Sunday, April 21, 2013

UK dig reveals 'sizeable' amount of Iron Age artefacts


Ancient metal artefacts found at a Leicestershire site could go on permanent display, archaeologists say.
UK dig reveals 'sizeable' amount of Iron Age artefacts
Ancient human remains have also been found at the site, a former Iron Age fort [Credit: BBC]
The dig at Burrough Hill, near Melton Mowbray, has uncovered one of the biggest collections of Iron Age metalwork found in the East Midlands.

The finds include spears, knives, iron brooches, reaping hooks and the decorative bronze trim from a shield. Burrough Hill is the site of an Iron Age fort but no major excavation had taken place there since the 1970s.


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Mesolithic artefacts found at Stonehenge


An excavation funded with redundancy money shows Stonehenge was a settlement 3,000 years before it was built.
Mesolithic artefacts found at Stonehenge
New archaeological evidence from Amesbury in Wiltshire reveals traces of human settlement 3,000 years before Stonehenge was even built [Credit: Christopher Jones/Telegraph]
The archaeological dig, a mile from the stones, has revealed that people have occupied the area since 7,500BC.

The findings, uncovered by volunteers on a shoestring budget, are 5,000 years earlier than previously thought.

Dr Josh Pollard, from Southampton University, said the team had "found the community who put the first monument up at Stonehenge".


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Saturday, April 20, 2013



Aerial archaeology has revealed a network of World War I trenches on the Hoo Peninsula which could rewrite military history.



English Heritage's new aerial surveys have revealed that the Peninsula was once at the centre of military technology experiments in trench design and warfare.

A network of trenches has been discovered in the area next to the former Chattenden Barracks which were used to practise trench digging and design.

It was previously thought troops were largely thrown into battle in World War I with little preparation and training, but the discovery may require historians to rethink that view.


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Friday, April 19, 2013

Norfolk Broads: Bronze Age evidence 'everywhere'

Ben Robinson with plane 
  Ben Robinson said hundreds of archaeological sites on the Norfolk Broads could be revaluated


Proof of Bronze Age activity can be found throughout the whole of the Norfolk Broads, archaeologists claim.

The Middle Bronze Age field system at Ormesby St Michael in 2010 is not unique to the area, Nick Gilmour said.

Mr Gilmour, who will feature in The Flying Archaeologist on BBC One, said aerial photos suggest clear signs of life well before the Broads were dug.

"The more you look the more you start seeing Bronze Age everywhere," he will say on the programme, at 19:30 BST.

Mr Gilmour was involved with the discovery of the complex field systems, which date back to about 1,500 BC.

It was previously thought the systems had not existed further east than the Cambridgeshire Fens.


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Vespasian’s Camp: Cradle of Stonehenge

The ancient spring at Blick Mead, where recent investigations have found objects deposited over thousands of years.


Salisbury Plain is renowned for its spectacular Neolithic monuments, but decades of research have found few traces of earlier activity in the Stonehenge landscape. Now the discovery of the plain’s oldest residential site has uncovered evidence of 9,000 years of ritual and domestic activity, beginning three millennia before Stonehenge was built, as David Jacques, Tom Phillips, and Tom Lyons explained.

About a mile east of Stonehenge, an impressive promontory rises out of Salisbury Plain to around 95m above sea level. Situated close to the Avenue and Bluestonehenge (CA 237), commanding extensive views over the river Avon, and surrounded at all points of the compass by important prehistoric and historic sites and monuments, this spot might be expected to have held pivotal cultural significance for the plain’s early inhabitants for its location alone. But until our small-scale Open University excavations began in 2005, the Iron Age fortifications cresting the hill had received little archaeological attention.


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Stonehenge occupied 5,000 years earlier than thought




New archaeological evidence from Amesbury in Wiltshire reveals traces of human settlement 3,000 years before Stonehenge was even built

An excavation funded with redundancy money shows Stonehenge was a settlement 3,000 years before it was built.

The archaeological dig, a mile from the stones, has revealed that people have occupied the area since 7,500BC.

The findings, uncovered by volunteers on a shoestring budget, are 5,000 years earlier than previously thought.


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Oldest European Medieval Cookbook Found



A 12th-century manuscript contains the oldest known European Medieval food recipes, according to new research.

The recipes, which include both food and medical ointment concoctions, were compiled and written in Latin. Someone jotted them down at Durham Cathedral’s monastery in the year 1140.

It was essentially a health book, so the meals were meant to improve a person’s health or to cure certain afflictions. The other earliest known such recipes dated to 1290.

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Funding cuts threaten North-Rhine Westphalia's cultural heritage


North-Rhine Westphalia's unique cultural heritage is under threat. Massive cutbacks in public funding of cultural heritage have been announced. 
Funding cuts threaten North-Rhine Westphalia's cultural heritage
Reconstruction of a Neanderthal man and woman from
the Neanderthal Museum [Credit: Wiki Commons]
The German Society for Pre- and Protohistory has started an online-petition to urge the government to rethink their plans. 

In Germany the petition has already become an overwhelming success with 16.000 signees and surprisingly wide resonance in the press within three weeks.

For more information and to sign the petition click here

Stonehenge project compares Neolithic building methods


An experiment is under way in Wiltshire to find out more about Neolithic building methods. Using archaeological evidence unearthed from nearby Durrington Walls, three structures are being built at Old Sarum Castle, near Salisbury.
Stonehenge project compares Neolithic building methods
The project aims to recreate the buildings which may have existed
in Neolithic times [Credit: Ancient Technology Centre]
The English Heritage project aims to discover what was the most efficient way of building with locally-sourced materials.

The final reconstructions will be built at Stonehenge later this year. They will be put up outside the new visitor centre.

The experiment is part of a £27m English Heritage scheme looking at how the setting of the ancient monument can be improved.

The recreated Neolithic buildings will form part of an "interactive and experiential" external exhibition at the 3,500-year-old World Heritage site.


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Reconstructing how the Romans made glass


Man has been making glass since the third millennium BC and during the manufacture of ancient glass, antimony, in a metal or mineral form, was added to make it colourless or opaque.


Different antimony ores have slightly different antimony isotope ratios and researchers in Belgium and the UK have developed an inductively-coupled plasma mass spectrometry (ICP-MS) method to detect and quantify these tiny differences. 

By analysing samples of Roman glass, the team hope to uncover clues about how the glass was made and the geographical provenance of the raw materials.

Initial results suggest antimony ores from at least two locations were used to make the Roman glass being analysed. 


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Thursday, April 18, 2013

Mary Rose reveals armour piercing cannonball secret



She was first raised from her underwater resting place more than 30 years ago and has been prized as an archaeological gem, but it appears the she still has some secrets to surrender.
A Mary Rose cannon ball showing a hole in the lead coating where the iron inclusion has oxidised and left a hollow in the centre of the cannon ball
Scientists studying Henry VIII’s naval flagship, which sank 468 years ago off the south coast of England in a battle with the French, are making new discoveries about the vessel that will change our understanding of history.
New finds will be among 19,000 artefacts going on show in a new £23 million museum, built around the skeleton of the vessel, due to open later this year.

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Iron Age warriors point to glories of Gaul

Cecile Paresys stands next to the bones of two Gauls, on a site in Bucheres, near Troyes, on April 11, 2013 (AFP, Francois Nascimbeni)


BUCHERES, France — In a muddy field located between a motorway and a meander of the Seine southeast of Paris, French archaeologists have uncovered an Iron Age graveyard that they believe will shed light on the great yet enigmatic civilisation of Gaul.
The site, earmarked for a warehouse project on the outskirts of Troyes, is yielding a stunning array of finds, including five Celtic warriors, whose weapons and adornments attest to membership of a powerful but long-lost elite.
Archaeologist Emilie Millet is crouched at one of 14 burial sites that have been uncovered in recent weeks.
At her feet are the remains of a tall warrior, complete with a 70-centimetre (28-inch) iron sword still in its scabbard.

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A flair for imperfections

A flair for imperfections


The axe from HundvÃ¥g is damaged by a succession of failed strokes in both edge and body, suggesting that it was sculpted by an unskilled knapper, probably a child. Credit: Terje Tveit, Archeological Museum, UiS 

To most people, a useless flint axe is just that. To archaeologist Sigrid Alræk Dugstad, it is a source of information about Stone Age children.


Whereas arrowheads, axes and other formal tools have traditionally received a lot of attention in research, the archaeologist Sigrid Alræk Dugstad now concentrates on what is at the bottom of the hierarchy, namely the production debris and the unfinished and discarded products. 

In the article "Early child caught knapping: A novice early Mesolithic flintknapper in southwestern Norway," she has turned upside down the hierarchy of objects from the Early Stone Age. 

"A succession of failed strokes, terminating in many hinge and step fractures, indicates that axe was made by a novice flintknapper, probably a child," Dugstad says.

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Archaeologists uncover medieval murder mystery


A 600-year-old body found by archaeologists excavating the crannog site in Co Fermanagh may have been the victim of an ancient murder mystery, it has emerged.
Archaeologists uncover medieval murder mystery
A handout photo of the 600-year-old body found by archaeologists excavating
the crannog site in Co Fermanagh [Credit: PA]
The fact the woman, who was in her late teens when she died, was not buried in either a recognised graveyard or in traditional manner has led archaeologists to consider foul play.

Excavation director Dr Nora Bermingham dated the teenager’s death to around the 15th or 16th centuries.

“The skeleton of a young woman, probably around 18 or 19 with very bad teeth, was found in the upper layers of the crannog,” she said.


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Officials, police inspect Pompeii excavations


The Italian government's anti-mafia directorate and police on Tuesday carried out raids at the world-famous archaeological site of Pompeii, which Rome and the European Union has granted 105 million euros to restore.

Officials, police inspect Pompeii excavations

The checks were ordered by the government's top representative in nearby Naples, Francesco Musolino, to inspect progress on restoration of the House of the Guilt Cupids, the House of the Great Fountain and the Fullonica of Stephanus laundry.

Italian authorities fear that the EU's pricey 'Grand Plan for Pompeii' initiative to prevent the Unesco World Heritage site from crumbling could be infilitrated by organised crime groups and subject to fraud.


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Wednesday, April 17, 2013

Photos from the EMAS Archaeological Study Tour



Photos from the EMAS 2013 Archaeological Study Tour are now online at:

http://archeurope.smugmug.com/Category/Study-Tour-to-Yorkshire-2013/28811407_HfHdDk#!i=2446486475&k=4L4SQbw

You can find out more about EMAS here...

Study backs 'hobbit' island dwarfism theory



How an ancient human species may have shrunk as a result of island dwarfism
A diminutive species of human whose remains were found on the Indonesian island of Flores could have shrunk as a result of island dwarfism as it adapted to its environment.
A study of the remains of the creature, nicknamed the "hobbit", shows that it is possible for it to have been a dwarf version of an early human species.
The hobbit co-existed with our species until 12,000 years ago.
The research has been published in the Royal Society's Proceedings B Journal.
Since its discovery in 2003, researchers have struggled to explain the origins of these metre high, tiny-brained people, known scientifically asHomo floresiensis.

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Monday, April 15, 2013

Gaul warriors unearthed at 2,300-year-old site




French archaeologists have unearthed the graves of several Gaul warriors dating back around 2300 years, at the site of a huge business park development near the city of Troyes in central France.
Gaul warriors unearthed at 2,300-year-old site
One of the 2300 year old graves unearthed near the city of Troyes [Credit: The Local]
Archaeologists from the National Institute for Preventive Archaeological Research (Inrap) have been carrying out excavations at the site near Buchères over the course of recent years.

But even they were surprised by their latest discovery at the 260-hectare site, which is set to become the Aube Logistical Park.

Around 30 graves dating back to between 260 and 325 BC were identified at the site, with around half being excavated, revealing the remains of Gaul warriors, with weapons and shields in hand. Women are buried alongside them.


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Northampton Castle dig reveals Saxon past


A "rare" Saxon brooch, a medieval harness, pottery and animal bones are among items found by archaeologists at Northampton's medieval castle site.A survey of the land is taking place ahead of work to build a new £20m railway station in the town.
Northampton Castle dig reveals Saxon past
Excavation work in Northampton [Credit: ITV News Anglia]
Tim Upson-Smith, from Northamptonshire Archaeology, said the team had discovered elements of the site's Victorian, medieval and Saxon past. He said he hoped the finds could be displayed in the new station.

Archaeologists are expected to remain at the site on Black Lion Hill for eight weeks before West Northamptonshire Development Corporation (WNDC) can begin work on the first phase of the new station.


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Friday, April 12, 2013

'Pompeii of north' being unearthed in London



Archaeologists working on a site in London are calling it "the Pompeii of the north" after they have managed to find Roman artefacts dating back nearly 2,000 years.
Just yards from the River Thames, in what is now the capital's financial district, archaeologists have found coins, pottery, shoes, lucky charms and an amber gladiator amulet.
Sonja Jessup has been finding out the secret to their remarkable survival.

Watch the video...