Digging up history in Southwick

From the Shoreham Herald

DIGGING up the history of Sussex is the subject of the next Manor Cottage Heritage Centre heritage talk, in Southwick.

John Mills, an archaeologist with West Sussex County Council, will talk about the latest developments in Sussex archaeology that are adding to our knowledge of the county's history.

Many new developments are preceded by archaeological digs and these are constantly providing new information.

At the same time, chance finds often shed exciting new light on the past. Two years ago, the Southwick Society itself added to this knowledge with a dig on the Manor Cottage site, in Southwick Street, which produced finds ranging from flint tools to medieval pottery and 17th-century clay pipes. The talk at 7.30pm on Monday is the fifth in a monthly series to be held at Southwick Community Centre.

All talks are open to everyone, with tickets priced £3 each, or £1 for members of the Southwick Society. The Manor Cottage Heritage Centre, currently undergoing extensive restoration, is run by volunteers from the Southwick Society.

Full piece here

Joint PAS/Ebay/BM announcement on antiquity selling

Or, another excellent reason why funding cuts in aid of the olympic games shouldn't result in the loss of the PAS (amongst many other services).

From the PAS website

The British Museum and the Museums, Libraries and Archives Council (MLA) have partnered with eBay.co.uk to ensure that antiquities found in the UK are being sold legally on its site.

In order to prevent illegal sales of treasure, the Portable Antiquities Scheme (PAS, which is managed by the British Museum on behalf of the MLA) has set up a team to monitor antiquities sold on eBay.co.uk and to ensure that sellers have the right to trade them. Where the listing is illegal, PAS will report it to the Art and Antiques Unit of the Metropolitan Police and eBay.co.uk, which has committed to end illegal listings.The commitment is the latest development in eBay's on-going work with national law enforcement agencies.

Full announcement here

Fairly interesting piece on Roman medicine in Britain

From BBC Health

Think of the Roman legacy to Britain and many things spring to mind - straight roads, under-floor heating, aqueducts and public baths.

But they were also pioneers in the health arena - particularly in the area of eye care, with remedies for various eye conditions such as short-sightedness and conjunctivitis.

Perhaps most surprisingly of all is that the Romans - and others from ancient times, including the Chinese, Indians and Greeks - were also able also to carry out cataract operations.

The Romans were almost certainly the first to do this in Britain.

Surgical skills

Nowadays the procedure can be carried out by lasers, but in Roman times technology was rather more basic - needles were inserted into the eye.

The sharp end of the needle was used for surgery and the blunt end heated to cauterise the wound.

Full article here

Rather interesting Thornborough rally report from the PAS

Download the Thornborough Henges Rally report

Over at the British Archaeological Jobs Resouce site (http://www.bajr.org/), a document has been produced as an independent report on the recent metal detecting rally on the land around Thornborough's Henges (not on the protected area). The Henges have been at the centre of a large legal battle revolving around Tarmac's desire to quarry the area. More information on this can be found at Timewatch's website.

From the PAS website

Chariot reconstruction ready for Scottish museum

From This is Devon
(And if you'd like to order one for yourself, you need to speak to the chap at chariotmaker.com)


" Two and a half thousand years ago the original was belting around the muddy highways like an ancient equivalent of a Ferrari - now a replica of the UK's earliest chariot is enjoying a much quieter life, on display in a Westcountry museum, writes Martin Hesp.

But the remarkable machine won't be at rest for long at the Somerset County Museum in Taunton - soon it will head for Edinburgh to be exhibited close to where the original was found in a recent archaeological dig.

So why should a replica of a Scottish chariot be temporarily residing in the Westcountry? Because it is "drying out", according to its creator Robert Hurford - the West Somerset-based craftsman who is the nation's only professional maker of chariots."

Full story here

ADHS release ST Osyth dig report

From historyhouse.co.uk

The Essex County Council Field Archaeology Unit has just released a report on their archaeological excavation at Lodge Farm, St Osyth, Essex, from May 2000 to February 2003. Among the main findings were a previously unknown causewayed enclosure, a pond barrow, Late Neolithic / Early Bronze Age ring-ditches, a Middle Bronze Age ring-ditch group, a Middle Iron Age settlement, Middle/Late Iron Age and Roman enclosures and trackways, Early Saxon pits and a medieval farmstead.

From historyhouse.co.uk

Posted by DD at 03:32 0 com

Legal developments at Tara

From the Evening Echo

Activists fighting to save the Hill of Tara today launched fresh High Court action to stop the construction of the controversial M3 motorway through the ancient site.

The new case is being taken by Limerick resident Gordon Lucas, who is seeking to enforce EU environmental impact assessment directives and the European Convention on Human Rights.

The computer programming student is seeking an injunction and a declaration that the National Monuments Act 2004 is in breach of EU law.

Campaign group Tarawatch said the case against the Minister for Environment John Gormley is being taken as a last resort after the Government opted not to perform a new environmental impact assessment on the proposed demolition of the Lismullin national monument.

It hopes the High Court fight will protect the 2,000 year-old ruins discovered at Lismullin, near the Hill of Tara, which has been earmarked for demolition.

Full story here

New edition of Explorator (10.41) released

Explorator 10.41

Mesolithic finds at Bath

They forgot to mention that rain falling at the time of the earliest level of archaeology (10,000 years bp) is only now surfacing in the hot springs...Full story from the Western Daily Press

Chock-full of famous Roman Baths, Celtic kings, Georgian crescents and Jane Austen, the history of Bath already ran to quite a weighty tome.

But archaeologists admitted yesterday that two new chapters would have to be written after amazing discoveries made while a new sewer was being dug.

At the very depths of the site of a new £350 million shopping centre in the heart of the ancient city, archaeologists found new evidence that extends the history of the city thousands of years further back.

The archaeologists found the first evidence of human activity near the banks of the River Avon dating back to 8,000BC, that's before any kind of recorded history and even before the idea of farming had reached the British Isles.

The first Bathonians were hunter- gatherers, following herds of deer and other game along the river valley, attracted by the hot springs and the plentiful fish in the River Avon.

And on the spot where people would later settle and use the hot springs, they made tools, fished and left scraps of archaeological evidence, according to Bath and North East Somerset archaeologist Richard Sermon.

"Previously, archaeological interest has been on the Roman and medieval times in Bath, but this has given us a glimpse right back into the very first people who would have come to what is now Bath," he said.

"The hunter-gatherers would have been attracted by the game here and the fishing, and possibly by the micro-environment caused by the hot springs. It takes the history of Bath right back to 8,000BC.