Neolithic remains which cast new light on the Isle of Man’s earliest known inhabitants have been uncovered at the airport’s new runway project. The 5,000-year-old artefacts were found by workers within a 200ft (61m) stretch of the proposed taxiway extension. As well as tools and pottery, experts found a human skull, a building, a rubbish dump and evidence of skull burials and funeral pyres. Excavations of the site are expected to continue until July, although experts from Oxford Archaeology are already convinced the site has “European significance”.
“When the topsoil was stripped away, it revealed well-preserved archaeological remains, which date to the Neolithic period,” said Fraser Brown, senior project manager of Oxford Archaeology North. “These are specific to the Isle of Man and relate to what is known to archaeologists as the Ronaldsway Neolithic House, which was identified in 1943 following excavations for the original airfield. This latest find includes a rectangular ‘sunken feature’ building, which provides evidence of human habitation.”
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How to make Bronze Age beer.
I’ll say no more – except to say that if I had my time over and somebody had said make a film about Standing Stones and stuff that’ll take you two years to complete and a whole lot of work getting it noticed – or – investigate the making of beer 2,500 B.C. and then set up an experiment which involved actually making the stuff and then drinking it, er … how hard a choice would that be?
More info on these guys and what they did here: http://www.mooregroup.ie/beer/ and here: http://mooregroup.wordpress.com/
Well, we may have looked like we knew what we were doing most of the time, but we did have our moments. We had the map, the compass, the GPS. We even had Rupert’s Columbian Drug Baron Hat. It really should have been easy to make our way from Men-an-Tol across a short expanse of moorland to the 9 Maidens stone circle to the North. However, in the spirit of always making thing much more complicated than they really are, we took the scenic route. Actually, in this part of the world every route is a scenic route – but you know what I mean.
After a few unnecessary scrambles through acres of gorse and brambles we emerged close to what we thought must be the 9 Maidens stone circle. Nobody had bothered to tell us that it had been restored (slightly) and now numbered 11. Actually, turning up before the restoration wouldn’t have helped us much because then there were only 6 stones standing. Or when William Borlase first recorded it – because then there were 18 – out of an original 22! Clearly, the ’9 Maidens’ label is not so much an archaic folk memory as a verbal snapshot taken sometime in the last 200 years.
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For us, another gorgeous day filming in Cornwall – this time on the North-East coast of the county. Rocky Valley is pretty much that – a picturesque gorge carved by a stream that used to power the Trevillett Mill, now a trout hatchery. The carvings themselves are on a bare face of soft shale on the other side of the 18th/19th century mill ruins from the stream. If you follow the stream past the carvings and the mill you are treated to a wonderful walk right down to the sea with views up and down the coast from the cove.
Dozens of tools thought to have belonged to Neanderthals have been dug up at an archaeological site called Beedings in West Sussex.
The tools could have been used to hunt horses, mammoth and woolly rhinoceros.
“The impression they give is of a population in complete command of both landscape and natural raw materials with a flourishing technology – not a people on the edge of extinction.”
I was wanting to do some research on North American prehistory and investigate the possibility of using the North American Indian culture and belief system as a tool for approaching the mindset of our European Neolithic and Bronze Age ancestors. I quickly came across web references to the site known as ‘America’s Stonehenge’ – formerly called ‘Mystery Hill’.
Well, I’m only making this post in the spirit of reporting – for the moment at least – because this ain’t no Stonehenge. On the face of it, this site is potentially very exciting indeed – a megalithic site 25 miles North of Boston, Massachusetts? The trouble is that it seems to be an archaeological mess.
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Bruce Bedlam just sent me this reconstruction of Woodhenge. If you go to stonehenge.tv, you’ll see not only more images of his work on Woodhenge but images and his reasoning behind a spectacular version of Stonehenge – WITH A ROOF. Right or wrong, Bruce’s work is certainly not wild speculation but carefully thought through and the result of many years of research. The integrity of the final design and the way it marries with the existing megaliths is certainly compelling. I would only ask him how he squares including the Y and Z holes in the scheme when they have been dated to 700 years after the sarsens were erected? I’m sure he has an an answer. Nevertheless, I think work like Bruce’s is valuable and stimulating – more power to him.
Early days for this blog but about time I did something about the early days of making this film.
A couple of months after Rupert and I had finally decided to ‘green light’ production of Standing with Stones, in early December 2005 I set off on my own towards Cornwall to do some preliminary filming and exploring. At that time Rupert was still living on the Isle of Man and logistically it did not make sense for him to make a special journey, especially as no script had been written yet. Most importantly, it was a chance to test the way we had chosen to work and to make sure that the motorhome we had bought really was up to the job of mobile hotel, office and camera car. I had invested specially in what I thought was the best camera for the job (given limited resources) – a brand new Sony Z1e HDV camcorder. High definition (albeit heavily compressed) to do justice to landscape and texture, lightweight enough to be carried up mountains along with the other gear and cheap enough so I could buy it.
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Men-an-Tol will always be a hot June day with whispy white clouds in a deep blue sky to me. Actually two hot days. And almost exactly two years ago. I only say that because
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Apologies about Stonehenge and National Geographic overkill at the moment, but I just had to include this series of clips from a spoof interview that National Geographic seem to have tagged on to the side of their ‘Stonehenge Decoded‘ programme. Enjoy.
