“New information has emerged from letters written in 1776 about excavations at Silbury Hill and published for the first time in the new volume of the Wiltshire Archaeological and Natural History Magazine.”
More here – wiltshireheritagemuseum.blogspot.com/2010/02/silbury-hill-new-find-in-archive.html
“English Heritage has welcomed yesterday’s decision by Wiltshire Council’s planning committee to approve plans for a new visitor centre for Stonehenge.”
More here -
andoveradvertiser.co.uk/news/4864607.English_Heritage_welcomes_Stonehenge_Vistor_Centre_decision/
“English Heritage, the Salisbury and South Wiltshire Museum, and the Wiltshire Heritage Museum have agreed to collaborate on presenting and interpreting the story of the Stonehenge World Heritage Site.
“The two museums will make loans from their collections to English Heritage for display in the proposed new visitor centre, while English Heritage will assist the two museums with their own displays and enhancing their archives to support the co-ordinated approach.”
More here – wiltshireheritagemuseum.blogspot.com/2010/01/wiltshire-museums-join-forces-to-tell.html
Bill Bryson, writing in The Times today, pays homage to (among others) John Lubbock who, “...was a banker by profession, but was in addition a distinguished botanist, astronomer, expert on the social behaviour of insects, politician and antiquarian. Among much else, he coined the terms palaeolithic, mesolithic and neolithic in 1865. But his real contribution to life was to push through Parliament the first Ancient Monuments Protection Act, which became law in 1882. People forget how much of Britain’s historic fabric was nearly destroyed in the past. Before Lubbock’s intervention, nearly half of Avebury was cleared away for housing, and at one point it was even threatened that Stonehenge, then still in private hands, might be dismantled and shipped to America. Without Lubbock, many stone circles, tumuli and other historical features of the landscape would have vanished long ago.
More here -
entertainment.timesonline.co.uk/tol/arts_and_entertainment/books/non-fiction/article6979468.ece
“Jade is normally associated with imperial China, notably the Han Dynasty burial suits made up of hundreds of jade plaques linked with gold wire; or with the Ancient Maya in Central America, where royal burials were often smothered in jade necklaces and carved objects. Prehistoric Europe is not usually thought of as society that used jade, but recent studies have shown that superb polished axes of green jadeites were traded from the Alps to the Channel 6,500 years ago, reaching Britain shortly thereafter.”
The Wiltshire Heritage Museum in Devizes holds a superb example of a jadeite axe from Breamore (mentioned in The Times article above and here – timesonline.co.uk/tol/life_and_style/court_and_social/article6497835.ece )
“Dogu are from the earliest-dated tradition of pottery manufacture in the world, dating to the prehistoric Jomon period, which began 16,000 years ago. Most of the figures in the exhibition are from about 2500 BC to 1000 BC (the Middle and Late Jomon periods) and show the development of the sculptural form over time.”
The exhibition is in Room 91 at the British Museum until 22 November 2009. Admission free.
More here – britishmuseum.org/whats_on/all_current_exhibitions/the_power_of_dogu.aspx
“These monuments were irretrievably damaged, however, in some cases destroyed and for what? The route chosen wasn’t the only possibility, but viable alternatives were dismissed without a second look. In hindsight and given the collapse of the economy, the motorway itself may not even have been necessary. Some people obviously thought so. As has recently been revealed, Eurolink were given a minimum traffic guarantee, which surely indicates prior consideration, if not expectation, of low usage levels.
“Anyone with half an eye on national events will concede that this is a country where the elite are in and out of each others pockets, smoothing their respective ways along. You wouldn’t have to be particularly conspiracy-minded to smell something fishy in the alterations of laws when they prove inconvenient to ‘progress’. Or the swift ‘about-face’ of the Greens when they arrived in Government. Why was this route and project, opposed by the EU, prominent archaeologists and a significant body of the public, untouchable?”
More here – heritageaction.wordpress.com/2009/09/18/m3-co-meath-the-end-of-the-road/
“The Annual General Meeting of the Wiltshire Archaeological and Natural History Society will take place at Devizes Town Hall, commencing at 2.30pm (10 October, 2009). This will be followed by a lecture from Prof. Mike Parker Pearson.
“Mike’s talk is entitled ‘The Stonehenge Riverside Project – Recent Results’. It is sure to be very popular so advance booking is essential. If you are interested in attending the lecture contact 01380 727369...”
More here – wiltshireheritage.org.uk/events/index.php?Action=2&thID=442&prev=1
“They were carved out of stone and squeezed out of clay 9,000 years ago, at the very dawn of civilisation.
“Now archaeologists say these astonishing Stone Age statues could have been the world’s first educational toys.”
“About 4,500 years ago some inhabitants of Britain suddenly started wearing and being buried with jewellery. Subsequent centuries saw objects being fashioned out of amber, jet, gold, copper, bone and faience in a bewildering variety of forms.”
A lecture entitled ‘Prehistoric Jewellery in Britain and Beyond’ by Ben Roberts will be held at the Wiltshire Heritage Museum, Devizes from 2:30 pm on Saturday, 24 October 2009. More here – wiltshireheritage.org.uk/events/index.php?Action=2&thID=444&prev=3&catID=4
Culture minister Barbara Follett has announced a £150,000 grant for the Wiltshire Heritage Museum in Devizes. The grant will be used to create a new Bronze Age Gallery to house material excavated from the Stonehenge World Heritage Site.
More here – wiltshireheritage.org.uk/news/index.php?Action=8&id=83&page=0 and here – nce.co.uk/news/structures/4m-construction-grant-for-uk-museums/5207448.article
“Mummies, possibly of ‘Celtic’ origin and some 3,000 years old, have been unearthed in the Tarim Basin of western China for nearly 100 years. ‘Cherchen Man’ is just one of these but one of the most interesting. Cherchen Man is tall, red haired and wears a red tunic and tartan leggings. His mummified body, along with others, are now kept in Urumqi City Museum in Xinjiang province. Perhaps even more interesting are the burial sites where Cherchen Man and his people are found – these bear signs of a Celtic influence and include standing stones similar to British dolmens as well as icons reminiscent of sheela-na-gigs.”
More here – heritageaction.wordpress.com/2009/08/23/the-celts-in-china/
“Archaeologists have unexpectedly uncovered London’s oldest timber structure, which predates Stonehenge by about 500 years.”
More here – livescience.com/history/090813-london-oldest-timber.html
Bachwen, Gwynedd: Some thoughts on Portal Dolmens, by Gordon Kingston is an interesting and thought-provoking feature on the symbolism behind portal dolmens. The author suggests that “...our monuments, particularly this type, had to be more than a burial utility with a common form, but an architecture that spoke. Whose voice would have caused wonder, awe, fear even.”
More here – heritageaction.wordpress.com/
“The continued destruction of prehistoric monuments is a fact which I am sure we all deeply regret, and which reflects little credit on us as a nation. This year a portion of “Abury”, the grandest monument of its kind in this country (perhaps in the world), was actually sold for building purposes in cottage allotments.”
Sir John Lubbock speaking to the Anthropological Institute on 15th of January 1872.
“Recently the current statutory guardians of Avebury, English Heritage, expressed their opposition to the development of the site of the adjacent Bonds Garage for housing yet then failed to exercise their available powers towards it, thus allowing building to go ahead – which it will shortly – thus blighting the northern approach to Sir John’s ‘grandest monument of its kind in this country (perhaps in the world)’ forever.”
More here – heritageaction.wordpress.com/
“A prehistoric complex, including two 6,000-year-old tombs, has been discovered by archaeologists in Hampshire.
“The Neolithic tombs, which until now had gone unnoticed under farmland despite being just 15 miles from Stonehenge, are some of the oldest monuments to have “been found in Britain.”
More here – timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/uk/article6463970.ece
and here – themodernantiquarian.com/post/75242/news/new_forest.html
English Heritage, in association with The History Channel, have launched a new selection of short films – some dealing with Silbury Hill and Stonehenge.*
‘A walk through the tunnel’ is one such film and shows the scale of damage inflicted on Silbury when a tunnel was dug into it in 1968. The film is presented by Jim Leary and also shows some of the finds made during recent consolidation work at the monument. It’s a little puzzling why this information was not made available to the public during the consolidation work, via English Heritage’s Silbury Updates webpage, and to date there is still no link from that page to this new EHTV website.
Today’s Independent* reports that -
“Unesco, the world cultural body, has threatened to humiliate France by placing the Lascaux caves – known as the “Sistine Chapel of prehistory” – on its list of endangered sites of universal importance.
“The Unesco world heritage committee, meeting this week in Quebec, has given the French government six months to report on the success of its efforts to save the Lascaux cave paintings in Dordogne from an ugly, and potentially destructive, invasion of grey and black fungi.
“There are already 31 sites on the Unesco “List of World Heritage in Danger”, including such treasures as the ancient Buddha statues of the Bamiyan valley in Afghanistan, partly destroyed by the Taliban. Only one of the existing, officially threatened sites is in western Europe – the architectural heritage of the Dresden-Elbe valley in eastern Germany, site of a planned motorway. A decision by the Unesco committee to list Lascaux as “endangered” would, therefore, be a severe embarrassment to France. Unesco would, in effect, be telling Paris that it can no longer be trusted to manage one of the world’s most important historical and cultural treasures.”
* independent.co.uk/news/world/europe/six-months-to-save-lascaux-865819.html
“A survivor of one of the most audacious invasions of Stonehenge has turned up in time for this week’s solstice celebrations, more than 40 years after all the perpetrators were believed to have perished in a fire. As archaeologist Julian Richards prepared to exhibit his extraordinary Stonehenge collection at Salisbury museum, including snow shakers, Victorian guide books, 1920s admission tickets – 6d (2.5p) for adults and 3d for children – and some of the dodgiest T-shirts ever screen-printed, word reached him that Bruce Bogle was ready to come out of hiding.
“Bruce Bogle has joined Richards’s exhibition of Stonehenge memorabilia, which includes faked first world war postcard images of Zeppelins and biplanes buzzing the stones. His favourites include a sign scavenged in the 1980s, reading “Press pass holders and Druids only”, and a Spinal Tap picture disc from the spoof rock movie, in the shape of the great trilithons. He hopes Bruce Bogle may flush out his creators, never identified. “They must now be in their 60s or even 70s – it would be wonderful if this exhibition inspired them to come out and own up at last.”
guardian.co.uk/science/2008/jun/21/archaeology.heritage
The Inspired by Stonehenge exhibition is at Salisbury Museum until September 20.
From today’s Telegraph -
“This year the giant has gone from being a white icon, through a green man stage, into the invisible man.
“We need more sheep on the site or it needs the village to take him into their care by trimming the grass, weeding the trenches then whitewashing them.”
telegraph.co.uk/earth/main.jhtml?xml=/earth/2008/06/19/eagiant119.xml
“Prehistoric cave sculptures never seen by the public will be revealed today thanks to the most advanced, computerised techniques of laser-copying and visual display.
“A museum to open near Poitiers, in western France, will span one-a-half millenniums of human image-making, from stone chisels to computers. The star of the show, at Angles-sur-L’Anglin, in the départementof Vienne, will be a 60ft-long frieze of bison, horses, cats, goats and erotic female figures, carved into the limestone of western France 15,000 years ago.
“The caverns containing the frieze were discovered by French and British archaeologists in 1950 but have never been opened to the public. The Roc-aux-Sorciers (witches’ rock) caves are the only site of their kind in Europe: a two-dimensional, carved equivalent of the celebrated cave paintings at Lascaux in Dordogne, 120 miles farther south, which were created 1,000 years earlier.“*
More here, in French, but with some stunning pics roc-aux-sorciers.com/
15 Sep—2 Dec 2007. Main Galleries, Royal Academy of Arts, London.
“This exhibition explores the work and achievement of the Fellowship of the Society of Antiquaries of London since its foundation in the early eighteenth century to the present day.
“It features works of art, antiquities and manuscripts of unique historical importance, such as a processional cross of King Richard III and his defeated Yorkist army recovered from the battlefield of Bosworth (1485). Also on show will be the earliest known medieval manuscript illustrations of Stonehenge,* as well as drawings and paintings of this and other historic sites and monuments by great artists such as Constable, Turner, Girtin and Blake.“**
* The 15th century Scala Mundi manuscript?
** More at royalacademy.org.uk/exhibitions/makinghistory/ and royalacademy.org.uk/exhibitions/makinghistory/ charles-hamilton-smith-the-grand-conventional-festival-of-the-britons-1815,450,AR.html
“Herefordshire Council has found a section of laid stone surface dating from the early Bronze Age, the only discovery of its kind in Europe.” The surface appears to be made of fired pieces of stone laid out in the shape of a serpent. Part of the surface will be intersected by a new road but, fortunately, not destroyed; the new road will be laid over the Bronze Age surface and the rest investigated.
More at -
news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/hereford/worcs/6268900.stm
smr.herefordshire.gov.uk/news_events2/RotherwasNews2.htm
anthropology.net/2007/07/04/rotherwas-ribbon-a-bronze-age-site-unique-in-europe/
“By the agrarian revolution of the third millennium BC Stonehenge was already an important site, but its extension about 2300BC was clearly intended by its guardians to make it a major pilgrimage attraction. This needed some sensational draw, and what could be more sensational than a henge composed of the fabled Preseli bluestones, fount of a hundred holy wells? It was worth any Olympian expense.
The medieval historian Geoffrey of Monmouth told of a belief in the healing power of Stonehenge’s stones, brought by Arthur’s magician, Merlin, “from Ireland”, where stones have long had magic properties. Geoffrey’s stories are ridiculed, but his folk memory might contain a grain of truth. Could the appeal of the bluestones lie not in ancestor worship or astronomical ritual but in the power these objects were thought to hold back in Preseli? In his new book, Stonehenge: Biography of a Landscape, Darvill points out that the arrangement of the stones at Stonehenge even reflects their geological location back in Wales.”
More at – guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/story/0,,1961517,00.html
“The second phase of the Ancient Human Occupation of Britain project (AHOB) is funded to run until 2010, thanks to a grant by the Leverhulme Trust. The project, which started in October 2001, has made groundbreaking discoveries dating human occupation of Britain back as far as 700,000 years. Phase two of the AHOB project (AHOB2) will continue to add data on the earliest human colonisations of Britain, but the project will also carry out more comparative studies in continental Europe.
The first year of the AHOB2 project will include an attempt to recover DNA from a fragment of jawbone found at Kent’s Cavern in Devon. This will help determine whether it is a modern human as previously believed, or a late Neanderthal. With a newly estimated date of 35,000, this fossil lies right at the time when modern humans could have first encountered the Neanderthals in western Europe.”
More at -
nhm.ac.uk/hosted_sites/ahob/index_2.html
and info on phase 1 of the AHOB project at -
Today’s Guardian reports on the discovery of the bones of a three-year-old from 3.3m years ago.
“Fossil hunters working in Ethiopia have unearthed the fragile bones of a baby ape-girl who lived 3.3m years ago, the earliest child ancestor discovered so far.
The fossilised remains reveal a critical moment in human evolution that saw our earliest relatives shaking off the legacy of ape ancestors to take their first tentative steps along a path that ultimately led to modern humans.
The remarkably complete skeleton’s lower half is almost perfectly adapted to walking upright, while the upper body is more primitive, with gorilla-like shoulderblades and curved chimpanzee-like fingers suited to clinging and climbing trees.
The intact skull and nearly full set of teeth show the large, pointy canines that distinguish apes from early humans have disappeared, leaving only substantial chewing teeth.“*
* More at -
“New research shows early humans were living in Britain around 700,000 years ago, substantially earlier than previously thought. Using new dating techniques, scientists found that flint tools unearthed in Pakefield, Suffolk, were 200,000 years older than the previous oldest finds.“*
Two years ago Russian archaeologist Ilya Akhmedov made a sensational discovery; he found an ancient structure ‘resembling’ Stonehenge near the site of the ancient settlement of Staraya Ryazanin in the village Spasskaya Luka.
Source english.pravda.ru/science/19/94/377/15764_stonehenge.html
“A retired fisherman has discovered an ancient stone head which experts say could be 24,000 years old – the oldest found in Britain.” The five-inch stone head was found off Long Island in Hampshire and according to archaeologists could be a piece of Neanderthal art. “A similar stone head was found in a Neanderthal cave in northern France and was dated back to 28,000 BC.”
Full story and photo appear on page 7 of The Times, 2 October 2004.