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January 2003 | |
 Stonehenge tunnel approved
Plans for a tunnel through hills near Stonehenge in Wiltshire have been approved. The 1.3-mile tunnel to upgrade the A303 past the famous ring of stones will cost £183m and protect it from heavy traffic, says the government. It is part of the £5.5bn package of transport improvements announced by Transport Secretary Alistair Darling, which also includes widening the A303 to the west of Stonehenge to Ilminster. Mr Darling said: "The World Heritage site at Stonehenge will be enhanced and protected by putting the existing road in a bored tunnel, which will improve safety and congestion."
A spokesperson for Friends of the Earth said: "The tunnel is better than ploughing through a road on a bulldozer." The £183m will be jointly financed by the Highways Agency and heritage sources. The tunnel is expected to be finished in three years, with work starting by 2005.
Sir Neil Cossons, chairman of English Heritage, the body that looks after Stonehenge, said the site would now get the dignified setting it deserved. He said: "The roads are made safer and the core area of the heritage site landscape is reunited." Arts Minister Tessa Blackstone also welcomed the announcement: "It will make possible the construction of a world class visitor centre." But the National Trust was more cautious in its response to the minister's announcement. A statement said: "The Council of the National Trust has previously agreed that it will press for the longest achievable tunnel past Stonehenge. It will be considering all the evidence to assess why the government believes the 1.3-mile tunnel meets that description."
Sources: BBC News (10 December 2002, http://news.bbc.co.uk)
The oldest burial object?
They have called it Excalibur, though it was plucked from a pit of bones rather than the stone of Arthurian legend. To the ordinary eye it is a hand-sized, triangular chunk of ochre and purple rock, its surface slightly scratched. But the palaeontologists who found this axe-head buried in a deep cavern on a Spanish hilltop, it is the world's oldest burial artefact. The discovery of the axe-head placed among ancient bones in a cave at Atapuerca, near the city of Burgos in central Spain, started a fierce scientific debate about the exact moment when man's mind was lit by the spark of imagination and creativity.
Deliberately tossed into a primitive burial chamber, the placing of the axe was a ritual act and evidence that, in the minds of some very ancient Europeans, death had become something more than a mere, brutish fact of nature. This idea first dawned more than 350,000 years ago on the squat, powerful examples of Homo heidelbergensis whose remains are being slowly excavated from the so-called Pit of Bones at Atapuerca. The find means that man's development of a mind capable of thinking beyond reality and needs into a world of shared ideas, symbols, fantasy and imagination, may have developed 310,000 years earlier than was thought.
"The biggest debate in human evolution is when men's minds appeared, when the spark was lit," Ignacio Martinez, one of the Atapuerca team, told El Pais news paper. The only proof of that spark, he said, would come from rock art, the earliest examples of which are only 40,000 years old, from proof of language use or from burial ceremonies. The discovery at Atapuerca, if it turned out to be a true example of a ceremonial burial, would be remarkable. As such, it can expect to raise bitter controversy.
Experts said they were surprised and generally rather sceptical about Excalibur. "If they could prove it, it would be staggering," said Dr Michael Petraglia, lecturer at Cambridge University's Leverhulme centre for human evolutionary studies. "It would push intentional or symbolic thought back much further than is currently accepted."
The Atapuerca team have produced some of the most remarkable palaeontological finds of the past decade, producing 350,000-year-old crania and proof that Homo heidelbergensis was a cannibal. They seemed yesterday to have the backing of at least one scientific heavyweight for their claims that these were also thinking, imaginative, potentially artistic cannibals. Even if Homo heidelbergensis was an intelligent, creative, artistic type, it did him no good. He eventually evolved into a neanderthal and then became extinct. Homo sapiens came out of Africa to replace him.
Source: The Guardian (9 January 2003 http://www.guardian.co.uk/)
Bronze Age ring cairn found in Yorkshire
The discovery of a Bronze Age ring cairn and other items of historical importance at a site near Kettlewell, follows two years' work by Dr Roger Martlew and a group of his students from Leeds University's school of continuing education.
"This site has been unusual right from the start," he said." After a detailed field survey we thought we'd found a prehistoric round-house, but once the excavation started we realised we were on to something very different." In fact, excavations have unearthed a number of surprises: hollows that were expected to contain cremation burials in pottery urns proved to be empty, while the latest find was the final resting place of an infant, carefully laid in a stone-lined hollow, with more stones placed on top of the body. This find has been particularly exciting as it is thought this burial may well belong to a phase of activity even older than the ring-cairn. Dr Martlew said he had not expected to find the remains of the child because it was usual for Bronze Age ring cairns to be ceremonial and not actual burial sites.
Unearthed nearby were the remains of a cow, as well as several pieces of pottery. Much of the latter is being kept at the Craven Museum, in Skipton Town Hall. Dr Martlew added: "The site is full of features which, although found individually at different ring cairns around the UK, have not been found together in one place before."
After an enforced break during the foot and mouth crisis, work is now continuing to unravel the complexities of this site.
Sources: BBC News (2 January 2003, http://news.bbc.co.uk), Craven Herald (January 2003 http://www.thisisbradford.co.uk), Yorkshire Post (3 January 2003 http://www.yorkshiretoday.co.uk/)
Cattle make way for ancient rock carvings
Cattle have trampled for the last time on one of the finest prehistoric "art galleries" in Britain, thanks to a stewardship deal organised by the local farmer. Duncan Ord, whose dairy herd roams hilly country on the edge of Alnwick in Northumberland (United Kingodm), was astonished when the winter shelter used by his cattle turned out to house an exceptionally rare collection of rock carvings. Nosed out by the animals as a refuge, the gash in Ketley Crag was used for the same reason by unknown Northumbrians 4,000 years ago. The natural half-cave is one of only a handful of prehistoric rock shelters which have escaped destruction by erosion or quarrying.
"These are superb examples of rock art - I would say some of the best in the world," said Stan Beckensall, the leading expert on the mysterious cups, rings and delicate lines traced on Northumberland's crags. "The Ketley Crag rock shelter has an extraordinary decorated floor. Northumberland is the only part of Britain where this occurs, so it is particularly significant."
The extent of the carvings at Ketley, and on a scattering of smaller sites on Mr Ord's Chatton Park farm, has been catalogued for the first time by Mr Beckensall, whose discoveries alerted the farmer. "Chatton Park is a marginal farm and our cows were traditionally wintered on the hill because it offered a sheltered spot," Mr Ord said. "But when Stan told me how important these markings on the rocks were I was happy to change our husbandry practices." Through a stewardship agreement with the Depart ment for the Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, Mr Ord will be compensated for moving the cattle to a different part of the farm and protecting the rock art site from grazing by his flock of sheep. Funds will also help to pay for an access trail for the public.
Source: The Guardian (11 December 2002 http://www.guardian.co.uk/)
9,000-year-old tools uncovered in Northern Ireland
Hunting tools believed to be 9,000 years old have been uncovered during a road development near Toome Bypass (County Antrim, Northern Ireland). The finds are the most significant discovery in the province since a 4,000-year-old grave was discovered during an excavation in the ruins of Newtownstewart Castle in County Tyrone in 1999.
Archaeologist Paul McCooey said: "The finds range from Mesolithic, through Neolithic to Bronze Age right through to a sprinkling of 18th and 19th century finds. These finds have confirmed that this area would have been an ideal home for our early ancestors. These hunter-gatherers concentrated their activities on waterways, foraging on the shores of the seas, lakes and rivers."
Ronnie Faloon, Roads Service, said: "We employed a team of archaeologists to carry out a full examination of the site, and construction work is continuing on schedule. The site has already yielded over 8,000 pieces of flint including small blades called microliths and larger tools used for hunting, and fishing." Other finds made along the Bann at Castleroe, Newferry and now Toome confirm the migration of Mesolithic man up the River Bann to Lough Neagh. A visible shoreline around the west edge of the drumlin confirms that the Mesolithic Lough Neagh was much larger than today's.
"The finds at Toome also include flint tools and shards of decorated pottery from the Neolithic period. Neolithic man built more permanent rectangular dwellings whose foundations show up as linear gullies with stone foundations packed with organic material." said McCooey.
Later activity is evident at the southern end of the drumlin, where several Bronze Age 'fulachta fiadha' have been found. These cooking places were wood-lined troughs dug in the ground and filled with water. Stones, heated in a fire beside the trough, were thrown into the water warming it sufficiently to boil meat.
Sources: 4NI, BBC News (8 January 2003 http://www.4ni.co.uk/, http://news.bbc.co.uk/)
Found traces of an ancient Native American civilization
High above the banks of the Assabet River, in the southernmost tip of Acton (Massachusetts, U.S.A.), archaeologists have found traces of an ancient Native American civilization that dates back as far as 7,000 years, to 5,000 BC.
Duncan Ritchie, the senior archaeologist for the Rhode Island-based Public Archaeology Laboratory, said the discovery of thousands of Native American artifacts excavated from the site, called Pine Hawk, includes fragments and bits from stone tools, arrow heads used for spears, hearths and fire pits, storage and refuse pits, workshops where stone tools were made, and post molds for housing circles.
The site ''is considered one of the most significant discoveries of ancient Native American culture on the Eastern Seaboard,'' said Acton's Bob Ferrera, the founder of the ad hoc committee, Friends of Pine Hawk. Though the dig was conducted three summers ago, details of the Pine Hawk discovery were made available only recently because the site was registered as a historic property by the Massachusetts Register of Historical Places, with an edict that requires that information about such places not be made public until fragments from the site are excavated and studied.
Pine Hawk was discovered quite by accident five years ago when Acton began planning to build a waste-water treatment plant along the Assabet River. During the survey, the Public Archaeology Laboratory, started digging and found thousands of chipping debris pieces and projectile point fragments that were implanted as arrow tips on spears. In addition, several fire pits were uncovered 4 feet deep in the soil. The pits had traces of charcoal indicating that they were used between 3,900 and 4,600 years ago.
Since it was not possible to relocate the proposed treatment plant and preserve the Pine Hawk site in place, the archaeologists mounted a program to retrieve the fragments for analysis. Ritchie said a study of the fragments followed with radio carbon-dating tests at a Florida laboratory indicate that the area was occupied by an ancient Native American culture 7,000 years ago in the post-glacial period.
''The amazing thing about the fragments is that they weren't buried; they were left on the ground, and time has added more and more material over them,'' said Doug Halley, a Friends of Pine Hawk member and Acton's Board of Health director. ''It's hard to believe that over a period of 4,000 years, almost 4 feet of it has fallen on the ground
Source: The Boston Globe (5 January 2003 http://www.boston.com)
First Stone Age flints found in Abu Dhabi
Archaeological excavations near Abu Dhabi International Airport (United Arab Emirates) have yielded new information on human habitation at the site during the Late Stone Age or Neolithic period 8,000 to 5,000 years ago. According to Dr Heiko Kallweit of the University of Freiburg, Germany, and Field Director of Abu Dhabi Islands Archaeological Survey (ADIAS), several hundred archaeological finds, including pieces of flint and fragments of pottery, were collected during the two-week fieldwork on the site. The pottery dates back to the early Bronze Age, while the flint materials belong to the Late Stone Age or Neolithic period.
"Our first season of fieldwork on the site, in the summer of 1996, revealed the significance of the area. We knew it had been inhabited during four periods, the Late Stone Age or Arabian Neolithic, then two periods in the Bronze Age, the Hafit period, around 3000 BC, and the Umm Al Nar period, from around 2500 BC to 2000 BC, and finally around 2,000 years ago," Dr Kallweit said. He added the second major discovery was a number of stone tools known as "micro-liths", probably used to form the blades of sickles used for cutting wild grasses or possibly crops. "Such microliths have never previously been discovered in the emirates, though they were found elsewhere in the peninsula such as western Saudi Arabia near the Red Sea coast."
Source: Gulf News (6 January 2003 http://www.gulf-news.com)
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