Cornelius has put me on to a new archaeology TV series in the UK –Extreme Archaeology – from Channel 4. It runs 20 June to 8 August – eight programs. These are the people that brought you Time Team – the archaeologists who tackle a site in a weekend. Here they are to tackle sites…
posts – matters of design
Julian Thomas and the dangers of scholasticism
Julian Thomas (Manchester University) and Mike Pearson (Wales, Aberystwyth) were the opponents in the defence of Jonna (Ulin) and Fiona’s (Campbell) dissertation in Gothenburg (see my blog entry for June 11). Something has been bugging me since then about Julian’s criticisms of their work. Jonna and Fiona make a basic proposition that archaeology is performance….
the individual in prehistory
Could Stonehenge Skeletons Be Its Bronze Age Builders? – 24 Hour Museum This is the second (or third) recent attempt to connect individual burials with the making of Stonehenge (see my comments on ). They come from Wessex Archaeology. OK – so let’s accept that people built Stonehenge, not spacemen or giants or wizards. These…
the prehistoric built environment
Guardian Unlimited | Ramblers barred from ancient mound Image – earthrod.co.uk Access is to be denied to the great earthen mound to the north of Stonehenge – Silbury Hill. Yes, it is receiving too much damage. But what interested me was that this feature of an earthen landscape has been reclassified a building. (As part…
origins of agriculture
BBC NEWS | Science/Nature | Farming origins gain 10,000 years Humans made their first tentative steps towards farming 23,000 years ago, much earlier than previously thought. Stone Age people in Israel collected the seeds of wild grasses some 10,000 years earlier than previously recognised, experts say. These grasses included wild emmer wheat and barley, which…
the conservation of transience
Fascinating piece of restoration highlighted by Architecture Week 2004 | June 18 – June 27 Organised and Managed by Arts Council England Long before upstart trader Nick Leeson put the boot into Barings Bank by secretly running up more than $1bn of liabilities, financial difficulties had scuttled one of the key assets of the bank’s…