Tom Higham's audio: Neanderthals and modern humans

A public day of lectures and discussion on the Palaeolithic of Europe, the arrival of the first modern humans and the extinction of Neanderthals. 16 April 2011, Martin Wood Lecture Theatre, Oxford.

Prof Martin Richards from University of Leeds talks about Archaeogenetics and the Palaeolithic.

Dr William Davies delivers the fourth talk of this public day entitled "Living on a climatic rollercoaster: Climate, environment and humans in the last Ice Age".

 

In this audio file I conclude the public day with a talk on the end of the Neanderthals and the transition to the Upper Palaeolithic in terms of radiocarbon dating.

Listen to the audio...

The Rose rises again

L-R: actors Michael Pennington and Dame Janet Suzman, architect Nick Helm, Harvey Sheldon, chair of the Rose Trustees, Simon Hughes MP for Southwark, and actor Timothy West. Image: Jack Lawson

Almost a quarter of a century after the 16th-century Rose Theatre was rediscovered during archaeological work ahead of the construction of a new office block (see CA 115), its trustees today (13 July) launched a Heritage Lottery Fund bid to secure its future.

After a long fight to save the playhouse from advancing bulldozers, the remains were designated a Scheduled Ancient Monument and preserved in situ in the basement of the modern structure built on the site.

The proposed project, ‘The Rose Revealed’, would see the final third of the site excavated, the remains conserved and a new public exhibition space built on the site.

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New 'Iron Age' discoveries made in Inverness

New discoveries made in Inverness have fuelled speculation among experts that it was an important area of prehistoric iron production.

Rare finds of well-preserved metalworking hearths, or furnaces, have been uncovered at Beechwood during work by Edinburgh-based AOC Archaeology.

Archaeologists believe the discoveries date to the Iron Age.

Highlands and Islands Enterprise (HIE) is spending £25m on preparing the land for the new Inverness Campus.

The University of the Highlands and Islands and businesses will eventually occupy buildings constructed on the former farmland.

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'Deep Fen' archaeologists awarded for Cambridgeshire finds

Bronze Age boats, spears and clothing dating back 3,000 years have helped secure two prestigious awards for Cambridgeshire archaeologists.

Excavation at a brick pit near Whittlesey earned the Cambridge Archaeological Unit (CAU) team the titles of best project and best find.

The British Archaeology Awards said the Must Farm dig "stimulated imagination".

CAU's Mark Knight said the site was the "first exploration into deep Fenland, submerged for 10,000 years".

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Rowing like Vikings in the name of science

A Viking museum in the German town of Busdorf has welcomed the largest reconstruction of a medieval long-ship, the Havhingsten, or Sea Stallion.

30 metres long and using only the technology available a thousand years ago, it sailed from Denmark to participate in a festival of square rigged ships.

The gruelling experience of its crew of 60 allowed experts to gain insights into the life of Viking seamen.

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Scientists uncover 'pre-human' skeleton in South Africa

Archaeologists have identified the most complete skeleton related to an ancient relative of human in a rock in South Africa, which dates back to two million years ago.

Scientists uncovered that the findings were the remains of a juvenile hominid skeleton, of the Australopithecus (southern ape) sediba species.

The remains are the "most complete early human ancestor skeleton ever discovered," according to University of Witwatersrand paleontologist and a lead professor in the finding Lee Berger.

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More Viking-Era Artifacts Surface in Salme Dig

An archaeological excavation that resumed last week in Salme on the island of Saaremaa, a site where ancient ships were previously found has turned up more Viking-era ship rivets and sword fragments. 

"We don't have any major discoveries and finds to report yet, but we have received confirmation in the course of the work that they may come," archaeologist Jüri Peets told the island daily Meie Maa.

"We have reached the sixth soil layer and right on the first day we found two rivets that are from the same era as the Viking ships. They are exactly the same kind and size that we have found in the past."

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Museum Confirms Salme Find as Oldest Known Viking Sailing Ship

The Estonian Maritime Museum's research says one of the ancient ships found in archeological excavations in Salme in 2008 was was so seaworthy that it could have been used as a sailed warship on the open sea.

"The Maritime Museum believes that the Salme ship number two was an advanced Viking type of ship whose very good seaworthiness allowed it to be used as a sailed warship," said marine archaeologist Vello Mäss.

That means that open-sea sailing started in the Baltic Sea region earlier than thought, Saarte Hääl reported, quoting the popular science magazine Imeline Teadus.

Mäss added that the smaller Salme ship that was discovered first was not meant to bear a sail.

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Double-Edged Sword Found in Salme Ship Burial Site

Among the latest finds at the ancient ship burial site in Salme, Saaremaa, archaeologists have discovered a well-preserved double-edged sword.

“We have discovered typical Salme materials from here, such as swords, rivets, arrowheads, a sheath for a whetstone, and a bunch of modern trash that has been mixed in with the ship's materials,” Ragnar Saag, a master's student of the University of Tartu who led Tuesday's excavation, told ERR radio.

"I think the most double-edged sword is probably the most remarkable artifact that we have found. It is in one piece with a hilt intact, and it provides for good research,” Saag said.

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2,000 year old coins found in Leicestershire

A man from Leicestershire has stumbled across a set of 2,000 year old coins, which will be unveiled at the start of the county's two week archaeology festival. 

The coins date back to the Iron Age [Credit: Leicestershire County Council]

The ten gold coins were discovered in Peatling Magna by Steve Bestwick. 

It is thought that they were made in Northern France, between 60-50 BC, suggesting that people living in Leicestershire had contact with their French counterparts. 

“These coins bring up so many questions. Why did they come to Leicestershire? What sort of journey they have been on? How did they get here from the continent, so long ago before cross –channel ferries? Who was the last person to hold them and what did they mean to them?” – Steve Bestwick, metal detectorist

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Hidden Doggerland underworld uncovered in North Sea

A map of the UK with Doggerland marked as red

A huge area of land which was swallowed up into the North Sea thousands of years ago has been recreated and put on display by scientists.

Doggerland was an area between Northern Scotland, Denmark and the Channel Islands.

It was believed to have been home to tens of thousands of people before it disappeared underwater.

Now its history has been pieced together by artefacts recovered from the seabed and displayed in London.

The 15-year-project has involved St Andrews, Dundee and Aberdeen universities.

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Scapa Flow's historic wrecks mapped in sub-sea survey

A new sub-sea survey of Scapa Flow at Orkney has mapped 18 important historic wrecks.

Historic Scotland commissioned sonar surveys of the sea bed, which revealed new details on scuttled merchant ships from WWI and WWII.

It also showed a German submarine, and a trawler used to operate boom defences at the entrance to Scapa Flow.

The survey findings will help Historic Scotland to consider the case for a Historic Marine Protected Area.

This would improve protection for Scapa Flow's most important marine heritage sites under the Scottish Parliament's new marine legislation.

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Celtic cross fundraising appeal launched

A FUND raising campaign is under way in Innerleithen to ensure that part of an ancient Celtic cross can be preserved for public viewing. 

The Runic Cross, which has been based at several locations in recent years was originally found by master builder Robert Mathison when he was commissioned to demolish the old church at Kirklands in 1871. 

Now the plan is to site the Runic Cross within the Parish Church on Leithen Road, the exciting new plans will see information boards and lighting erected within the porch way of the church to ensure the public can properly view the remains of the cross which Historic Scotland suggests once stood 12 feet high.

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Surprise Human-Ancestor Find—Key Fossils Hidden in Lab Rock

Posing with an A. sediba skull, student Justin Mukanku points to the tooth he found in a fossil-filled rock.

Single tooth tipped researchers off to a bonanza right under their noses.

Last month a prehistoric tooth protruding from a boulder tipped off researchers to hidden evolutionary treasure: remarkably complete human-ancestor fossils trapped in a rock that had been sitting in their lab for years.

Scans later showed that the rock contains two-million-year-old fossils that will "almost certainly" make one Australopithecus sediba specimen "the most complete early human ancestor skeleton ever discovered," anthropologist Lee Berger said in a statement Thursday.

(See pictures of Australopithecus sediba fossils.)

The bones are nearly invisible from the outside, and were discovered only after a technician noticed the small tooth in the three-foot-wide (meter-wide) rock, which was retrieved from a South African cave in 2008 and brought to a lab at the University of the Witwatersrand in Johannesburg.

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Archaeology Live

Archaeology Live! 2012 - Site Diary (Weeks 1-6)

We have not moved far from last year, across the road in fact. There are some details about the dig on the web pages - http://www.dighungate.com/content.asp?ID=43

Basically we have been given the opportunity to see if we can follow what we were finding across the road in Block H, and so far it seems that we have amazing preservation of the Victorian layers and earlier.

Go to the website...

Lost Viking Military Town Unearthed in Germany?

Archaeologists excavate an eighth-century town in northern Germany.

Photograph courtesy Andres S. Dobat, Aarhus Universitet

 

A battle-scarred, eighth-century town unearthed in northern Germany may be the earliest Viking settlement in the historical record, archaeologists announced recently.

Ongoing excavations at Füsing (map), near the Danish border, link the site to the "lost" Viking town of Sliasthorp—first recorded in A.D. 804 by royal scribes of the powerful Frankish ruler Charlemagne.

Used as a military base by the earliest Scandinavian kings, Sliasthorp's location was unknown until now, said dig leader Andres Dobat, of Aarhus University in Denmark.

Whether it proves to be the historic town or not, the site offers valuable insights into military organization and town planning in the early Viking era, according to the study team.

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Silver treasure found at Swedish shipwreck

Divers have recovered a number of 16th century silver coins from the wreckage of the legendary Swedish warship Mars, which was discovered last year off the coast of the Baltic sea island of Öland.

"The coins are in excellent condition and of great historic interest, especially considering where they were found," the diving expedition organizers which found the wreck, Ocean Discovery/Deep Sea Productions, said in a statement, according to local news website Barometern.se.

According to the divers, the silver coins date from the time of Sweden's King Erik XIV, who ruled over Sweden between 1560 and 1568.

The mighty Mars was one of the largest ships of its time with 107 guns and a crew of 800 men, both out-sizing and outgunning the famous warship Vasa, which has been on show in Stockholm since it was lifted from city's harbour in the 1960s. 

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Historian Gives Readers Glimpse of Medieval Life

In a SPIEGEL interview, British historian Ian Mortimer discusses the often brutal reality of everyday life during the Middle Ages, the violent excesses of the time, his lively approach to writing historical tomes and his need to empathize with the subjects he is covering. 

At one time, historian Ian Mortimer, 44, was an ambitious student at the University of Exeter. But, frustrated after his exams, he moved back to the remote village of Moretonhampstead in Devon, in southwestern England. He started a family, bought a house and built a bell tower.

For years, he raged against all the academics who torment their audiences with "boring and tedious" treatises. But then he started writing his own books.

Since Mortimer doesn't like to travel and hasn't boarded an airplane in years, it might seem odd that his best-known work is essentially a travel guide. In the book "The Time Traveler's Guide to Medieval England," Mortimer explains what travelers would expect if they were catapulted back to the Middle Ages in a time machine. Instead of writing about famous battles, kings and wars, he describes how it smelled in the narrow alleyways, what kinds of meals the people cooked in their crooked houses, and how they washed their backsides.

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Roots of medieval rights of common stretch back thousands of years

The Uffington white horse marks an area of open grassland that has been subject to common rights of pasture for over 3,000 years. Image: Dave Price (Flickr, used under a CC )

In the 1920s archaeologists discovered more than 1,000 cattle skulls buried at an early Iron Age stock enclosure at Harrow Hill in Sussex, while a huge Iron Age midden (rubbish heap) covering at least 2.5 hectares has been found at East Chisenbury in Wiltshire. Each is thought to represent the remains of vast annual feasts on grasslands shared between local communities, perhaps during the annual round-ups of their collective herds.

A chance for a good meal

These meetings were much more than the chance for a good meal. Feasts reinforced links and relationships within and between communities: such occasions provided at very least a context for resolving disputes about livestock and grazing, at times when animals were taken to the pastures in the spring or rounded up in the autumn and disagreements were most likely to occur. Post-medieval folklore suggests that these meetings may have been accompanied by games and competitions, the making of marriages and other formal agreements between groups, and opportunities to catch up between members of extended families.

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Archaeology team search for Roman cemetery in Middlewich

AN archaeological dig is currently taking place in Middlewich in a bid to find a Roman cemetery.

Experts from Oxford Archaeology North are excavating land in King Street industrial estate and are expected to stay on site until late August.

They are also hoping to make discoveries relating to Roman industry.

It follows tests on the site in 2008 which revealed evidence of cremation urns.

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