Posts tagged Neolithic
What does the new henge mean for Stonehenge?
Jul 22nd
Confusion at Stonehenge
I don’t know.
I think the coverage at places like the BBC are good, David Gregory found it exciting and I thought his story was a good read. However there are too many details missing from the reports to come to any conclusions. That’s not a complaint about the coverage, the mass-media isn’t an archaeological journal. It’s not even a gripe about publication by press-release because Mike Parker Pearson showed last year that news leaks out, so why not give the brief details out properly?
On the other hand the Birmingham team are looking at the landscape and, from reading the reports, I’ve no idea where this new site is in relation to Stonehenge. It’s almost certainly in sight of Stonehenge, but then the landscape round there is littered with barrows, Bronze Age burial mounds. The location will affect how we see the landscape. This henge isn’t to be confused with Bluestonehenge, the site found by the river Avon near Stonehenge last year. It’s also not Woodhenge, despite being made of wood, because that’s a different site near Durrington Walls, which is another site that has been in the news in recent years.
There’s not a lot I can say about the More >
Bookmarks for 16th of November through to 18th of November
Nov 18th
These are my links for 16th of November through 18th of November:
- The Academic Journal Racket « In the DarkTelescoper explains how academic publishing works. The only thing that would improbe the post would be the theme from 'The Naked Gun' in the background.
- A Case in Antiquities for ‘Finders Keepers’ – NYTimes.comYou can make arguments in favour of repatriation of antiquities. You can make arguements against. Being on either side doesn't make you inherently foolish. But when you write that the British Army took the Rosetta Stone from the French and "returned it to the British Museum" then something has gone wrong. It's probably a case of momentary brainfade rather than idiocy, but it matters because the whole question of ownership of the Rosetta Stone is about where it rightfully belongs. Using the word 'returned' builds in the assumption that all antiquities are inherently British.
- Notes & Queries; Sledges – Theoretical Structural ArchaeologyGeoff Carter concluded he didn't have evidence for a staggeringly early cart shed in Poland. Could it have been a used to house a sledge? I've just realised I know absolutely nothing at all about the history of sleds and sledges. Not only that, but I can't recall much attention More >
Bateman’s Scars
Sep 14th
Arbor Low on Google Earth
Arbor Low is a Neolithic stone circle and henge in the Peak District. The henge is the bank and ditch arrangement with the bank on the outside and is probably the oldest part of the monument. The current estimate is that it was built around 2500 BC. That’s a date that’s open to a lot of revision as the last published excavation was 1901-2 I think. The stone circle could be as late as 2000 BC.
There’s some odd things at Arbor Low. For example the two entrances mean that the path through the henge runs in the same direction as the Roman Road built over two millennia later. That suggests there’s some pretty deep ideas about movement embedded with the landscape. Excavations at Stonehenge and Durrington Walls have revealed possible timber posts and multiple phases for building, often much earlier and much more complex than previously thought. So why hasn’t anyone taken a mattock to the site for a century? One reason is money, but another can be seen on the east side of the monument.
Some time in the Bronze Age, a chieftain looked at the henge and decided: ‘I’m having that.’ He gathered a lot of earth, quite a bit from More >
Stonehenge Decoded?
Jun 6th
I saw it and it was like the Curate’s Egg, good in parts.
The big idea is something Mike Parker Pearson has been pushing for a long while. Stonehenge is a place for the dead, and important in funerary rites. I’ve been wary of this. An astronomer thought it was a giant observatory. A Gynaecologist recently published it was a birth canal. It’s no great shock to discover that a specialist in burials thinks it was associated with burials. What marks out Mike Parker Pearson’s work are two key differences.
One is that he’s been patiently gathering data to support his idea. While not always strongly successful, he’s not really had a major problem with the data forcing him into special pleading. The second is that his ideas explain a lot more than Stonehenge and actually say something useful about British society in the 3rd Millennium BC. (more…)
Newgrange and the Astronomy of the Dead
Dec 20th
Entrance to Newgrange passage tomb. Photo (cc) Sophie Robson.
One of the problems with archaeoastronomy is that it’s quite hard to find an archaeological site where you can be certain astronomy was important. Even Stonehenge is problematic. A lot of people think it was related to sunrise or sunset at one of the solstices, but there’s no certainty as which one. Some people argue that it’s the midwinter sunset which is important at Stonehenge and the alignment towards the midsummer sunrise is a happy accident of geometry. As for other megalithic sites it’s often impossible to show that an alignment wasn’t due to chance. Statistical analysis of many alignments certainly show preferences for astronomical targets, but all archaeology is local and who is to say that, at any specific site, the result wasn’t due to chance?
Newgrange, a passage tomb in the Republic of Ireland, is one of the most compelling sites – if you want to demonstrate an interest in astronomy in the prehistoric British Isles. It is the strongest argument for an interest in astronomy, but at the same time one of the strongest arguments against reading ancient astronomy as an ancient scientific research programme. (more…)
More >Prehistoric rice farming and modern consequences
Sep 27th
Rice fields. Photo (cc) mackaysavage.
I’m making a note of this because I missed it when I was on campus today. There’s a report in Nature on the discovery of the earliest damming in prehistoric China. From the Register-Guard:
Stone Age Chinese began cultivating rice more than 7,700 years ago by burning trees in coastal marshes and building dams to hold back seawater, converting the marshes to rice paddies that would support growth of the high-yield cereal grain, researchers reported Thursday.New analysis of sediments from the site of Kuahuqiao at the mouth of the Yangtze River near present-day Hangzhou provides the earliest evidence in China of such large-scale environmental manipulation, experts said.
This is interesting because the transition to farming is an interesting subject, but Neolithic Chinese farming may us something about Global Warming according to palaeoclimatologist Bill Ruddiman. (more…)
Archaeologists peer inside Silbury Hill
May 14th
The shafts in Silbury Hill are to be re-opened and archaeologists are going to enter the engimatic monument for the first time in around forty years. One of the reasons why Silbury Hill is so enigmatic is that it wasn’t built with any shafts – which is the big problem on the site.
In fact there’s precious little known about Silbury Hill. It’s the biggest prehistoric monument in Europe, being about 30 metres high and 160 metres across. It’s more or less conical, so it looks the same shape from any direction and built from earth.
Exciting news from Stonehenge
Jan 30th
View of Stonehenge facing the Midwinter Sunset
Stonehenge has no shortage of mystery. One of the big ones is the lack of people in the landscape. Stonehenge is clearly the product of a large community, but until now there has been no evidence of these people. The Stonehenge Riverside Project has announced that they have now found a large Neolithic settlement which they’ve dated to around 2600-2500 BC. There are a few things which stand out.
One is that this village was home to hundreds of people. This is tiny by modern standards, but in the sparsely populated Neolithic landscape of Britain this is the biggest settlement known. This is interesting because Stonehenge isn’t the biggest circle. Avebury is much bigger. Does this mean that there’s an even bigger village waiting to be found a few miles to the north? What does that say about the population of Wessex in the Neolithic. There is also the matter of the economy needed to support a large population. This is where the speculation gets really interesting. (more…)
The Coligny Calendar
May 23rd
Looking for archaeological evidence of the Celtic Calendar is problematic. With up to eight potential targets for significant alignments it can be a matter of faith whether a monument is aligned accurately to a specific sunrise or just facing a general sunrise direction. It has been argued that the Coligny Calendar is independent correlating evidence, but this too may be ambiguous in tracing ancient timekeeping. (more…)
What is an Equinox?
May 9th
In theory an equinox should be easy to define. It’s the point halfway between the solstices. However, in what way do we mean halfway? Halfway in space or halfway in time? Or something completely different? (more…)
