Pic: Science News

Bruce Bower of Science News reported this week That people made musical instruments out of bone and ivory soon after reaching Europe. The hills may be alive with the sound of music, but so were vulture bones and mammoth tusks for ancient Europeans.

Researchers working at two Stone Age German sites have unearthed a nearly complete flute made from a vulture’s forearm as well as sections of three mammoth-ivory flutes.

These 35,000- to 40,000-year-old finds are the oldest known musical instruments in the world, says archaeologist and project director Nicholas Conard of the University of Tübingen in Germany. Continue Reading »

Pic: The Belfast Telegraph

The Belfast Telegraph tells us Prehistoric mysteries uncovered in an archaeological dig at a Co Down road scheme have been revealed to the public   The team behind the dig at the A1 Loughbrickland road scheme has uncovered not just a Bronze Age burial ground but also a Neolithic settlement dating back some 6,500 years. The settlements, which contained a number of intriguing artefacts, lay on a finger of land which is believed to have been almost surrounded by water in prehistoric times. Three books on the finds have been published, including ‘Digging Down’, a children’s book, and a number of information boards at Loughbrickland lakeside were unveiled by Education Minister Caitriona Ruane this morning.

Kev Beachus, of Jacobs Engineering UK Ltd who headed the dig team, said that one-hectare site had contained a Bronze Age crematorium and round barrows containing the buried remains of eight or nine people.

“They had been ploughed into the field for years and years. On the top you didn’t know they were there, but when you dug deeper there they were,” he said.

“There were also three neolithic houses — the first to be excavated in Co Down. The three houses all dated to about 4,500BC. The barrows seem to have been in use for about 100-200 years and between the first use and end use is about 1,000 years. That means in 1,000 years we have had eight people buried. Where are the rest of them? That is the big question. Three of the houses burned down and radio carbon dating suggests that they were all burned at the same time. They were living on land between the lake and the bog and it looks like they exploited these for food and security,”

he added.

“We have evidence that they were making their own pottery and there is evidence that clay for the pottery came from the lake.” Continue Reading »

Pic: CESNUR

The Center for Study on New Religions (CESNUR) has released a report about Ár nDraíocht Féin (ADF), one of the most widely spread forms of modern druidry or druidism. This paper called A Pathway to Druidism is the text of a paper read by Michael T. Cooper, Ph.D. (Trinity International University, Deerfield Illinois, USA) at the 2006 International CESNUR Conference. Unfortunately, I do not have permission to quote from it but hopefully my introduction will prompt you to head over to CESNUR and read it. My introduction and paraphrase follows:

The Introduction to the paper examines Druidism as one of the expresses of the Neo-paganism movement, whose ideals can be expressed as egalitarianist, pantheist and environmental responsibile. He defines ADF as a typical example of North American neo-paganism that meets these ideals as well as the spirituality of North Americans. Continue Reading »

Originally posted 2008-10-23 09:47:36. Republished by Old Post Promoter

Pic: Damerham Archaeology Project

Two 6,000-year-old tombs have been unearthed in Hampshire (England) in one of the biggest archaeological finds for years. The discovery, thought to be among the oldest ever made in the UK, is set to shed new light on the life led by the county’s earliest settlers. Flint tools and fragments of pottery have already been retrieved from the Neolithic site at Damerham in the New Forest. The find has been made by a team of experts from Kingston University in London.

 Archaeologist Dr Helen Wickstead said she and her colleagues were ’stunned and delighted’ when evidence of the prehistoric complex came to light. She added

 "Some artefacts have already been recovered and in the summer a team of volunteers will make a systematic survey on the site. If we can excavate, we’ll learn a lot more about Neolithic people in the area and discover things such as who was buried there, what kind of life they led and what the environment was like 6,000 years ago." Continue Reading »

Pic: BBC News

The skulls of scores of young men have been found in a burial pit in Dorset on the route of a new road for the 2012 Olympics. So far 45 skulls, believed to be almost 2,000 years old, have been found, and more may be found as the pit is emptied. Archaeologists have called the discovery extraordinary, saying it could be evidence of a disaster, a mass execution, a battle or possibly an epidemic.

"We think that these dismembered bodies are likely to be native Iron Age Britons." 

The question is – how did they die and who killed them," said David Score, project manager for Oxford Archaeology. Continue Reading »

Pic: Evening Star

For generations the sarsen stones at Alphamstone near Sudbury (on the Essex/Suffolk border, England) have been at the centre of hot debate as to whether they were ever part of the only proper stone circle outside the west of England. There are two stones marking the entrance to St Barnabas Church and a number of others further back near – and in – the church, but they form neither a circle nor part of a circle.

But Paul Daw, a surveyor who has visited more than 300 of the 400 or so stone circles, timber circles and henge sites in England, believes he might have found the original location of a stone circle in the churchyard using dowsing. He believes the stones which visitors to the church can see have been moved away from a once-standing circle in a corner of the churchyard. Continue Reading »

Pic: Aldaron

NS Gill, About.com’s Ancient History specialist has blogged about Boudicca in some detail. She writes that Boudicca (also spelled Boadicea and Boudica) was the wife of King Prasutagus of the Celtic Iceni, in the east of ancient Britain. When the Romans conquered Britain, they allowed the king to continue his rule, but when he died and his wife, Boudicca took over, the Romans wanted the territory. They are said to have stripped and beaten Boudicca and raped her daughters.

As a result, in about A.D. 60, Boudicca led her troops and the Trinovantes of Camulodunum (Colchester) against the Romans, killing thousands in Camulodunum, London, and Verulamium (St. Albans). The tide turned and the Roman governor in Britain Gaius Suetonius Paullinus (or Paulinus) defeated the Celts. Continue Reading »

One of the Vikings’ most important trading centres has been discovered in Ireland. The settlement at Woodstown in County Waterford is estimated to be about 1,200 years old. It was discovered during archaeological excavations for a road by-pass for Waterford city, which was founded by the Vikings.

The news was announced by the BBC, and they say:

Almost 6,000 artefacts and a Viking chieftain’s grave have been discovered at the site, which was established by the year 860. The grave contains a sword, shield and silver mark.

Source

Originally posted 2008-05-12 11:43:22. Republished by Old Post Promoter

A member of the Catalan government told Welsh Member’s of Parliament this week that business had nothing to fear from the introduction of legislation in Wales that would strengthen the position of the Welsh language, reports Cornwall 24. Bernat Joan i Mari, who is the Secretary for Language Policy in the Catalan Government was speaking to Westminster’s Welsh Affairs Select Committee, who are considering whether to give the Welsh Assembly the power to update the 1993 Welsh Language Act.

A new language act for Wales is likely to extend into the private sector, which has given rise to the concerns of businesses in Wales that they could incur higher costs. Currently the 1993 act only covers the public sector. Continue Reading »

Pic: BBC

The four Bone Caves of Inchnadamph in the north west Highlands, which are protected by SNH, contained a physical record of Scotland’s ancient beasts, reports the BBC. They are a window in to the past, according to Alex Scott, an officer with Scottish Natural Heritage (SNH). Since the late 1800s remains have been excavated from the underground complex.

Last week an almost complete skeleton, recovered over a period of years by cavers, was confirmed as that of a large male brown bear (see our earlier post).

It joined a long list of creatures whose remains have been retrieved from the darkness. They include bones from a polar bear, lemming, arctic fox, reindeer, tundra vole and wolf. Some may have been washed into the caves during Ice Age floods.

Most exciting

The polar bear skull found in 1927, and held in the collections of the National Museum of Scotland in Edinburgh, continues to fascinate scientists. Believed to the only remains of its kind found in Britain, a sample was taken last year for DNA analysis.
Ireland-based genetics expert Ceiridwen Edwards had hoped to compare the DNA of the animal found in a cave in Scotland with that of modern polar bears.

However, she said there was not enough DNA left in the sample for an analysis to be done. According to SNH’s leaflet on the Bone Caves, one of the most exciting finds was the skull of a Northern lynx dated at about 1,770 years old and also found in 1927.

The caves were also a burial site and the bones of four people found there have been radiocarbon-dated to being between 4,515 and 4,720 years old.

The recovery of the newly-confirmed brown bear was a painstaking process. Caving club, Grampian Speleological Group, retrieved the first pieces of bone in 1995. Cave divers then spent the next 12 years wriggling through narrow spaces and moving soil to unblock entrances in their effort to recover all they could.

Their efforts have paid off with another valuable addition to the record of Scotland’s long gone residents.

You can read the full article on the BBC website