Experts believe they have discovered another Iron Age power centre in Moray (Grampian, Scotland). National Museums of Scotland curator Dr Fraser Hunter said investigations at a field at Burghead have possibly revealed 'a high-status site'. The archaeologist said the remains of four Iron Age roundhouses could lie buried beneath the soil. He said: "In combination with the finds that have been discovered at the site, it suggests that this is one of the more important areas, one of the power centres of the Burghead area." The exact location of the site at Burghead is being kept secret while further investigations are carried out.
Exciting discoveries unearthed at the field in recent years prompted a team of Glasgow University experts to carry out a study of several acres of land. A hoard of Roman coins and brooches, Bronze Age gold-plated ring money, a shield stud and a gold ring are among the relics found at the location in recent years. The three-day National Museums of Scotland-sponsored study investigated the internal structure of the field using a technique called geophysical surveying.
Mr Hunter said: "There's evidence that we have got a settlement of roundhouses there, which was what we were hoping for. We can never know entirely with geophysics, so the idea would be to test this and get some funding. We need to discuss it with various people and the landowner but the ideal next move would be to start excavating. It looks very promising."
Another Iron Age power centre 13 miles south at Birnie, near Elgin, has, over the last 12 years, uncovered a vast array of relics. Mr Hunter went on to say that the works at the Burghead field would be small-scale by comparison, however. "There is no way that we could do anything on the same scale as what we have done at Birnie. We have been digging there for 12 years," he said.
Source: The Press and Journal (6 March 2010)
Last January we reported that archaeologists found the outline of a burial mound dated from nearly 1000 years before the stone circles at Stanton Drew (Somerset, England). 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 2,500 BCE, there was an impressive long barrow burial chamber on the land.
The ancient monument known as The Cove, separated from the main circles by the village church, is a set of three ancient standing stones 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."
"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 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."
To find out more about the significance of the find, John Oswin met up with the project leader, John Richards, an IT manager at Bristol University. "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."
For more information, visit the Bath and Camerton Archaeological Society website at www.bacas.org.uk.
Source: Evening Post (27 February 2010)
Wiltshire is now on the virtual map, as Heritage Key have just unveiled a 3D virtual Stonehenge web experience. Heritage Key is an online community aimed at those with an interest in history and culture. The site combines content such as podcasts, YouTube videos and news articles with an online 3D virtual experience. Key features of the virtual experience include the chance to explore Stonehenge as it once stood over four thousand years ago in a dynamic living environment filled with wildlife and where the sun rises and sets. You can also visit the nearby Neolithic settlement of Durrington Walls and interact with the people of the time, as well as take part in an ancient sunset ritual. Continuing the interactive experience, you will also be able to discuss your experience with other visitors in Heritage Key's virtual visitor centre.
Jonathan Himoff, CEO of online virtual environment company Rezzable, says: "Heritage Key is bringing this story to life through our virtual experience, as well as the varied media resources available online to complement it. In reality, Stonehenge is now fenced off from the public to protect the site from over-tourism. Not only can Heritage Key's virtual experience allow you to wander amongst the stones, we can also take visitors back in time to when the site was first built."
The Stonehenge virtual experience is being launched as part of Heritage Key's Ancient World in London festival, a series of online and real-world events celebrating the ancient world that is just underneath the skin of modern Britain. To find out more information, and to sample the Stonehenge 3D experience, visit the Heritage Key website at www.heritage-key.com.
Source: BBC News (24 February 2010)
Students at a Cambridgeshire (England) college have begun an archaeological dig of their 'artefact-rich' grounds. Previous excavations at Linton Village College have revealed evidence of a Roman settlement and Bronze Age burial remains. Neolithic pits dug 5,000 years ago have also been found there.
The dig is part of year-long art, archaeology and film-making project funded by a £25,000 lottery grant. "We don't know what they will find, but it is almost certain that they will find something," said archaeologist David Crawford-White, who is working with the students. "It will be tremendously exciting to be the first person to see and touch an object for over 2,000 years." The students are teaming up with a professional film-maker to record their findings.
Source: BBC News (16 February 2010)
Thirteen projects look set to receive money from Orkney Islands Council's fund for archaeological investigations in 2010. Members of the OIC development committee have backed recommendations to award funding to the projects selected by a panel made up of the OIC manager of museums and heritage, the county archaeologist and the Orkney Museum's curator of archaeology.
Set to receive the highest amount is the ongoing excavation on the Ness of Brodgar, which is described in the report as having huge tourism potential and exciting archaeology. Led by Nick Card, of the Orkney Research Centre for Archaeology (ORCA), the project has been allocated £8,000. Other ORCA projects were also successful in attracting funding, including the Brae of Habreck, in Wyre.
The Hoy and South Walls Landscape Interpretation work has been approved for £4,662 in funding. This project is a continuation of another scheme that has so far 'hugely changed the interpretation of an area of Hoy', including a mound, previously thought to be a broch, which turned out to be a Neolithic chambered cairn. Expected to receive £1,500 is Oxford University's Birsay-Skaill Landscape Archaeology Project, which, councillors heard, "should deliver interesting results". Due to its "huge media potential", the "Wrapping places: interpreting the Ring of Bookan complex" project has been approved for £2,500 from the fund. The investigation is led by Dr Colin Richards of the University of Manchester.
Three geophysics projects, led by Dr Susan Ovenden, of Orkney College, look likely to receive £1,000 each. These include ongoing geophysics work in the World Heritage Area Inner Buffer Zone, which completes a long running programme of magnetometry, and the Skaill Loch Environs Project. Dr Ovenden's third successful project is the World Heritage Area LiDAR Zone, which is approved for funding because it enables Orkney to contribute to the national 'Scotland's 10' programme.
Source: Orkneyjar (4 February 2010)
One of the world's oldest shipwrecks has been discovered off the coast of Devon (England) 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 900 BCE, as being a 'bulk carrier' of its age. The copper and tin would have been used for making bronze. 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. 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. There is evidence of prehistoric field systems and Bronze Age roundhouses on the coast near the wreck site and it is thought the vessel could have sunk while attempting to land, or could have been passing along the coast.
Mick Palmer, chairman of the South West Maritime Archaeological Group, said: "There is more down there and we will carry on searching for it. We anticipate a lot more will be found." 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.
Source: Telegraph.co.uk (13 February 2010)
The Wiltshire Archaeological and Natural History Society supports without reservation the proposed Traffic Regulation Order (TRO) prohibiting motorised vehicles, with exceptions, on part of the A344 road and the Byways within the Stonehenge World Heritage Site.
The inscription in 1986 by UNESCO of the Stonehenge and Avebury World Heritage Site indicated the necessity of closing the A344 by Stonehenge as an urgent consideration, and this has continued to be a just concern of the World Heritage Committee. The closure to motorised vehicles of the A344 road is the crucial, necessary, enhancement of the immediate environment of the Stonehenge monument to re-join it to the Avenue, and, equally important, to eliminate the impact of motorised vehicles on the monuments and landscape in the central region of the World Heritage Site through which the A344 currently runs.
The equally imperative permanent TRO on the Byways within the Stonehenge World Heritage Site will not only enhance people's appreciation of the World Heritage Site through the removal of the distraction of both moving and parked vehicles, but also minimise the ongoing damage to the archaeological remains, both scheduled monuments and the remains of other features which survive within the unploughed margins of the Byways, where current motorised vehicles have increasingly widened the traffic-worn and rutted tracks.
The Society encourages, for the same reasons and as a matter of parity, the Council to propose as soon as possible the permanent prohibition too of motorised vehicles on Byways in the Avebury part of the Stonehenge and Avebury World Heritage Site.
Source: Wiltshire Heritage Museum (12 February 2010)
English Heritage has hit back at criticism of its management of Old Sarum (the site of the earliest settlement of Salisbury, in England, containing evidence of human habitation as early as 3000 BCE) as a fresh round of scrub clearance gets under way. And it has confirmed that no new trees will be allowed to grow up there. The work has upset campaigner Mo Vines, who has accused the organisation of 'getting rid of our future' by felling yew and beech saplings and holly bushes. "It will end up like Figsbury - just dead," she said. "I want to see variety and diversity there."
English Heritage says it is trying to preserve the embankments, which are being damaged by tree roots, by grass being shaded out on the surface, and by rabbits. Its ultimate aim is to restore the monument's original character as unimproved chalk grassland, and it has the backing of the Wiltshire Wildlife Trust. EH landscape manager for the Southwest, Chris Bally, said only scrub was being taken out, and the work was being car ried out by volunteers from the group Friends of Ancient Monuments. He said large trees would not be felled unless they became unsafe, but he is preparing a planning application for permission to clear more thorn, ash and sycamore.
Archaeologist Julian Richards, who is drawing up a management plan for the site, said he was recommending 'a lot more' scrub clearance. "The policy is going to be not to allow woodland to regenerate naturally in places where we don't want it. Primarily, Old Sarum is not a nature reserve, it's a nationally important ancient monument and English Heritage holds it in guardianship for the nation. I will be working with the volunteers up there on Sunday and I will be happy to explain to people what's going on." Mr Richards said he was recommending to English Heritage that a Friends of Old Sarum group be formed to involve the community in its care.
Source: Salisbury Journal (11 February 2010)
Its footpaths are 'tortuous', the roof likely to 'channel wind and rain' and its myriad columns - meant to evoke a forest - are incongruous with the vast landscape surrounding it. So says the government's design watchdog over plans for a controversial £20m visitor centre at Stonehenge, the megalithic jewel in England's cultural crown. CABE, the Commission for Architecture and the Built Environment, has criticised the design of the proposed centre, claiming the futuristic building by Denton Corker Marshall does little to enhance the 5,000-year-old standing stones which attract more than 800,000 visitors each year.
Its concerns are the latest chapter in the long saga surrounding the English Heritage-backed project, and follow a government decision two years ago to scrap on cost grounds a highly ambitious £65m scheme to build a tunnel to reroute traffic to protect the World Heritage site. The centre, which has been approved by Wiltshire county council planners, has divided opinion. "We question whether, in this landscape of scale and huge horizons and with a very robust end point that has stood for centuries and centuries, this is the right design approach?" said Diane Haigh, CABE's director of design review. "You need to feel you are approaching Stonehenge. You want the sense you are walking over Salisbury Plain towards the stones." But the 'twee little winding paths' were 'more appropriate for an urban garden' than the 'big scale open air setting the stones have', she added. The many columns were meant to be "lots of trunks" holding up a "very delicate roof", she said. "Is this the best approach on what is actually a very exposed site. In particular, if it's a windy, rainy day, as it is quite often out there, it's not going to give you shelter. We are concerned it's very stylish nature will make it feel a bit dated in time, unlike the stones which have stood the test of time".
CABE believed the location of the centre, at Airman's Corner, is good, and were pleased "something was happening at last", but questioned the "architectural approach". The centre has the full support of local architects on the Wiltshire Design Forum, and has been passed by the local planning committee. Nevertheless English Heritage recognised it was an emotional and divisive subject. "The Stonehenge project has to overcome a unique set of challenges," it said in a statement. "This has required a pragmatic approach and, following widespread consultation, we maintain the current plans offer the best solution".
Stephen Quinlan, partner at Denton Corker Marshall, defended the design. "It's not an iconic masterpiece. It's a facility to help you appreciate the Stonehenge landscape. It's intellectually deferential in a big, big way to Stonehenge as a monument. I wouldn't even mind if you couldn't remember what the building looked like when you left. The visitor centre is not the destination." However, he added: "We don't take criticism from CABE lightly. And we are crawling through their comments to see if there are any improvements we can make."
Source: Guardian.co.uk (7 February 2010)
Stonehenge may have been surrounded by a 'Stonehedge' that blocked onlookers from seeing secret rituals, according to a new study. Evidence for two encircling hedges - possibly thorn bushes - planted some 3,600 years ago was uncovered during a survey of the site by English Heritage, the government agency responsible for maintaining the monument in southern England.
The idea that Stonehedge was a shield against prying eyes isn't yet firmly rooted, but it's archaeologists' leading theory. For instance the newfound banks are too low and unsubstantial to have had a defensive role. "The best [theory] we can come up with is some sort of hedge bank," said English Heritage archaeologist David Field, whose team discovered the two landscape features in April 2009. "We think they served as some sort of screen to filter access to the center [of Stonehenge]." The shallow earthworks - each runs inside a ring of known Bronze Age pits - are just visible to an expert eye, "but you need to get down on your hands and knees" to see them, Field added. The archaeologists didn't find any physical evidence of vegetation, but the shallow features resemble former hedge banks that are seen around formerly hedged fields.
While there's no firm evidence for a British prehistoric landscape-gardening tradition, there's evidence for tree cultivation at the time Stonehenge was in use. "It seems standard-size trees were being cultivated and looked after in order to provide straight, telegraph-pole-like features for the construction of palisades and so on," Field said. With that in mind, Stonehedge's "vegetation screens are quite feasible," Field said. "Something like thorn bushes, or small trees." Past archaeological investigations at Stonehenge have tended to focus chiefly on the stones themselves, he noted. "To date nobody has really considered the vegetation around the stones."
The April 2009 landscape survey employed advanced equipment, such as high-resolution surface lasers, to discern shapes invisible to the human eye. "Believe it or not, it's the first earthworks survey of the monument since 1919," Mike Pitts, an archaeologist and Stonehenge expert, added. "Unsurprisingly, all sorts of things were found."
Those include a flattened mound near the center of Stonehenge, which may be a burial. The Stonehenge area is littered with prehistoric burial mounds, and the monument itself likely served first and foremost as a cemetery, experts say. Partially concealed by fallen stones, the forgotten mound had been previously recorded in 18th- and 19th-century watercolor paintings. "There's a good chance it's prehistoric," said English Heritage's Field. The suspected burial mound possibly dates to the earliest phases of the monument, as early as 5,000 years ago, Field said. If the mound was built first, "it may be that this was the focus around which Stonehenge developed."
Sources: Guardian.co.uk (4 february 2010), National Geographic News (11 February 2010)