Bronze Age burials unearthed near Stonehenge
The remains of four adults and two children were found by Archaeologists at a site in Amesbury, Wiltshire (England). It is about half-a-mile from that of the Amesbury Archer, the Bronze Age man who was buried with the earliest gold found in Britain. He was dubbed by the media as "King of Stonehenge" because archaeologists said he might have been involved in building the monument; tests showed he was born in the Alps region in central Europe.
Dr Andrew Fitzpatrick, of Wessex Archaeology, said: "This new find is really unusual. It is exceptionally rare to find the remains of so many people in one grave like this in southern England. The grave is fascinating because we are seeing the moment when Britain was moving from the Stone Age into the Bronze Age."
Radiocarbon tests will be done to determine more precise dates for the burials, but the group is believed to have lived around 2,300 BCe, during the building of Stonehenge at Amesbury, 75 miles southwest of London. Wessex Archaeology said it is possible the bones are those of people from different generations, as the grave seems to have been reopened to allow further burials to be made. The bones of the earlier burials were mixed up but those of the later burials, a man and a child, were undisturbed.
The grave, which is about three miles from Stonehenge, contained four pots in the Beaker style that is typical of the period, some flint tools, one flint arrowhead and a bone toggle for fastening clothing. It had narrowly missed being damaged by trench digging for electric cables and a water pipe.
The new discovery was found almost exactly a year after the Amesbury Archer was found during excavation for a housing scheme at Boscombe Down, Amesbury, three miles from Stonehenge. His grave was the richest found in Britain from its time, containing about 100 items, more than ten times as many objects as any other burial site from this time, and included hair tresses that are the earliest gold in the country.
Sources: Ananova, BBC News, The Scotsman (21 May 2003), The Olympian, Western Daily Press (22 May 2003)
Scottish hillfort under threat
Kaimes hillfort, an important defensive site in West Lothian (Scotland), prominent in the local landscape, has already been substantially damaged by quarrying and landfill. Ramparts and house platforms are still visible, though the rock art was taken away to be preserved offsite.
The Bronze Age hillfort, hut circles and chevaux de fries, which has been ravaged last century (mostly by quarrying between 1960-70) is now to be faced with further indignity. Having suffered 20 years of Edinburgh's festering bin-bags and rubbish, dumped there by the Capital City Council, Kaimes is now to endure 20 more years of sorrows. That is if developers get permission to build an artificial hill immediately alongside this unusual volcanic intrusion and ancient site that lies in pleasant scrub and surrounding hill farms only 11 miles from the next volcanic whinstone intrusion, Edinburgh castle rock.
WRG, an ex-Hanson company, proposes to build a massive waste processing hall, known in the waste trade
as a "Dirty Murf" immediately alongside. The size of four aircraft hangars this giant factory will tease apart Edinburgh's bin bags and then dump the unwanted bits (about 60%) by creating an artificial hill on the next-door 100 acres farmland site.
Objections might be addressed to Edinburgh council and the Scottish Parliament in the first instance.
Source: BritArch Malling List (7 May 2003)
