AlunSalt

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 [...]

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. With the evidence he’s gathered it looks plausible.

The image is an example of the sort of shape they’re talking about. You can see it bigger at Flickr. Well yes that may be true, but it’s not just Palaeolithic men who’d want to venerate them. Slightly more seriously art is ambiguous. The Minoans are known for their bull symbolism, but it’s unlikely any [...]

I visited Nine Stones Close on Harthill Moor this past weekend to experiment with my camera. I was surprised how successful some of the photos were. Initially I used the Aperture Priority setting on the camera, because I wanted plenty of depth of field. The camera was designed by many clever boffins, so I assumed [...]

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 an article on history in the week’s Times Higher Education Supplement which has baffled me. It’s by Daniel Lord Smail of Harvard and its part of the promotion of his new book On Deep History and the Brain. It’s stuck in my mind because it also appeared in New Scientist (sub) and baffled me [...]

This shows how little I understand the original news story. There’s surprising news today. Burials of around thirty Romans have been discovered. This would please an archaeologist anywhere, but the oddity is that they’ve been found in a suburb of Copenhagen, Denmark. My first reaction is that the translation is wrong, but the original text [...]

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 [...]

It’s a deer. This is the most easily seen of the carvings. I went up to Creswell Crags on the bank holiday weekend to see the Ice Age art which had recently been discovered. As a trip I can highly recommend it. Even though it was a Bank Holiday weekend, there weren’t that many people [...]

Out of Ergyng has more commentary on the Rotherwas Ribbon including the local politics. One post, Letting Nature Do the Council’s Dirty Work, lead onto the recent photos post-downpour of the Ribbon. Personally given the choice between malice and incompetence I usually choose the latter as an explanation. Hopefully the recent announcements that the council [...]