I found this info on the web: EH has been assessing tenders for a Stonehenge laser scan -- archaeological analysis. Value -- up to £15,000. To be completed in 2 months.
http://www.tendersdirect.co.uk/Search/Tenders/Expired.aspx?ID=%20000000003548306§=A081&cat=20&Source=Categories
Do any of our spies out there have anything to share? Not sure how this project is supposed to move forward the earlier work reported here:
http://www.stonehengelaserscan.org/
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-12688085
5 comments:
No, no idea how this project is to move forward English Heritage's earlier scanning work, but the man who does know, David Field of English Heritage, will no doubt reveal all at a talk on Saturday March 10th at 14.30hrs at Devizes' Wiltshire Heritage Museum.
His talk is entitled "Recent analytical survey and investigation at the Stonehenge World Heritage Site". It will be the 2nd time he has given this talk within 3 months. Public demand brings him back. I should be there for this one.
Now here's an (intelligent?) guess? Because laser scanning can pick out very subtle marks and scratches on rock surfaces, maybe they are looking not just for inscriptions or carvings of Bronze Age daggers, but also for tool marks and geological features such as cracks, bedding structures, foliations, and -- dare I say it? -- striations that might have something to do with glaciation......
Well, I do hope you're right, Brian, but I'm not holding my breath (but then, didn't David Field/ A.N.Other suggest, in an English Heritage report about 12 months or so ago, that many of Stonehenge's goliath sarsen stones might, after all, have been sourced locally by our Stonehenge ancestors, i.e. rather than from the Marlborough Downs 26 miles distant?
Let's hope E.H. adopts a multi-disciplinary approach to this latest piece of research, so we may call it truly scientific rather than "horses for courses".
I hope they pick out the other T shape (aka Chief's face) on the side of Stone 53.
Should be interesting to see what they are doing.
I can do it with a piece of paper and a wax crayon for £9.99 a stone?
John Noakes
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