Feb 18 2010
Fire-blasted heath finds yet more Celtic stone treasure
 Pic: The Guardian |
It’s a funny thing. You find an amazing story of Celtic treasures turning up in a fire, and then somebody points you to an article about other treasures being discovered. They say there is no such thing as coincidence, don’t they? Just synchronicity…
Listener and friend, Andy found the following article and says that he was there a few years ago, and the uncovered stones, rock art and other evidence dating from Prehistory to the 18th Century Alum Industry is amazing. |
The Guardian released this news article back in the summer of 2008. It reads:
A catastrophic fire which “skinned” a precious moorland to its rocky bones has unexpectedly revealed some of the most important prehistoric archaeology found in Britain.
The uncontrolled six-day blaze on Fylingdales Moor in North Yorkshire has exposed a lost landscape dating back 3,000 years which is now to be made accessible to the public by English Heritage.
Unique rock art and unprecedentedly clear bronze age field boundaries have emerged from the soot and cinders which were all that was left of two-and-a-half square miles of the North York Moors national park when fire crews and heavy rain finally swamped the area in September 2003.
The intense heat destroyed the entire blanket of peat which had accumulated over the area, close to the North Sea coast, since farmers abandoned it for unknown reasons in around 1000BC.
We have always known that this part of the world is very rich in prehistoric remains,
said Graham Lee, senior archaeological conservation officer for the national park.
But the sheer number of new finds exposed by the fire is the most exciting development in archaeology in my experience.
The rock art list for the site, part of a vast moor also used by the RAF’s Fylingdales satellite tracking and early warning station, has grown to almost three times its previous size, with more than 100 sets of mysterious lines, cups and circles discovered since the fire.
You can read the full article on the Guardian website.
