef, an archaeologist at Harvard University in Cambridge, Massachusetts, who was not involved in the study. Work in recent years has also uncovered a handful of Stone Age sites in the Near East with evidence for plant-eating.

The meat-centric view of early modern humans stems partly from the fact that meat-eating leaves a more indelible mark in the archaeological record than omnivory, says Laura Longo, an archaeologist at the University of Siena in Italy and an author on the paper.

Stone blades used for hunting and animal bones bearing cut-marks are common finds, whereas plants leave few relics. Complicating matters, archaeologists typically washed the grinding tools used to process plants, removing any preserved plant matter, says Longo.

Early omnivores;

Beginning in the early 2000s, Longo and her colleagues started analysing unwashed stone tools from a 28,000-year-old human settlement in central Italy called Bilancino. Patterns of wear on the sandstone tools suggest that they were used for grinding, like a mortar and pestle. The stones were also coated with several kinds of microscopic starch grains. Longo and her colleagues identified the grains based on their shape as belonging to the root of a species of cattail and the grains of a grass called Brachypodium.

The researchers also found grinding tools coated with cattail and fern residues at human sites in southern Moravia in the Czech Republic and south of Moscow, all dated to roughly 30,000 years old.

Unlike Neolithic humans, who domesticated and cultivated grains such as wheat and barley, these hunter–gatherers relied on wild vegetation. However, many of the plants found by Longo and her team were widely distributed, offering a reliable, even nutritious source of food, she says. For example, once ground and cooked, the cattail grains contain nearly as much energy as domesticated cereals, the researchers calculate.

Grinding tools bear traces of 30,000-year-old cattail and fern (right).PNASBar-Yosef says that the study proves that flour-making was common to early modern humans. “I’m pretty sure that you’re going to have many more cases where there is evidence for the use of plants by humans.”

Bruce Hardy, a paleoanthropologist at Kenyon College in Gambier, Ohio, expects that flour-making dates back even further than 30,000 years. “This is not isolated to a small group of people. It’s a regular part of subsistence for humans,” he says.

After all, humans, ancient or modern, just aren’t equipped to live on a diet of meat alone. “If you get that much meat in your diet not balanced out with other nutrients, you get protein poisoning,” says Hardy.

nature.com/news/2010/101018/full/news.2010.549.html?s=news_rss&utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+news%2Frss%2Fmost_recent+%28NatureNews+-+Most+recent+articles%29

WHEN Hamish Mowatt decided to investigate a mysterious mound as he tidied an Orkney garden, he had little idea he would uncover a hoard of bodies that had lain untouched for around 5,000 years.
Archeologists believe the tomb he discovered under a boulder outside a bistro in South Ronaldsay could lead to new insights into how our neolithic ancestors lived and died.

But they face a race against time as water washing in and out of the newly uncovered tomb could wash away its contents and dissolve any pottery and human remains inside.

Mr Mowatt uncovered the tomb in the garden of Skerries bistro and self catering cottages. He said: “There is a big slab of stone about eight foot by eight foot and I had always wondered what was underneath it. I had a bit of time at the end of the summer and I thought I would take a look.”

Mr Mowatt, who runs a boat business, pushed a piece of wire down a hole at the side of the stone and discovered a cavern underneath it. He then pushed down a rod attached to an underwater camera he used for looking at wrecks and discovered a chambered cairn with skulls against the edge.

“I have never really been that interested in archaeology, but when the rod went down into the chamber I could not leave it alone, my blood was pumping when I got a torch. Carole and I looked inside and saw the skull sitting in the murky water.

“It was amazing to think that we were looking at something that had not seen the light of day for 5,000 years. One of the skulls was looking straight at me. It set me back for a moment.”

Mr Mowatt and his fiancee Carole Fletcher, who owns the bistro, got in touch with Julie Gibbon, the Orkney county archeologist, who told them they had made a significant find.

“She was really blown away. She said it might be the missing part of the jigsaw – and they could discover a lot by excavating it.”

Ms Gibbon said she hoped Historic Scotland would support the excavation of the site – which is around 100 metres away from the Tomb of the Eagles, the chambered cairn where Orkney farmer Ronnie Simison found 348 human skulls in 1958.

Mr Simison and his family run a tourist attraction based around the 3,000 year old tomb – which they believe was a centre for sky burials – where dead bodies were exposed on the cliffs so the sea eagles could carry off their meat.

Seventy talons from sea eagles were found inside the tomb as well as 14 birds.

The archeologist said the new find was extremely significant. She said it could lead to new discoveries about the life and the death of some of Orkney’s earliest inhabitants.

Until the tomb is fully excavated it will not be known how extensive it might be.

There are at least four skulls inside – but the archeologist believes there may also be shards of pottery – or other artefacts which can be rescued before the water washes them away.

“Orkney has some of the best preserved archeology in Scotland and a lot of what we have has national and international significance.

“But it is not every day that you find the remains of people buried 4-5000 years ago.

“Because we have found them now we have the chance to excavate them in such a way that we can save more of the DNA within the bones. These sorts of techniques were not available 50 years ago.”

Ms Gibbon said the tomb needed to be examined quickly because of potential damage from water seeping in and out, but that said she had high hopes that the excavation would shed fresh light on neolithic society and ritual.

“I’m hoping Historic Scotland is going to support us. This is going to give us a lot of answers about neolithic life.”

Bistro owner Carole Fletcher said she was thrilled about the discovery. “I am really quite excited. I know there are a lot of archeological sites on Orkney but this is something special. I’m very interested to find out what is under there. It isn’t every day you find something like this.”

heritage.scotsman.com/heritage/Neolithic-tomb-found-in-garden.6561782.jp

A 4000-year-old burial chamber in Perthshire has been described as Scotland’s “Valley of the Kings.”

Excavation of the site at Forteviot, just to the south of Perth, began in earnest last year and ever since it has been regarded as something of an archaeological jewel.

It was uncovered by the Strathearn Environs and Royal Forteviot (SERF) project, run by archaeologists from Glasgow, Aberdeen and Chester universities, and the results of the project’s first three years have just been published by Perth and Kinross Heritage Trust.

Researchers first discovered the four-tonne capstone slab covering the burial chamber in 2008, but had to wait until last year to organise the resources to lift it.

The team hoped there was a burial chamber beneath, but had no idea it would prove to be one of the best preserved sites in Britain and almost undamaged by the passage of time.

The high quality of preservation proved to be “virtually unique” and archaeologists were soon claiming the early Bronze Age grave as a site of “exceptional importance.”

At the entrance, a stone sealed the grave so well that organic materials survived, with a leather bag, unidentified wooden objects and plant matter among the items discovered.

A distinctive bronze dagger with a gold hilt band was also found.

The plant matter was later identified as meadowsweet blossoms and was hailed as the first proof that people in the Bronze Age laid flowers upon the graves of loved ones.

Together with carvings on the underside of the capstone, the findings were also taken as evidence that the grave was that of a significant person.

The team returned this year to reveal more impressive burials and monuments, indicating that the site was a significant centre of ceremony and burial in the early prehistoric and the Pictish periods.

Excavations explored part of a massive Neolithic timber enclosure and demonstrated that the monument required over 200 huge timber posts, which needed a ramp to hoist them into position.

The work has shown that the site continued as a major burial location and ritual landscape into the Bronze Age.

The area has also revealed square barrow cemeteries from the Pictish period and although these burial mounds have not yet been dated, their form suggests they are early, demonstrating that people in the Dark Ages were using the prehistoric earthworks as a sacred place for burial in the period around the formation of the Pictish kingdom.

Perth MSP Roseanna Cunningham said the burial site helped to underline “the absolutely central importance of this part of Perthshire to the whole of Scotland.”

The full story, along with illustrations and photographs, is revealed in a new 60-page Perth and Kinross Heritage Trust publication, Strathearn Environs and Royal Forteviot Project Report 2006-2009.

The booklet is available from the trust’s office, Perth Museum and Art Gallery and the AK Bell Library.

thecourier.co.uk/Community/Heritage-and-History/article/5518/perthshire-burial-chamber-is-scotland-s-valley-of-the-kings.html

environmental survey for site on outskirts of Stornoway lodged with Scottish Government

Plans to build a controversial £200million windfarm on the outskirts of Stornoway have moved forward.

The developer – a partnership between Amec and French government-owned EDF Energy – wants to erect up to 50 giant turbines adjacent to a busy tourist route.

Now an environmental survey has been lodged with the Scottish Government, which has responsibility for deciding if the windfarm goes ahead due to the large scale of the scheme.

The proposal sparked fierce criticism after it emerged the community-owned Stornoway Trust signed a deal potentially committing crofters’ grazings to the huge development for decades.

Stornoway Trust factor Iain MacIver said: “I am delighted with the recent progress the application has made.

“This application will be respectful and mindful of the impact on the local environment and habitats and this has been foremost in our thoughts as we have submitted the application.

“Our development partners have listened and learned from their previous application and we are committed to engaging and consulting with the local community during this project. I believe the appointment of a community co-ordinator will be integral to this process as we aim to form an ongoing partnership with the local community.”

The environmental report covers all aspects of how the proposed windfarm would be assessed from an environmental perspective during the design, construction and operational phases.

It addresses surveys to include noise, visual impact, archaeology, ecology, tourism and hydrology. Bird studies started on the site last spring.

The current proposal follows the Scottish Government’s refusal to approve a controversial plan for a £700million chain of 181 huge turbines up the length of Lewis. Depending on the number of turbines which receive planning permission, up to £1.5million is being offered annually in community benefit after electricity starts generating in three or four years.

Read more: pressandjournal.co.uk/Article.aspx/1932165?UserKey=#ixzz10QxDcFAx

Striking prehistoric rock art created up to 5,000 years ago has been discovered at almost 100 sites in Somaliland on the Gulf of Aden in eastern Africa.

A local team headed by Dr Sada Mire, of the Institute of Archaeology at University College London (UCL), made the finds, which include a man on horseback, painted around 4,000 years ago – one of the earliest known depictions of a mounted hunter.

Leaping antelopes, prancing giraffes and snakes poised to strike are among animals and reptiles depicted with astonishing clarity.

Such is the quality of the paintings that at least 10 sites, scattered across semi-desert terrain, are likely to be given World Heritage status.

Mire, who has just become a UN consultant for Somaliland, said: “These are among the best prehistoric paintings in the world.

“Yet Somaliland is a country whose history is totally hidden. With wars, droughts and piracy in Somalia, hardly anyone has researched the archaeology until now. But it’s absolutely full of extraordinarily well-preserved rock art.”

Dhambalin, about 40 miles from the Red Sea, features horned cattle, sheep and goats painted about 5,000 years ago. The animals have distinctive bands around their backs and bellies, which suggests farming or ritual traditions.

The pictures also depict animals, such as giraffes, no longer found in Somaliland.

Mire, who is Somali-born, has been struck by paintings of “eerie headless creatures”. She said: “Sometimes the cattle are represented as necks or horns, a pictorial shorthand that was evidently sufficient to convey meaning.”

Other paintings are more mysterious, such as the 2,000-year-old colourful images of the full moon, half-moon and geometric signs at Dawa’aleh. Mire believes these depict the ancient artists’ view of the world, time and space.

Somaliland is in the northern part of Somalia, an area slightly larger than England but with a population of just 3.5m. More than half are nomads.

Once part of the Ottoman Empire, it was a British colony from 1884 until 1960. Although it declared itself independent of Somalia in 1991 and has a
separate government, it is yet to be recognised as a separate state.

Mire said: “Whereas Somalia has suffered with an ongoing civil war
and piracy, Somaliland has remained peaceful.

“Yet despite boasting a stable, grass-roots democracy, the country has
not been recognised by the UN and so does not formally exist, leaving
it a breakaway state teetering on the edge of a violent region.

The discovery of the 100 sites follows that of cave paintings at Laas Geel in 2000. For centuries, they were known only to nomads, who believed the site was haunted by evil spirits.

Mire’s research study will be published this month in Current World Archaeology.

guardian.co.uk/world/2010/sep/17/cave-paintings-found-in-somaliland

Sound recording at reconstruction of Stonehenge in Maryhill Monument, USA........

Did our ancient ancestors build to please the ears as well as the eyes? Trevor Cox pitches into the controversial claims of acoustic archaeologists

“The wind, playing upon the edifice, produced a booming tune, like the note of some gigantic one-stringed harp. No other sound came from it... Overhead something made the black sky blacker, which had the semblance of a vast architrave uniting the pillars horizontally. They entered carefully beneath and between; the surfaces echoed their soft rustle; but they seemed to be still out of doors...”

This atmospheric description of a “temple of the winds” comes from the dramatic climax of Thomas Hardy’s novel Tess of the d’Urbervilles. The setting is Stonehenge, arguably the most famous prehistoric monument of all. Its imposing ring of standing stones is visible for miles on Salisbury plain in southern England. On the day of the summer solstice its outlying “Heelstone” is exactly in line with rays of the rising sun. A more perfect example of the visual impact of an ancient monument would be hard to find.

Might we be missing here something that both Hardy and our prehistoric ancestors understood? Some archaeologists have begun to think so. They argue that sound effects were an important, perhaps even decisive, factor in how early humans chose and built their dwellings and sacred places. Caves that sing, Mayan temples that chirp, burial mounds that hum: they all add up to evidence that the aural, and not just the visual, determined the building codes of the past. But is that sound science?

Assessing the claims of “acoustic archaeology” rapidly encounters a fundamental problem: sound is ephemeral. Pottery fragments, coins, bones and bits of buildings can survive for centuries, waiting to be analysed, interpreted- and reinterpreted. The sounds of the past, by contrast, have long since died away. Where historical records make mention of acoustic intent in designing structures, the claims are often based on faulty science (see “Sound design?“). Going back into prehistory, we do not even have the luxury of knowing what our ancestors were thinking- or often a clear idea of the original layout and acoustic properties of the structures we are interpreting.

There is, however, a plausible argument that sound must have been important to our ancestors, perhaps more so than it is to us now. “Today we guzzle sounds and make a lot of noise,” says UK archaeologist Paul Devereux, an advocate of the claims of acoustic archaeology. “We are visually very sophisticated, but acoustically very primitive.” Our ancestors, by contrast, would have been “acoustically more calm and attentive in a much quieter world”, he says. Without artificial light, listening intently would have been imperative to ward off night-time predators. In a time before writing, moreover, information was principally communicated orally. It seems reasonable that prehistoric humans would have paid more attention to their acoustic landscapes than we do today. “Senses as a whole were more fused,” says Julian Thomas, an archaeologist at the University of Manchester, UK. “There wasn’t the separation of vision from the other senses as there has been over the last few centuries. Nowadays we tend to prioritise vision.”

New Scientist
tinyurl.com/36eddvm

A photo of the ‘Stonehenge’ Maryhill site;
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Maryhill_stonehenge_WWI_monument.jpg

Laser scanners are being deployed in Orkney to record details of some of the island’s key historical landmarks.

A team from Glasgow School of Art and Historic Scotland will scan the chambered tomb of Maeshowe, the Ring of Brodgar and Skara Brae settlement.

The two-week project is part of a plan to build up three-dimensional images of 10 World Heritage sites.

Among the sites already scanned are New Lanark’s 18th Century mills and Mount Rushmore in South Dakota.

The Heart of Neolithic Orkney is made up of the tomb of Maeshowe, the Stones of Stenness, the Barnhouse Stone, the Watch Stone, the Ring of Brodgar and Skara Brae.

The recording process will involve a laser being fired millions of times a second at each of the monuments.

The end result will be a precise record of the sites, accurate down to just millimetres.

The data will be used to assess the physical condition of the structures and provide a foundation for future conservation, site management and aid archaeological understanding.

Project leader Dr Lyn Wilson said: “Though we have already scanned New Lanark, the scale and nature of the monuments will be an entirely different challenge.

“This will be the first site in the Scottish Ten project where we have existing scan data: comparing data acquired at different dates will allow us to measure any changes in condition of the monuments.”

Sites including the Antonine Wall, St Kilda, and the Old and New Towns of Edinburgh will also be scanned.

bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland-north-east-orkney-shetland-10990965

Images from all the sites will be made available at ......
www.historic-scotland.gov. uk/news

So it says elsewhere but also interestingly in another article it says..

“Results gleaned from the scanning process will be shared with the California based CyArc Foundation, who are pledged to create a storehouse of open access data relating to World Heritage Sites.”

There is at least a dozen press reports on this, from the Guardian to the Daily Mail which got the reconstruction wrong but provides most of the photos, the following from the Yorkshire Post...

“Archaeologists said today they have discovered Britain’s earliest house, in the North Yorkshire countryside.
Teams from Manchester and York universities who are working at Star Carr, near Scarborough, said the Stone Age house dates to 8,500 years BC, when Britain was still connected to mainland Europe.

The team, which also uncovered an 11,000-year-old tree trunk, unearthed the 3.5m circular structure next to a former lake.

The house predates the house previously thought to be Britain’s oldest, at Howick, Northumberland, by at least 500 years.

The team said they are also excavating a large wooden platform made of timbers which have been split and hewn. It is thought to be the earliest evidence of carpentry in Europe.

Dr Chantal Conneller and Barry Taylor from the University of Manchester have been working with Dr Nicky Milner from the University of York at Star Carr since 2004. The house was first excavated by the team two years ago.

According to the archaeologists, the site was inhabited by hunter-gatherers from just after the last Ice Age, for between 200 and 500 years.

They migrated from an area now under the North Sea, hunting animals including deer, wild boar, elk and enormous wild cattle known as auroch.

Although they did not cultivate the land, the inhabitants did burn part of the landscape to encourage animals to eat shoots and they also kept domesticated dogs.

Dr Milner said: “This is a sensational discovery and tells us so much about the people who lived at this time. From this excavation, we gain a vivid picture of how these people lived. For example, it looks like the house may have been rebuilt at various stages. It is also likely there was more than one house and lots of people lived here.

“The platform is made of hewn and split timbers; the earliest evidence of this type of carpentry in Europe. And the artefacts of antler, particularly the antler head-dresses, are intriguing as they suggest ritual activities.”

Dr Conneller said: “This changes our ideas of the lives of the first settlers to move back into Britain after the end of the last Ice Age. We used to think they moved around a lot and left little evidence. Now we know they built large structures and were very attached to particular places in the landscape.”

Mr Taylor added: “The ancient lake is a hugely important archaeological landscape many miles across. To an inexperienced eye, the area looks unremarkable – just a series of little rises in the landscape.

“But using special techniques I have been able to reconstruct the landscape as it was then. The peaty nature of the landscape has enabled the preservation of many treasures including the paddle of a boat, the tips of arrows and red deer skull tops which were worn as masks.

“But the peat is drying out, so it’s a race against time to continue the work before the archaeological finds decay.”

Universities and science minister David Willetts said: “This exciting discovery marries world-class research with the lives of our ancestors. It brings out the similarities and differences between modern life and the ancient past in a fascinating way, and will change our perceptions for ever. I congratulate the research team and look forward to their future discoveries.”

The research has been made possible by a grant from the Natural Environment Research Council, excavation funding from the British Academy, and from English Heritage, which is about to schedule the site as a National Monument. The Vale of Pickering Research Trust has also provided support for the excavation works.

The world-renowned Star Carr site, which dates back to 9,000BC, was first discovered by local man John Moore in 1947 after he came across a flint blade in a field and began digging for artefacts.

He found a number of other significant sites in the area before excavation went ahead between 1949-1951 and 1985-1989. Dr Conneller, Dr Milner and Mr Taylor recommenced excavation in 2004.

yorkshirepost.co.uk/news/Britain39s-earliest-house-is-unearthed.6467344.jp

the Guardian report..

guardian.co.uk/science/2010/aug/10/britains-oldest-home

The Daily Mail.....

dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-1301837/Found-Britains-oldest-house-10-500-years-old.html?ITO=1490

ITV news (once past the chocolate advert)
itv.com/yorkshire/stone-age-des-res58472/

Well the new top destination tourist place according to The Telegraph. Skara Brae and The Flintstones for goodness sake!

Scotland’s Orkney Islands provide a rare glimpse of Stone Age life, says Paul Humphreys...

Many archaeological sites are baffling to the layman. How often do you see a few bits of half-buried wall accompanied by a not-very-informative plaque telling you that this might have been the palace of a bishop? Or perhaps it was the outer wall of a stonemason’s workshop…

Neolithic structures such as Stonehenge are awe-inspiring and magical, but they don’t tell us much about everyday life in the Stone Age. To get an idea of how Neolithic people actually lived, you should head for the far north of Scotland, to Orkney, home to some of the most impressive prehistoric settlements in the whole of Europe.

Here you will find remains so well preserved that you don’t need an expert to tell you what’s what. You can see for yourself. The best-known example is Skara Brae, a settlement on Orkney Mainland (the largest island) that was buried for centuries until its cover was blown by a storm in 1850.

What came to light was a 5,000-year-old housing complex that surely inspired the creators of The Flintstones. For here there are beds, hearths, dressers and storage units, all carefully crafted in stone. It’s easy to imagine a Stone Age chap arriving home in the evening after a hard day’s cattle herding, hanging his stone axe up by the front door, sitting around the fireplace and sharing a meal with his family before snuggling up for the night under a pile of warm animal skins.

There are so many extraordinary sites in Orkney that it’s difficult to know where to start – so Visit Scotland has done visitors a great favour by launching an online Archaeological Treasures Trail that covers all the major sites (there are also trails for the Outer Hebrides and Shetland). Here you’ll find suggested itineraries and potted histories of the sites, together with opening dates and times and other useful tips.

Skara Brae, with the Ring of Brodgar stone circle and henge, the Stones of Stenness and Maeshowe, together form a World Heritage Site called The Heart of Neolithic Orkney, and these are the highlights of the Orkney trail.

Places such as these abound in Orkney, with one island alone having 200 known prehistoric sites. Sometimes called the “Egypt of the North”, Rousay is home to Midhowe Broch, probably the finest surviving example of the tower-style fortified homes that were common in Iron Age Scotland. Here again, so much remains of the interior – including dividing walls, a stone tank and the like – that it’s easy to imagine people living there and going about their everyday lives.

Of course, not all the sites of Orkney are so easily understood. Only yards away from Midhowe Broch is the much older Midhowe Cairn, known as the “great ship of the dead”, a vast 30-metre Neolithic chamber. County archaeologist Julie Gibson says that only a few skeletons were found within a monument that seems to have been used for hundreds of years – so it looks as though a few individuals were selected in some way. It’s possible that the bones of ancestors were brought out from time to time and used in rituals – but that is really just an educated guess.

The word “ritual” is a favourite term of tour guide and archaeologist Caz Mamwell, who is candid enough to admit that whenever the experts are baffled by such things as stone circles, “ritual” is a handy explanation. Sometimes, though, the archaeologist’s job is made a good deal easier – as in the case of the Maeshowe Chambered Cairn, back on Orkney Mainland.

This monument was already ancient when the Vikings came across it in the 12th century – and left their mark in the form of runes carved into the stone. The building is mentioned in the Orkneyinga Saga – the History of the Earls of Orkney – a fascinating account of the 300 or so years (from AD 900-1200) when Norsemen ruled the waves in these parts.

Their influence can be felt to this day in the Orkney accent: Scottish, yes, but with a distinctive Scandinavian lilt that sets these islanders apart from their southern countrymen.

But not all historical monuments here date from the distant past, Continues here..

telegraph.co.uk/travel/destinations/europe/uk/7929936/Orkneys-archaeological-treasures.html

From the Telegraph and Argus....

Work is underway to compile the first comprehensive record of ancient monuments on Ilkley Moor.

Archaeologists have started a three-year project to photograph rock carvings across Rombalds Moor and will use state-of-the-art technology to produce 3-D images of the stones.

The results could prevent deterioration of the carvings and create a fuller picture of the history of Ilkley Moor.

The study is part of the South Pennines Watershed Landscape project, which won almost £2m of Lottery funding in April to restore the landscape and heritage of the uplands.

It will examine the impact of man’s intervention on the area, and is being led by community archaeologist Gavin Edwards.

Mr Edwards, who is based at Ilkley’s Manor House Museum, said the study could be the last chance to get a good record.

“The first thing is getting people involved in helping record the carved rocks because although they are well-known, we don’t have a standard record of them all and that’s what we need to establish because we are worried about erosion,” he said.

“We don’t have a benchmark record of how much damage has been done, but hopefully this will help us understand how we can protect them in the future.”

The imaging techniques will include photogrammetry, which uses two-dimensional photographs to create 3-D computer images.

Workshops will be held to teach people how to record data and an education worker has been commissioned to recruit schools to take part.

Mr Edwards said: “We’ve got to stop looking at that landscape as if it’s natural – it looks the way it does as a result of human activity in the past. “I’m certain there’s a huge amount of knowledge out there. I’m hoping we can create a vehicle through a website where people can offer information and get a clearer picture of what’s going on. There’s got to be a permanent legacy from this.”

thetelegraphandargus.co.uk/news/8312600.Study_of_Ilkley_Moor_stones_being_rolled_out/?ref=rss

Maeve Kennedy in the Guardian....

Stone tools, flakes and the remains of a final feast at the site in Wiltshire suggest the huge sarsens that now stand at Stonehenge were brought to Marden Henge........

The last revellers seem to have cleared up scrupulously after the final party at Marden Henge some 4,500 years ago.

They scoured the rectangular building and the smart white chalk platform on top of the earth bank, with its spectacular view towards the river Avon in one direction, and the hills from which the giant sarsen stones were brought to Stonehenge in the other.

All traces of the feast – the pig bones, the ashes and the burnt stones from the barbecue that cooked them, the broken pots and bowls – were swept neatly into a dump to one side. A few precious offerings, including an exquisitely worked flint arrowhead, were carefully laid on the clean chalk. Then they covered the whole surface with a thin layer of clay, stamped it flat, and left. Forever.

In the past fortnight, English Heritage archaeologists have peeled back the thin layer of turf covering the site, which has somehow escaped being ploughed for more than 4,000 years. They were astounded to find the undisturbed original surface just as the prehistoric Britons left it.

“We’re gobsmacked really,” said site director Jim Leary.

Giles Woodhouse, a volunteer digger who must return next week to his day job as a lieutenant colonel in the army bound for Germany and then Afghanistan, has been crouched over the rubbish dump day after day, his black labrador Padma sighing at his side. He has been teasing the soil away from bone, stone and pottery so perfectly preserved it could have been buried last year.

“It gives one a bit of a shiver down the backbone to realise the last man to touch these died 4,500 years ago,” he said. His finds, still emerging from the soil, will rewrite the history of the site.

Marden in Wiltshire has been puzzling archaeologists for centuries. It is set almost exactly half way between two of the most famous and tourist-choked sites in Britain, Stonehenge and Avebury, but it is far larger than either. The ragged oval of outer earth banks at Marden, completed by a bend of the Avon, enclose more than 14 hectares, compared with 11.5 hectares at Avebury, where the banks surround an entire modern village.

Famously – to its comparatively few devotees and visitors, that is – it is the biggest henge in Britain that isn’t there, surrounding one of the biggest artificial hills in Britain, which isn’t there either.

This is the first excavation since Geoffrey Wainwright, former chief archaeologist at English Heritage, explored one small corner of the site in 1969. What stunned the archaeologists when they started work three weeks ago was just how much is left.

Once your eye is in you can see it: the sweep of the ditches, the belt of trees hiding some of the earth bank, which still rise to three metres in some places, the stain in the grass marking the lost barrow and its massive surrounding moat, and the wholly unexpected discovery – the second, smaller henge so close to the modern houses that the roots of two trees at the foot of a back garden are actually growing into its bank.

The neolithic buildings were not where others have looked for them, on the level in the centre of the henges, but on top of the bank.

“We’ve all been looking in the wrong place,” Leary said, “there will have to be a major rethink about other henges. And it’s actually almost terrifying how close to the surface the finds were – there’s also going to have to be a major review of our management plans for other sites.”

The only known image of Hatfield Barrow – an early 18th century map in the archives of the landowner, Corpus Christi College in Oxford – shows the artificial hill as a jaunty little sandcastle sporting a cockade of trees. It once rose to a height of almost 15 metres, half the height of Silbury near Avebury.

The two antiquarians who burrowed like rabbits through scores of Wiltshire earthworks in the early 19th century, Sir Richard Colt Hoare and William Cunnington, punched a massive shaft through Hatfield Barrow in 1807. They scrappily recording finds that torment the modern archaeologists, including animal bones, burned wood, and “two small parcels of burned human bones”.

They left the shaft open, possibly intending to return in another season, and the mound collapsed. This is a phenomenon Leary knows well, having led the rescue excavation before the engineering works to stabilise Silbury, which was also left riddled with slowly collapsing holes by Georgian and later diggers.

The farmer at Marden filled in the moat, which an 18th century naturalist recorded as fed by a natural spring and never dry even in the hottest summer, and sold the collapsed hillock as top soil. Leary’s massive trench has uncovered barely a trace of hill or moat.

If the hill disappointed, the excavations at one of the original entrances and at the small henge certainly do not. They are revealing what appears to be a broad gravelled ceremonial road leading towards the river. Discovering undisturbed neolithic surfaces and building platforms on this scale counts as a discovery of international importance.

There is no evidence of permanent occupation of the dwellings or the site as a whole. As in the work led by Professor Mike Parker Pearson at Durrington Walls, 20 miles away (he couldn’t resist coming over to help dig, and some of his former students had the pleasure of giving him orders) the implication is of people gathering for seasonal rituals and feasting, and maybe a work camp.

“A completely artificial division has been made in the past between domestic and religious, recreation and ritual,” Leary said. “We’re going to have to rethink all that. It’s not one thing or the other, it’s everything mixed in together.”

If it wasn’t a village, or a temple, or a farm, or a cemetery, what was Marden for? Leary suspects the answer may be emerging in stone working tools, and flakes of sarsen, turning up all over the site. If you were going to drag sarsens the size of double decker buses from their original site to Stonehenge, he said, the obvious route is straight through a natural gap in the hilly landscape, which would take them through Marden.

The evidence that Marden was a sort of builder’s yard for the most famous prehistoric monument in the world may have been in the mud under the boots of Leary’s puzzled predecessors.

So why did they leave? Maybe with Stonehenge complete, the sarsens shaped into the giant trilithons which still awe the hordes of modern visitors, their job was done. They tidied up nicely, turned out the lights, and left.

guardian.co.uk/science/2010/jul/28/marden-henge-builders-yard-stonehenge

Archaeologists are carrying out a virtual excavation of Stonehenge to discover what the area looked like when the monument was built.

The multi-million pound Euro study will map the terrain and its buried archaeological remains with pinpoint accuracy, organisers claim.

The millions of measurements will then be analysed and incorporated into gaming technology to produce 2D and 3D images.

The research will take three years.

Equipment will be spread over an area spanning 4km this year and a total of 14km over the next three years.

Project leader Professor Vince Gaffney, from the University on Birmingham, said: “We aim to unlock the mysteries of Stonehenge and show people exactly what the local area looked like during the time the monument was created.

“The results of this work will be a digital chart of the ‘invisible’ Stonehenge landscape, a seamless map linking one of the world’s most famous monuments with the buried archaeology that surrounds it.”

Dr Christopher Gaffney, from the University of Bradford, said: “Rather than looking at typically small discrete areas we intend to cover the whole of the World Heritage Site.

“We will do this using emerging technology that allows us to pull large banks of sensors behind a quad bike and using real time GPS to locate the measurements.”

The study is funded by the Ludwig Boltzmann Institute for Archaeological Prospection and Virtual Archaeology, in Vienna, and the University of Birmingham, and is assisted by the National Trust and English Heritage.

bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-wiltshire-10689609

Two ancient mounds which may contain the remains of farmers who worked the land 4,000 years ago have been saved for posterity.

The Bronze Age burial mounds just off the A166, close to the summit of Garrowby Hill, were considered at high risk but they have been protected from the plough after tenant farmer Geoff Wray applied to Natural England’s Higher Level Stewardship Scheme.

Historic environment field advisor Yvonne Luke said: “We are very grateful.

“It’s preserving the last resting places of the old farmers who cleared the forest and created the first fields.”

The mounds were excavated in the 19th century, but could still contain burials and other artefacts.

They probably mark the burial place of a chieftain and his relatives, and would once have stood several metres high. In a spectacular position on the edge of the Wolds, and made from gleaming white chalk, they would have been visible from miles around.

Three-quarters of ancient scheduled monuments in the East Riding considered at risk are slowly being damaged by ploughing. “Pasture is the best option for preserving earthworks and sub-surface archaeology,” said Ms Luke.

yorkshirepost.co.uk/news/Bronze-age-burial-mounds-saved.6408330.jp

Hopefully I’m in the right Irish county for this crannog........

THE RECENT prolonged dry weather spell which put pressure on water supplies in the west has proven to be good news for archaeologists.

The low water table on the western lakes and rivers has yielded a number of significant finds in Connemara, according to archaeologist Michael Gibbons.

Among them has been a new crannóg site which is part of a complex in the south Connemara area. It was located by Co Galway silversmith and archaeological student Ruairí O’Neill and a friend, John Foley, while exploring Lough Dhúleitir, north of Carna. Mr Gibbons, who lectures on Mr O’Neill’s course, said that it was a “fine example” of a small crannóg. The lake is overlooked by an abandoned 19th-century settlement.

“This is one of a wonderful group of six sites between Carna and Cill Chiaráin,” Mr Gibbons said. The distribution extends from Doon Loughan to Lough na Tulaí near Indreabhán in south Connemara. Crannógs, derived from “crann”, the Irish word for tree, were artificial islands built as dwellings in prehistoric and medieval times on lakes and in estuaries.

“Similar groups of stone crannógs are found in parts of Mayo, west Donegal and throughout the outer Hebrides in western Scotland and they range in date from the neolithic down to the 17th century, with the O’Flaherty’s castle built on top of one such lake dwelling,” Mr Gibbons said.

“They are part of the hidden heritage of the glacially scoured granite lands of south and west Connemara,” he added.

irishtimes.com/newspaper/ireland/2010/0629/1224273556107.html

STATEMENT – THE FUTURE OF THE STONEHENGE ENVIRONMENTAL
IMPROVEMENT PROJECT
At their meeting on 29th and 30th June, English Heritage Commissioners discussed the future
of the Stonehenge Environmental Improvement Project following the Government’s decision
on 17 June to withdraw Government funding
Commissioners decided that over the Summer/Autumn, English Heritage should continue to
explore alternative funding from non-Government sources. In the meantime, as the planning
process is so nearly completed, the organisation will use money raised from private sources
to complete the final few planning stages, without making irreversible financial commitment
to the scheme’s future.
Completing the planning stages ensures a tidy and cost-efficient break-point between
preparation and implementation of the scheme. It also allows more time to explore
alternative funding. Having worked for so many years to achieve the desperately needed
transformation of Stonehenge, Commissioners are very anxious that every possible avenue is
pursued.........

https://www.stonehengevisitorce[...]ioners-decision-final-june.pdf

A site at Marden, near Devizes, rivalled Stonehenge and Avebury in its day, says English Heritage.

The group is about to undertake a six-week dig at the site close to the village, starting on June 28.

Unlike Stonehenge and Avebury, Marden Henge no longer has any surviving standing stones, but its sheer size is astounding.

Comprising a substantial and well-preserved bank with an internal ditch enclosing an area of some 10.5 hectares – equivalent to ten football pitches – it is one of the largest Neolithic henges in Britain.

Archaeologists are particularly intrigued by evidence of a huge mound at the centre of the henge similar to a smaller version of Silbury Hill.

The mound collapsed in 1806 and was levelled by 1817. English Heritage hopes to find out more about this feature by obtaining dating material from any surviving features within its centre.

Jim Leary, the English Heritage archaeologist who was involved in the recent restoration of Silbury Hill, said: “Marden Henge deserves to be understood more, partly because of its size, but also due to its proximity to the more famous stone circles at Avebury and Stonehenge.

“How Marden relates to them is another layer of interest which we want to study.

“We are potentially looking at a much more intricate system of Neolithic ritual sites in this part of the world than we previously thought.”

The Henge is on the road out of the village towards Beechingstoke, at Hatfield Farm, and is a popular picnic area.

Parish council chairman Peter Bell was pleased with the news. He said: “I hadn’t heard English Heritage were planning this, but I am delighted. It is an important local archaeological site and we don’t know nearly enough about it.”

The Henge is on the road out of the village towards Beechingstoke, at Hatfield Farm, and is on private land.

Sue Shepherd-Cross, who lives at Hatfield Farm, was delighted at the news. She said: “It is a remarkable place and it would be fascinating to find out more about it.”

The website Megalithic.co.uk describes Marden Henge, or Hatfield Earthworks, as the largest henge in Britain. It adds: “There is not much to see but bank and ditch. Plenty of atmosphere, though.”

* A midsummer’s eve picnic party is taking place at Marden Henge on Saturday June 26 at 8.15pm in aid of the Fairyland Trust which is a children’s conservation society

thisiswiltshire.co.uk/news/headlines/8225512.Mystery_near_Marden_of_henge/?ref=rss

Proposals for a new £25m visitor centre at Stonehenge have been axed as part of cost-saving measures by the government.

English Heritage said it was “extremely disappointed” that £10m promised would not be forthcoming – but said it did not mean it was the end of the project.

It had wanted to move the visitor centre 1.5m (2.4km) away from the stones and to divert the nearby A344.

The remaining £15m was due to come from English Heritage, the Heritage Lottery Fund and other private sources.

‘Global significance‘

An English Heritage spokesman said “Stonehenge is a project of global significance.

“It’s Britain’s premier World Heritage Site. It was a key feature in Britain’s bid for the London Olympics.

“Transforming the monument’s setting and the visitor experience is vital to Britain’s reputation, and to our tourism industry, especially in 2012 but also thereafter.”

The cuts are part of £2bn of savings made by the coalition government.

Chief Secretary to the Treasury Danny Alexander told MPs the cuts were necessary to tackle the budget deficit and would be done in a “fair” way.

He said the previous government had gone on a “pre-election spending spree in the full knowledge that the government had long since run out of money”.

‘Hugely disappointed‘

“As a result of the poor decisions made by the previous government, I have taken the decision to cancel certain projects that do not represent good value for money, and suspend others pending full consideration in the spending review,” he added.

Wiltshire Council said it was “hugely disappointed” that the funding had been withdrawn.

“It is difficult to see the logic, given the government’s emphasis on maximising the benefits from the 2012 Olympics.

“Stonehenge is an important generator of funding for the government through its agency, English Heritage.

“The improved facilities would have dramatically raised the standard of welcome and facilities for visitors, increased the length of stay within Wiltshire and increased visitor spend,” he added.

English Heritage Commission is expected to make a statement about the future of the project on 30 June.

news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/wiltshire/10343945.stm

The Orkney Venus has been named in a shortlist of three for the Best Archaeological Discovery category in the 2010 biannual British Archaeological Awards.

The winner will be announced at an awards ceremony at the British Museum on 19 July.

The 5,000-year-old Orkney Venus attracted worldwide interest when it was discovered last summer by archaeologists working on the Historic Scotland excavation at the Links of Noltland, on Westray. The 4cm figure in sandstone is the only known Neolithic carving of a human form to have been found in Scotland.

The enigmatic figure – known locally as the Westray Wife – had lain undisturbed in the earth until the archaeologists carefully brushed away the mud to reveal the human face with heavy brows, two dots for eyes and an oblong for a nose, staring back at them.

A pair of circles on the chest have been interpreted as representing breasts, and arms have been etched at either side. A pattern of crosses suggests the fabric of clothing.

Its name comes from its resemblance to similar figurines classed as Venuses from elsewhere in Europe and beyond.

The figure is currently on public display for the first time on the island where it was found, at the Westray Heritage Centre.

It has already been viewed by more than 100,000 people as part of a special Historic Scotland touring exhibition taking in venues including Edinburgh Castle, Stirling Castle, Kilmartin House in Argyll and Urquhart Castle on the banks of Loch Ness.

It will finish in October at the Orkney Museum in Kirkwall.

Peter Yeoman, Historic Scotland’s head of cultural resources, said: “The Orkney Venus is the first replica of the human form to be found in Scotland and is possibly the best and earliest to be found in the UK.

“Her discovery confirms the importance of the Links of Noltland as one of the most fascinating prehistoric sites in Scotland. It is an incredibly rich settlement site which is advancing our understanding of our Neolithic to the Bronze Age ancestors.

“The site is in our care, but is severely threatened by wind erosion, which has removed the sand that protected the well-preserved houses, middens and fields for 4,000 years.

“Historic Scotland is now leading a race against the wind with further excavations being carried out for us this summer.”

Historic Scotland senior archaeologist Richard Strachan said:

“None of the archaeology team have seen anything like it before. It’s incredibly exciting. There is a strong possibility that it has been a votive offering to mark the abandonment of the site.”

news.scotsman.com/news/Orkney-Venus--closes-in.6364105.jp

The National Trust is getting ambitious this year ......

The National Trust is getting into the outdoor festival spirit this summer with a chill out bar and a project to illuminate Glastonbury Tor during the Glastonbury Festival Weekend.

Festival goers may have spotted the Tor above Glastonbury in the past, but this year the landmark will be unmissable as St Michael’s Tower, which is perched on the top of the iconic ancient monument, will be bathed in light for the first time.

The Tor will be illuminated each night between sunset and sunrise during the five days of the world famous music festival, which is also celebrating its 40th anniversary in 2010. The lights will go on at 9.31pm British Summer Time each evening, the exact time of sunset.

“It’s the first time that the Trust will be at Glastonbury Festival, and we wanted to do something special to mark the important role that the Festival plays in Somerset life and to celebrate its 40th birthday,” said Andy Mayled, National Trust General Manager for the Somerset Countryside.

Much like the light shows on the Festival’s famous Pryamid stage, the latest LED technology will be used to light up the Tor in a variety of coloured light. The special lighting will however use a much smaller amount of energy – less than a third of the power of kettle – and give off less light pollution than conventional spotlights.

Warming to the festival theme, the National Trust will also be running the Outside Inn this year. Offering an escape from the crowds and thumping bass, the “fresh air bar” and chill out zone will feature soft pebbles and meadow grass to cushion people as they lie back with silent disco headphones playing the sounds of the outdoors.

“The National Trust’s heart beats to the rhythm of the natural world, and we’ve tried to capture this in the Outside Inn where you can get refreshment for the mind and soul,” added Mayled.

More information on the National Trust and the Glastonbury Festival (June 23-27) is available at: www.nationaltrust.org.uk/Glastonbury

culture24.org.uk/history+%2526+heritage/archaeology/art79460

“Meath which opens today. Protests are expected from a range of environmentalists and heritage activists, including the campaign group Tarawatch who complained the route of the motorway is unacceptably close to the Hill of Tara.”

ROAD INFRASTRUCTURE: THE M3 motorway which cost an estimated €1 billion will be officially opened today.

The 61km motorway linking the Dublin/Meath border with the Meath/Cavan border is believed to be the largest single road project to be constructed in Ireland and incorporates bypasses of Dunshaughlin, Navan and Kells.

In addition to the motorway itself, the overall project involves a network of 49km of ancillary public roads and 34km of farm access roads.

Private security and a large contingent of gardaí will be in place for the opening ceremony, which is to take place near Kells, Co Meath, at 11am.

Protests are expected from a range of environmentalists and heritage activists, including the campaign group Tarawatch who complained the route of the motorway is damaging to the area and passes unacceptably close to the Hill of Tara.

The National Roads Authority (NRA) said anyone who feared the impact of the motorway on the Hill of Tara, the historic seat of the ancient high kings, should “assess it for themselves” over the bank holiday weekend or in the coming weeks.

“The weekend is a perfect opportunity for those who are concerned to get out and see what the fuss was all about,” said a spokesman.

It is also the latest of the State’s new motorways to be tolled. Motorists will face two tolls, at Clonee and Kells, under a public-private partnership between the State and a consortium involving civil engineering companies Ferrovial, Siac and Budimex.

Tolls will be set at €1.30 each, fixed in line with inflation. Despite assertions to the contrary from Tarawatch, the roads authority has insisted it is confident vehicle targets will be met in the first year of operation.

Following the completion of the major inter-urban motorways to Limerick and Waterford this October, all of the motorways between Dublin and the regional cities, as well as the Border, will feature tolls.

The roads authority said yesterday that private finance is likely to be involved in a greater share of its projects in coming years.

Current public-private partnerships in development include the Gort to Tuam motorway in Co Galway; the upgrade of Newlands Cross, Dublin; N11 improvements in Co Wicklow; and the southern section of the M20 Cork to Limerick road.

Construction of the M3 was controversial not only because of its proximity to the Hill of Tara, but also because it was used by the European Commission as an example of non-compliance by Ireland with European planning directives.

In 2007, then EU environment commissioner Stavros Dimas said the commission considered Ireland’s approach to decisions involving the destruction or removal of historic structures and archaeological monuments to be in breach of EU rules.

irishtimes.com/newspaper/ireland/2010/0604/1224271819706.html

Not strictly stone news, but the good news that a landscape is being preserved and getting some money as well! Especially after the closing down of the Sweet Track Centre....

Today (Thursday 20th May), the Heritage Lottery Fund (HLF) has earmarked a first-round pass* of £1,867,900 – including £95,400 development funding – under its Landscape Partnership (LP) programme, for Natural England to progress its plans for the Avalon Marshes Landscape Partnership Project.

The announcement was made by Simon Timms, in his first engagement as newly-appointed chair of Heritage Lottery Fund South West committee.

Working with local communities, partners and visitors, this exciting project will celebrate the outstanding natural and cultural heritage of the area through new heritage conservation, education, interpretation and rural skills training activities.

The Avalon Marshes comprise the low lying land of the Brue Valley which extends from Glastonbury in the east, towards Bridgwater Bay in the West. A nationally and internationally important wetland habitat, it is rich in wildlife and steeped in archaeological heritage. Home to ancient Neolithic trackways, stunning wildflower meadows, and thousands of wintering wildfowl, this landscape has many ancient and modern stories to tell.

The plans that Natural England and partners are seeking HLF support for aim to develop access, interpretation, education, and economic opportunities, with heritage at the heart of supporting a future for rural communities in the Avalon Marshes. Access to the landscape will be improved through new heritage interpretation using modern technology, new boardwalks and hides, and new access routes.

The project aims to revive traditional heritage skills such as thatching, willow weaving and green woodworking and will deliver specialist courses and training, in particular for young people, underprivileged groups and the unemployed.........

naturalengland.org.uk/regions/south_west/press_releases/2010/200510.aspx

Four thousand years after our ancestors built a timber circle on what is now Holme Beach, the final part of the monument was this morning lifted into what should be its final resting place.

A small crowd gathered in King’s Lynn Bus Station in the lazy Sunday morning sunshine as the glass front of Lynn Museum was removed and the giant oak stump was painstakingly manoeuvred into its new home.

Museum officials held their breath as the carefully wrapped one and a half tonne stump was gradually rolled off a special van.

The completed Seahenge display will go on show this summer inside a replica of its original setting.

Controversy surrounded the decision to excavate the 4,000-year-old monument after it was discovered late in 1998.

But while the purpose of Seahenge’s central stump remains unknown, scientists studying its ring of timbers have discovered ancient society in Norfolk was far more advanced than had previously been believed.

More than 20,000 visitors a year have been to see the oak posts since they went on show in a new £1.6m gallery at Lynn Museum two years ago.

Before going on display, the Portsmouth-based Mary Rose Trust spent almost a decade preserving the timbers, using similar techniques to those employed to preserve Henry VIII’s warship the Mary Rose. Due to its size, the 8ft high central stump took a further two years to conserve.

Area museums officer Robin Hanley said like the smaller timbers, the stump displayed marks made by individual axes when it was built on the edge of what was originally forest.

“It’s great to see the stump being reunited with the remainder of the timber circle after all these years they’re been apart and great to see the timbers back together in West Norfolk,” said Dr Hanley

“We’ve been extremely pleased with the response to the displays, a lot of people have been inspired by the preservation of the timbers and have enjoyed being able to see them in such detail.

“To be able to get so close to 4,000-year-old timbers and see individual axe marks left by Bronze Age axes is extraordinary.”

Scientists using carbon and tree ring dating estimate Seahenge was built in the spring of 2049BC. It is believed to be the only example of its kind ever found. Its timbers were preserved by peat which encased them beneath the sands until its outline was revealed by a storm.

Dr Hanley said: “It has been a complex military style operation. It was nice to see people here for what is quite a momentous moment.”

Seahenge enthusiast Christine Von Allwoderden, from North Wootton, came into the town to see the stump arrive.

She said: “How exciting it must have been when it was found. I am very interested in the history of it. I do think it’s fantastic for King’s Lynn and fantastic for the museum”

She added that although she thought it was good for King’s Lynn to have the timber circle in the museum, she thought it should still be at Holme.

EDP24; tinyurl.com/y4swt7q

LITTERED across the hills of Dartmoor in Devon, southern England, around 80 rows and circles of stones stand sentinel in the wild landscape. Now, striking similarities between one of these monuments and Stonehenge, 180 kilometres to the east, suggest they may be the work of the same people.

The row of nine stones on Cut Hill was discovered in 2004 on one of the highest, most remote hills of Dartmoor national park. “It is on easily the most spectacular hill on north Dartmoor,” says Andrew Fleming, president of the Devon Archaeological Society. “If you were looking for a distant shrine in the centre of the north moor, that’s where you would put it.”

Ralph Fyfe of the University of Plymouth and independent archaeologist Tom Greeves have now carbon-dated the peat surrounding the stones. This suggests that at least one of the stones had fallen – or been placed flat on the ground – by between 3600 and 3440 BC, and another by 3350 to 3100 BC (Antiquity, vol 84, p 55).

That comes as a surprise to archaeologists, who, on the strength of artefacts found nearby, had assumed that Dartmoor monuments like Cut Hill and Stall Moor (pictured) dated from the Bronze Age, around 2100 to 1600 BC. Instead, Fyfe suggests that Cut Hill is from the Neolithic period, the same period that Stonehenge was built.

Unlike Stonehenge, the 2-metre-tall Cut Hill stones lie flat on the ground, parallel to each other and between 19 metres and 34.5 metres apart, like the sleepers of a giant railway track. Packing stones discovered at the end of one of the megaliths suggest at least one of them stood erect at some point, but the regularity of their current layout makes it likely they were deliberately placed that way, Greeves says.

What’s more, the stones’ alignment with the summer and winter solstices seems identical to that of Stonehenge, Newgrange in Ireland and Maes Howe in Scotland. “It could be coincidence, but it’s striking,” says archaeologist Mike Pitts.

article in Newscientist by Linda Geddes
tinyurl.com/y788obk

p.s. A longer article in British Archaeology May/June says “that there are similar stone rows in form and scale on Bodmin Moor... a similar orientation appears at another exceptional site at Drizzlecombe, where two or three long rows runs for 75-150 m; one ends with one of Dartmoor’s largest standing stone 4.3m.“....

Lost land under the sea.....

It is just eight inches long, but its discovery changed what we know about prehistoric Europe and our ancestors.

The harpoon, which was found by a Lowestoft fishing trawler in 1931, was yesterday under the lens of a Norwegian television crew, who are making a documentary on the origins of Norway.

It is 14,000 years old, but in perfect condition, the points carved into it still sharp. It would have been used for hunting by modern man in late Paleolithic or early Mesolithic times; a time before written records when people lived in hunter-gatherer communities.

But it is where it was found, 25 miles off the coast of Cromer, that makes it important to history. When it was dredged off the sea bed in 1931, hidden inside a lump of peat, it was taken home by Pilgrim Lockwood, the skipper of the fishing boat Colinda. It later ended up in Norwich’s Castle Museum, where it fascinated archaeologists. They thought it might have been dropped by hunters on a fishing expedition. But later tests showed that the freshwater peat it came from would have been on land thousands of years ago. They realised the existence of land in the North Sea, long since drowned, called Doggerland.

The harpoon is now on display in the Museum of Rural Life in Gressenhall, near Dereham, but was being filmed in the study centre at the Castle Museum yesterday.

Its significance to Norwegian history is that it shows how people from south-west Europe could have got to Norway. The theory is that in the last ice age, people from Iberia moved up into Britain, across Doggerland and into Scandinavia.

Producer Ole Egil Strkson said: “This particular object is the first clue that that happened.”

The producers had been hoping to find relatives of Pilgrim Lockwood to tell the story of how he found the harpoon. What is known is that he returned to the site in 1932 to take the peat samples which were used for testing.

The television crew said they felt moved by the age and significance of the deer antler harpoon, known as the Leman and Ower harpoon after the sandbanks where it was found. Presenter Samina Bruket said: “I was allowed to hold it. To think it is 14,000 years old is just amazing. I had seen pictures of it but it is even more beautiful than I thought, it was so shiny and well preserved.”

Mr Storkson said: “It has been carved, so you can see it really has been used by humans.”

Alan West, a curator of archaeology with Norfolk museum service, said: “It was originally part of a pair. The barbs faced each other with a long shaft used to stab down, like the eel spears you see from the 19th century.”

The programme, which will be called Norwegian Roots, is due to be shown in December on the biggest Norwegian television station in prime-time.

The film crew went on to visit Holme-next-the-sea, near Hunstanton, where they filmed peat and remains of tree roots visible at low tide, showing that there was once land which is now covered by sea.

They are also planning to visit Vince Gaffney, of Birmingham University and an expert in Doggerland. He says that: “a very real, human tragedy lies behind the loss of this immense landscape”, and that with global warming and sea levels rising, it has relevance today.

About Doggerland

Doggerland, named after the Dogger Bank sandbank, is thought to have existed between 12,000 and 8,000 years ago.

During the last ice age, much more water was contained in the polar ice caps, and the North Sea included an area of land larger than England and Wales, linking East Anglia with Holland and Belgium, with a much narrower stretch of water cutting off Britain from Norway.

It is thought to have been a land of rivers and marshes, which offered good hunting grounds for people. As the earth warmed and sea levels rose 8,000 years ago, the land was covered by water. Sea levels rose at one or two metres per century, creating a loss of land which would have been noticeable to the residents but not enough to drown them overnight.

tinyurl.com/yhupq53

Europe’s Lost World – Rediscovery of Doggerland..
britarch.ac.uk/books/Gaffney2009

THE cyber age’s bid to spread its message into a pristine landscape has perished between a rock and a hard place in a Bronze Age valley.

Age-old archaeological remains are standing in the way of plans to bring modern internet communications to a scenic area of Kerry.

A telecommunications mast which would provide broadband to the mid-Kerry area would be a “new alien intrusion” on a very beautiful and almost pristine landscape.

That’s according to senior An Bord Pleanála inspector, Robert Ryan.

The area around the proposed location for a 12-metre mast at Coomasaharn, Glenbeigh, is “one of the most significant Bronze Age landscapes in the country,” Kerry County Council also conceded.

The local authority noted the Glenbeigh area has the greatest concentration of ancient “rock art” in Ireland, with more than 100 recorded examples.

The Bronze Age dated from around 2200 BC to 500 BC.

Mr Ryan supported the council and upheld a decision to refuse Hutchinson 3G Ireland planning permission for the mast on archaeological grounds.

He also said the mast would damage the visual amenities of the area which is close to the popular Ring of Kerry tourist route.

Hutchinson 3G has the Government’s national contract to roll out broadband to previously unserviced rural areas.

The company claims there is a strong demand for broadband in the Glenbeigh area and no other site options were available.

Glenbeigh is a hotbed of opposition to masts, with objections to five such proposals in the general area.

Hutchinson 3G said that, given there were 67 objections to the current proposal, the possibility of finding another site was limited.

Company spokesman Brian Phelan said they would continue to try to bring broadband to such areas.

“Broadband has the potential to create hundreds of jobs, especially in small to medium-sized businesses, and is probably the most important thing for rural Ireland since rural electrification,” he added.

Normally, An Bord Pleanála overturns Kerry County Council’s decisions in relation to masts because it does not agree with a controversial rule by the council which bans such masts on sites which are within a kilometre of houses, schools and other residential buildings.

On this occasion, however, Bord Pleanála – while still disagreeing with the one-kilometre rule – granted the appeal on grounds of protecting the sensitive landscape and local archaeology.

This story appeared in the printed version of the Irish Examiner Monday, March 08, 2010

Read more:
irishexaminer.com/ireland/bronze-age-remains-block-broadband-plan-113928.html

The exciting new find by ‘amateur’ archaeologists of the long barrow under The Cove, at Stanton Drew.

Ask anyone in Bristol to name an ancient stone circle, and 90 per cent of people will probably say Stonehenge. A few of the wider-read sorts might mention Avebury. But remarkably, few will say the words Stanton Drew.

While Wiltshire’s two landmark sites are known worldwide, Bristol’s own major neolithic stone circle goes largely unnoticed.

But all that might be about to change, thanks to a team of enthusiastic amateur archaeologists who have discovered some intriguing new evidence that suggests the Stanton Drew site, near Chew Magna, may actually be 1,000 years older than historians had previously thought.

The discovery has been made by geophysics enthusiast John Oswin and amateur archaeologist John Richards, both from the Bath and Camerton archaeological society, who have been working with a team of volunteers under the guidance of Richard Sermon, Bath and North-East Somerset Archaeological Officer.

The two Johns have spent the last six months studying the results of their survey of the site in the summer, and they believe that long before the mystical stone circles were erected on the site around 2,500BC, there was an impressive “long barrow” burial chamber on the land.

I find a windswept John Oswin wandering thoughtfully around the area of the ancient monument known as The Cove. Separated from the main circles by the village church, this set of three ancient standing stones is nestled at the back of a pub car park.

“This is where we believe the long barrow would have been,” says John, a former defence industry sonar expert at Filton who has taken a fancy for geophysical archaeology as a retirement hobby.

“I use a machine called a resistance meter,” he explains. “It looks like a walking frame with a small computer attached. But actually, it is using scanning technology to create a picture of any archaeology that might be beneath the surface. Unlike traditional digging, this allows us to see what’s below the surface in a non-invasive manner. Most people know about geophysics these days from watching Time Team on the television.

“Many neolithic stone circles are built on or near the site of an even more ancient long barrow – a large burial chamber. There is one, for example, at Stonehenge.

“But nobody had realised there was one here before because, although geophysicists had used this kind of equipment to scan the ground beneath the main stone circles, nobody had ever thought to come and scan this area known as The Cove.

“I first discovered there was a very large structure buried beneath the ground here back in the summer,” John recalls. “I had been scanning all day, and then moved next door into the Druid’s Arms to download my material on to a computer over a pint.

“When I saw the shape of a long barrow appearing on the screen my mouth just dropped open. It was one of those eyes-on-stalks moments, because I knew the civilisation that built stone circles came a thousand years after the civilisation that built long barrows.

“This would probably mean the stone circles had been specially built on a site that was already of sacred significance – a resting place of their distant ancestors.

“The neolithic – stone age – people who would have built the long barrow would have left the bodies of their dead to decay on the surface, before moving the bones down into the chamber – but only when they had been picked clean by birds or the flesh had rotted away.

“We believe they would then have brought the bones of their forefathers out for sacred rituals on special occasions. It’s not that different to modern day Catholics parading the bodies of saints through towns for feast days.

“But by the time people came to build the stone circles here a thousand years later, this would all have been distant folklore – as distant to them as the Norman Conquest is to us.”

To find out more about the significance of the find, I meet up with the project leader, John Richards, at his office at Bristol University – where he works as an IT manager.
“For me, archaeology is a hobby, but it’s something I’m passionate about,” he says, as he brings up the scan images on his computer screen.

“We were lucky to be given the chance to scan the ground at Stanton Drew, because access is often restricted by English Heritage, which maintains the monument.
“But we were approached as a society last year by Richard Sermon, the archaeological officer for the council. He wondered if we could give a demonstration of our geo-phys equipment to the public as part of a Festival of British Archaeology event.

“We said, yes we’d love to do it, but if we do, perhaps you could arrange something for us? Within a few weeks Richard had managed to get permission for us to survey the Stanton Drew site.
“It was exciting to get the chance to do the survey, so you can imagine how thrilled we were to find something as significant as a long barrow.”

Since unveiling their find in archaeological publications recently, the two Johns have received congratulations from professional archaeologists all over the country, many of whom were keen to find out more about their data.
“We’re hoping that this will be just the start of the story,” John Richards says.
“We’re hoping to get permission to go back on the site to do some more survey work this summer, and if we can get permission from the church and the pub landlord, we would like to scan the churchyard and the pub garden too, because we suspect the long barrow might extend on to their land – which would make this more than 20 metres in length.

“In other words, this would have been a very distinctive sacred landmark in the area 5,000 years ago.”

thisisbristol.co.uk/news/Finding-stones-near-Bristol-place-history/article-1871522-detail/article.html

A change of mind, a change of politics or maybe a devilish plot.......

Port developers anxious to avoid ‘very significant‘
neolithic complex, writes FRANK MACDONALD , Environment Editor

A PROPOSED deepwater container port at Bremore in north Co Dublin may be moved farther north to Gormanston, Co Meath, to avoid encroaching on a neolithic complex of passage tombs.

A spokesman for Treasury Holdings, which is planning to develop the new facility in partnership with Drogheda Port, confirmed yesterday that one of the options now being considered was to “shift it off Bremore headland” for archaeological reasons.

He said it had become clear at an early stage that the neolithic complex at Bremore was “very significant”, and the developers would be anxious to avoid it by examining alternative locations, such as Gormanston.

However, no final decision has been taken.

One of the constraints is that the Gormanston site is partly covered by an EU-designated special protection area (SPA) for wild birds.

It is also believed to contain another archaeological complex, though this is not thought to be as significant as the one located at Bremore.

“We’ve done a significant amount of preliminary work, including archaeological investigations by Margaret Gowen and Company,” the spokesman said, adding that Treasury would now be taking on an environmental specialist to assess the Gormanston option.

Treasury acquired options to purchase several landholdings at Bremore before entering into partnership with Drogheda Port, but it is understood the company holds none for Gormanston.

Land in the area would be cheaper to acquire now due to the property crash.

“We now have to work through the environmental issues as well as the cultural heritage and archaeological issues,” the spokesman said.

He added that Treasury and its partners would be consulting with “all the various interests”, such as An Taisce, which it has met already.

It is likely to be autumn before a firmer proposal will be put out for consultation.

“Ireland needs a deepwater port; the IDA (Industrial Development Authority) is conscious that we are losing projects because we don’t have one,” according to the spokesman.

An Taisce’s monuments and antiquities committee has warned that any port development at Bremore would “completely obliterate a passage tomb cemetery of neolithic date with affinities to Newgrange and a mid-16th century historic harbour site”.

Commenting on the possibility that it could be relocated to Gormanston, committee chairman Dr Mark Clinton said it would be likely to affect a sandy beach “most beloved in the locality” and shoreline that forms part of the river Nanny SPA.

Any such plan would require a full assessment of its environmental effects to be prepared and placed before the public prior to being approved.

“It would appear that the exact opposite of these legal requirements is in motion,” Dr Clinton said.

He also queried the need for a new port, noting that throughput at Drogheda Port had fallen by 50 per cent in 2008, according to its most recent set of accounts, while business at Dublin Port was down by 10 per cent.

“There is no need for a new deepwater port,” he said.

irishtimes.com/newspaper/ireland/2010/0223/1224265036102.html

Gordon Kingston on The Heritage Journal
Bremore: Proposed Port Site to change to Gormanston?

heritageaction.wordpress.com/2010/02/24/bremore-proposed-port-site-to-change-to-gormanston/

One of the world’s oldest shipwrecks has been discovered off the coast of Devon after lying on the seabed for almost 3,000 years.

The trading vessel was carrying an extremely valuable cargo of tin and hundreds of copper ingots from the Continent when it sank

Experts say the “incredibly exciting” discovery provides new evidence about the extent and sophistication of Britain’s links with Europe in the Bronze Age as well as the remarkable seafaring abilities of the people during the period.

Archaeologists have described the vessel, which is thought to date back to around 900BC, as being a “bulk carrier” of its age.

The copper and tin would have been used for making bronze – the primary product of the period which was used in the manufacture of not only weapons, but also tools, jewellery, ornaments and other items.

Archaeologists believe the copper – and possibly the tin – was being imported into Britain and originated in a number of different countries throughout Europe, rather than from a single source, demonstrating the existence of a complex network of trade routes across the Continent.

Academics at the University of Oxford are carrying out further analysis of the cargo in order to establish its exact origins.

However, it is thought the copper would have come from the Iberian peninsular, Alpine Europe, especially modern day Switzerland, and possibly other locations in France, such as the Massif Central, and even as far as Austria.

It is first time tin ingots from this period have ever been found in Britain, a discovery which may support theories that the metal was being mined in the south west at this time.

If the tin was not produced in Britain, it is likely it would have also come from the Iberian peninsular or from eastern Germany.

The wreck has been found in just eight to ten metres of water in a bay near Salcombe, south Devon, by a team of amateur marine archaeologists from the South West Maritime Archaeological Group.

In total, 295 artefacts have so far been recovered, weighing a total of more than 84kg.

The cargo recovered includes 259 copper ingots and 27 tin ingots. Also found was a bronze leaf sword, two stone artefacts that could have been sling shots, and three gold wrist torcs – or bracelets.

The team have yet to uncover any of the vessel’s structure, which is likely to have eroded away.

However, experts believe it would have been up to 40ft long and up to 6ft wide, and have been constructed of planks of timber, or a wooden frame with a hide hull. It would have had a crew of around 15 and been powered by paddles.

Archaeologists believe it would have been able to cross the Channel directly between Devon and France to link into European trade networks, rather than having to travel along the coast to the narrower crossing between modern day Dover and Calais.

Although the vessel’s cargo came from as far afield as southern Europe, it is unlikely it would have been carried all the way in the same craft, but in a series of boats, undertaking short coastal journeys.

The wreck site is on part of the seabed called Wash Gully, which is around 300 yards from the shore.

There is evidence of prehistoric field systems and Bronze Age roundhouses on the coast nearby and it is thought the vessel could have sunk while attempting to land, or could have been passing along the coast.

The coastline is notoriously treacherous and there is a reef close by which could have claimed the vessel.

The recovery work took place between February and November last year but the discovery was not announced until this month’s International Shipwreck Conference, in Plymouth.

The finds have been reported to both English Heritage and the Receiver of Wreck, which administers all shipwrecks. The artefacts are due to be handed over to the British Museum next week.

They will be independently valued and the museum will pay the team for the items.

Mick Palmer, chairman of the South West Maritime Archaeological Group, said: “For the British Isles, this is extremely important. This was a cargo trading vessel on a big scale.

“There is more down there and we will carry on searching for it. We anticipate a lot more will be found.”

Dave Parham, senior lecturer in marine archaeology at Bournemouth University and a member of the team, said: “What we are seeing is trade in action.

“We are not stuck with trying to work out trade based on a few deposits across a broader landscape. We are looking at the stuff actually on the boat being moved.

“Everything that is in the ship sinks with it and is on the seabed somewhere. What you would call this today is a bulk carrier. It was carrying what was for the time a large consignment of raw materials.”

Dr Peter Northover, a scientist at the University of Oxford who has been analysing the find, said: “These are the produce of a multitude of countries, scattered right around Europe, up and down the Atlantic coast and inland.

“It came from a combination of places. It is showing the diversity of the trade.

“Metal traders and workers would have traded parcels of metal with each other. The metal would have moved in steps, along networks of contacts exchanging metal as and when they need it.”

Dr Stuart Needham, a Bronze Age archaeologist, said: “This is genuinely exciting.

“Everyone knows that man has been walking around on land since time immemorial, but I think people now will be surprised to know how much they were plying the seaways at this time, up and down the Atlantic seaboard and across the Channel.

“There’s a complex lattice of interactions across Europe happening throughout this period.

“A lot of stuff may have moved across land, but it is eminently possible at this stage that there were quite sophisticated maritime networks with specialist mariners – people who know how to read the tides and the stars and who are not just casually going out on the sea to do some deep sea fishing.

“If you have got specialist mariners plying the Atlantic seaways, there is every possibility they could be picking up material in different locations and stockpiling it.

“The mainstay of this exchange network might have been a number of vessels undertaking short journeys. It doesn’t mean there weren’t occasional vessels and people going longer distances.”

One other Bronze Age vessel has previously been found near Salcombe, where just 53 artefacts were recovered. Another eight Bronze Age items have also been found at a third nearby spot, indicating another possible wreck.

The only other Bronze Age wrecks found in the UK have been located on land, or on the foreshore, at Dover and North Ferriby, on the Humber.

Ben Roberts, Bronze Age specialist at the British Museum, said: “It is an incredibly exciting find. What we have here is really, really good evidence of trade. We don’t get many shipwreck sites.

“It is very rare to get a snapshot of this level of activity. It is very possible there were also animals and people going across the Channel too.

“We hardly ever get to see evidence of this cross Channel trade in action. It is a huge amount of cargo.”

Article by Jasper Copping; Telegraph

telegraph.co.uk/earth/environment/archeology/7228108/Bronze-Age-shipwreck-found-off-Devon-coast.html

The battle begins.....

The ancient Bru na Boinne site around Newgrange may lose its World Heritage status if the proposed M2 motorway goes ahead, it was claimed today.

The National Monuments Forum warned if changes are not made to the new motorway plans, the area near the Boyne in Co Meath is likely to lose recognition from the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisation (Unesco).

Dr George Eogan, Professor Emeritus of Archaeology at University College Dublin (UCD), said the new motorway is too close to the monuments and will have a considerable impact on the surrounding landscape.

“Five hundred metres is simply too close, and it is conceivable that Newgrange could lose its World Heritage Status,” he said.

The site can be saved if Environment Minister John Gormley fast-tracks the new National Monuments Bill 2009 according to the National Monuments Forum.

Vincent Salafia, National Monuments Forum spokesman, claimed the minister created unnecessary delays which place Ireland’s heritage at risk.

“We urge Minister Gormley to deliver this long overdue legislation and to ensure it is strong enough to protect Newgrange from this outlandish proposal,” Mr Salafia said.

Read more: irishexaminer.com/breakingnews/ireland/motorway-may-cost-ancient-site-world-heritage-status-443046.html#ixzz0dQVSkddA

The National Roads Authority has given details of plans for the new Slane bypass, which would be built 500m from the World Heritage Site at Newgrange.

While the plan has been welcomed locally, it is expected that there will be controversy.

The bridge and the road through the village of Slane, Co Meath, is one of the most dangerous stretches of roads in Ireland.

Over 20 people have been killed in accidents and locals have long campaigned for a bypass around the village.

The NRA is proposing to build the route down river of the present bridge and to the east of the village.

The proposed bypass will be 500m away from the buffer-zone around the World Heritage Site at Brú na Bóinne, which comprises the ancient megalithic tombs at Newgrange, Knowth and Dowth.

It will also impact on the museum dedicated to Ireland’s most famous World War I poet, Francis Ledwidge, who came from Slane.

The Environmental Impact Statement for the project acknowledges that 44 archaeological sites will be within 500m of the roadway and that the potential to uncover much more during work is high.

While there will be a visual impact from the river, the Environmental Impact Statement says there will be negligible impact on the Site.

rte.ie/news/2010/0121/slane.html