Opportunity to dig at Northstowe alongside the Cambridge Archaeological Unit — Access Cambridge Archaeology

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archaeology, Britain, community, England, excavation

From next week there is a free community excavation starting that will be taking place alongside archaeologists from the Cambridge Archaeological Unit (CAU) at the new town of Northstowe. The community excavations at Northstowe will start on Monday 18th June 2018 at 9am and will run for five weeks until Friday 20th of July 2018. The dig is […]

via Opportunity to dig at Northstowe alongside the Cambridge Archaeological Unit — Access Cambridge Archaeology

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Making a living in Iron Age Britain

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archaeology, Britain, Celts, Iron Age, news, prehistory

What was it like to live in Britain before the arrival of the Romans? The latest edition of the British Museum Membercast presents an exclusive lecture from Curator Julia Farley and explores what life was like for the farmers and warriors who lived in these islands over 2,000 years ago.

A close look at Blick Mead and Star Carr

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archaeology, Britain, excavation, news, prehistory, stone age, Yorkshire

This is very exciting. It’s not often we get large excavation monographs devoted to single mesolithic sites in the UK (Three Ways Wharf stands out, a site that was published in 2011 and excavated in the 1980s), but recently within the space of a few weeks we got two: Blick Mead in mid March (photo […]

via A close look at Blick Mead and Star Carr — Mike Pitts – Digging Deeper

Lost Landscapes of Palaeolithic Britain

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archaeology, Britain, prehistory, stone age

Those who are interested in Palaeolithic Britain may wish to take a look at this volume:

White, Mark and Bates, Martin and Pope, Matthew and Schreve, Danielle and Scott, Beccy and Shaw, Andrew and Stafford, Elizabeth (2016) Lost Landscapes of Palaeolithic Britain. Project Report. Oxford Archaeology.

The chapters are available as a free download from the Oxford Archaeology website.

Feast at Stonehenge!

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archaeology, Britain, England, food and drink, news, Places to Visit, prehistory, stone age, Stonehenge

A new exhibition has opened at Stonehenge which reveals what the builders of this ancient monument cooked and ate.

Feast! displays a collection of rare finds including the skull of an aurochs, a now extinct species of wild cattle. You can also see decorated Neolithic pots used in the preparation of pork and beef dishes and a rare complete bronze cauldron from 700BC that featured as a centrepiece of late Bronze Age ceremonial feasts.

For more about the exhibition see HERE or read a blog by English Heritage on the topic.

Bronze Age Britain: From Bronze to Iron

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archaeology, Britain, Bronze Age, education, Iron Age, Nottingham, Nottinghamshire, prehistory, WEA

In the final session of this course, we discussed the transition from the Bronze Age into the Iron Age. This is a period which, in the Near East and the Mediterranean, has been linked to a cultural collapse, the causes for which are sometimes deemed to be due to the Sea Peoples, but which may be multi-causal.

This video reviews the evidence for the Bronze Age using examples from the Channel 4 series ‘Time Team’:

Archaeology of Bronze Age Britain

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archaeology, Britain, Bronze Age, education, Nottingham, Nottinghamshire, prehistory, WEA

To discover resources already available on this blog for ‘Archaeology of Bronze Age Britain’ click on the Bronze Age tag in the left hand column and it will take you to all the posts made on that topic to date. Other relevant tags include Prehistory, although the entries covered by that tag may be broader and include earlier as well as later prehistoric themes.

Bronze Age Britain: Houses

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Britain, Bronze Age, East Anglia, education, Ireland, Leicestershire, Loughborough, prehistory, WEA

In this short video, historian Dan Snow introduces the Must Farm site where archaeologists have revealed incredibly well-preserved Bronze Age dwellings. The excavation in the East Anglian fens is providing an extraordinary insight into domestic life 3,000 years ago. The settlement, dating to the end of the Bronze Age (1200-800 BC), would have been home to several families who lived in a number of wooden houses on stilts above water.

This video presents a computer-generated 3D reconstruction of two Middle Bronze Age houses discovered at Mitchelstown 1 on the route of the N8/N73 Mitchelstown Relief Road, 0.6 km north-west of Mitchelstown. The excavation by Eamonn Cotter (Eachtra Archaeological Projects) in 2004 revealed three Middle Bronze Age houses dating broadly to 1500–1200 BC, two of which were digitally modelled. Based on the excavated evidence, these two houses had been built over an earlier house.

This video presents a computer-generated 3D reconstruction of a Middle Bronze Age village discovered at Ballybrowney Lower 1 on the route of the M8 Rathcormac/Fermoy Bypass scheme, some 10 km south of Fermoy town. It was excavated by Eamonn Cotter (Archaeological Consultancy Services Ltd) in summer 2003. The Middle Bronze Age phase of the site consisted of three large subcircular enclosures (Enclosures 1–3), one of which contained an oval house, and three unenclosed houses, dating broadly to 1700–1550 BC. Late Bronze Age, Iron Age and medieval features were also excavated here.

New Research Published – suggests long-distance movement of cattle in the Bronze Age

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archaeology, Britain, Bronze Age, news, prehistory

Archaeology Orkney

Chillingham Cattle. Thanks to Sally Holmes.

Dr Ingrid Mainland of the University of the Highlands and Islands Archaeology Institute is the co-author of a new investigation into the origins and husbandry of Mid-Late Bronze Age cattle – now published in the Journal of Archaeological Science Reports.

The authors include Jacqueline Towers & Julie Bond of the University of Bradford, Jane Evans of the British Geological Survey, Ingrid Mainland of the UHI Archaeology Institute and Janet Montgomery of Durham University.

Bioarchaeological evidence suggests that the site of Grimes Graves, Norfolk, characterised by the remains of several hundred Late Neolithic flint mineshafts, was a permanently settled community with a mixed farming economy during the Mid-Late Bronze Age (c. 1400 BCE – c. 800 BCE).

Cattle tooth with enamel sequentially sampled for isotope analysis

The aim of this study was to investigate, through isotope ratio analysis (87Sr/86Sr, δ13C and δ18O), the origins and…

View original post 243 more words

Bronze Age Britain: Making Bronze

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archaeology, Britain, Bronze Age, education, Leicestershire, Loughborough, prehistory, WEA

In our first session on the  Bronze Age in Britain, we looked at one of the key defining elements of the archaeological time period: making bronze.

In this short video clip from the BBC series Ancient Voices, archaeologist Raksha Dave visits Butser Ancient Farm to look at the beginning of the Bronze Age, and construct an axe head in exactly the same way Bronze Age man would have done.