Wooden "halls" predating Long Barrows in Herefordshire

 

This story is all over the media at the moment -- interesting.  No doubt much more to be revealed.....

Public release date: 30-Jul-2013
Contact: Mike Addelman
michael.addelman@manchester.ac.uk

Two 6,000-year-old 'halls of the dead' unearthed, in UK first

The remains of two large 6000-year-old halls, each buried within a prehistoric burial mound, have been discovered by archaeologists from The University of Manchester and Herefordshire Council -- in a UK first.
The sensational finds on Dorstone Hill, near Peterchurch in Herefordshire, were thought to be constructed between 4000 and 3600 BC.
Some of the burnt wood discovered at the site shows the character of the building's structure above ground level -- in another UK first.
The buildings, probably used by entire communities, are of unknown size, but may have been of similar length to the Neolithic long barrows beneath which they were found – 70metres and 30m long.
They were, say the team, deliberately burnt down after they were constructed and their remains incorporated into the two burial mounds.
However -- much detail has been preserved in the larger barrow: structural timbers in carbonized form, postholes showing the positions of uprights, and the burnt remains of stakes forming internal partitions.
Most importantly, the core of each mound is composed of intensely burnt clay, representing the daub from the walls of the buildings.
The buildings were likely to have been long structures with aisles, framed by upright posts, and with internal partitions.
The smaller barrow contains a 7m by 2.5m mortuary chamber, with huge sockets which would have held upright tree trunks at each end.
These massive posts bracketed a linear 'trough' lined with planks, which would have held the remains of the dead.
Professor of archaeology from The University of Manchester Julian Thomas and Dr Keith Ray Herefordshire Council's County Archaeologist, co-directed the excavation.
Professor Thomas said: "This find is of huge significance to our understanding of prehistoric life-- so we're absolutely delighted.
"It makes a link between the house and a tomb more forcefully than any other investigation that has been ever carried out.
"These early Neolithic halls are already extremely rare, but to find them within a long barrow is the discovery of a lifetime."
He added: "The mound tells us quite a bit about the people who built it: they sought to memorialize the idea of their community represented by the dwelling.
"And by turning it into part of the landscape, it becomes a permanent reminder for generations to come.
"Just think of how the burning of the hall could have been seen for miles around, in the large expanse of what is now the border country between England and Wales."
Archaeologists have long speculated that a close relationship existed between houses and tombs in Neolithic Europe, and that 'houses of the dead' amounted to representations of the 'houses of the living'.
In addition to the two long mounds, the site has provided evidence for a series of later burials and other deliberate deposits, including a cremation burial and a pit containing a flint axe and a finely-flaked flint knife.
The objects have close affinities with artefacts found in eastern Yorkshire in the Late Neolithic (c. 2600 BC).
Dr Ray said: "These subsequent finds show that 1000 years after the hall burial mounds were made, the site is still important to later generations living 200 miles away – a vast distance in Neolithic terms.
"The axe and knife may not have been traded, but placed there as part of a ceremony or an ancestral pilgrimage from what is now East Yorkshire.
"So we witness an interconnected community linking Herefordshire and East Yorkshire by marriage and by descent 5000 years ago."
He added: "In the British context, the Dorstone find is unique and unprecedented.
"We were hoping our work with The University of Manchester would help us to give us a clearer picture of the origins of these long barrows- but we were surprised how clearly the story came through.
"It's very exciting for us: for 15 years I have been arguing that Herefordshire has something important to say on the national picture of our Neolithic heritage."

=========================

NOTES FOR EDITORS
Images are available from the excavation
An artist's impression of a hall of the dead is available
Professor Thomas and Dr Ray are available for comment
Journalists are welcome to visit the site at any point on Monday or Tuesday
For media inquiries contact:
Mike Addelman
Press Officer
Faculty of Humanities
The University of Manchester
0161 275 0790
07717 881567
Michael.addelman@manchester.ac.uk

Big meltwater conduits beneath an ice stream

 This is a rather interesting paper which explains how speculation and theory can sometimes be confirmed by observation -- using new techniques which were not available in the bad old days......

Glaciologists and geomorphologists have speculated for a long time about the manner in which meltwater moves beneath an ice sheet or ice stream in a polar situation.  In some parts of Antarctica there are spectacular 'labyrynths' of meltwater channels, suggesting that catastrophic meltwater flows have occurred in the past, with erosion on a massive scale being the result.  when my colleague David Sugden and I found big meltwater systems on two of the ice-free peninsulas of the South Shetlands (Byers Peninsula on Livingstone Island and Fildes Peninsula on King George Island) we wondered where all the water had come from, and also wondered whether these channels had been cut during a rapid and catastrophic melting phase at the end of the last glacial episode.

 A famous photo of the Labyrynth, by George Denton.  These channels are naturally taken to have been formed by vast amounts of meltwater, probably flowing subglacially.

The Labyrynth, in the Taylor Dry Valleys system of East Antarctica, is the most famous example of a chaotic system of connected valleys -- suggested to have been formed during the Miocene by subglacial floods.  As long ago as 1965 CA Cotton was speculating as to the origin of the "scablands" in the Wright Valley.

There is also a considerable amount of speculation in the glaciology literature about how water moves beneath great thicknesses of ice -- and how meltwater actually assists in lubricating the glacier bed and thus encourages ice movement and glacial erosion.

But naturally enough, it is virtually impossible to OBSERVE meltwater activity in real ice sheet situations where ice may be kilometres thick and where ice surface conditions may be very hostile indeed for field parties undertaking research.  Drilling projects in many parts of Antartica have revealed the presence of meltwater lakes -- some of them very large indeed -- but little has been known about where the water comes from, how it is maintained, and where it goes to.

Now a new advance in radar technology has allowed researchers to identify two different types of meltwater flow beneath very thick ice, associated with rapid ice movement.  Beneath the Thwaites Glacier in West Antarctica, Schroeder and his colleagues have used radar signals to differentiate two types of meltwater flow -- one essentially like a swamp, with no deep channels but with sheets of water interconnected and flowing extensively across the land-ice interface; and the other involving concentrated meltwater flow in distinct channels:

The authors were most interested in the implications of this work for the possible instability of the West Antarctic Ice Sheet -- but there are a number of geomorphological implications which we should note.  First, it is quite possible for large quantities of meltwater to be flowing on the bed of a very thick ice sheet or ice stream when it is operating normally -- rather than just when there is catastrophic wastage going on.  Second, extensive or areal flow and concentrated linear flow can occur beneath the same glacier, with a transition zone between the two types of flow.  Third, it appears from the work that the water is flowing uphill, on the up-glacier flank of a rock ridge -- that confirms the assumption made many hears ago that subglacial drainage operates wherever there is sufficient hydraulic pressure, regardless of ground surface slope.  Fourth, when the meltwater is concentrated into channels beneath the ice, it seems to move in distinct tunnels on the glacier bed with semi-circular or arches cross profiles.  That is interesting, because we have not had any great evidence on this until now.  We still do not know from this work whether there are deep rock-cut channels beneath the ice tunnels -- but if water is flowing in great volumes under high pressure it is almost inevitable that substantial bedrock erosion will be taking place.

There are strong implications in all of this work for the processes that might have operated in North Pembrokeshire during the Anglian and Devensian glacial episodes, when the Irish Sea Glacier cvovered much of the landscape.  For example, what does this work tell us about the cutting of the Gwaun Valley meltwater channel system, or even about the cutting of the gorge at Rhosyfelin?  Watch this space.....

http://www.pnas.org/content/110/30/12225.full.pdf+html

Scientists Image Vast Subglacial Water System Underpinning West Antarctica’s Thwaites Glacier

http://www.jsg.utexas.edu/news/2013/07/scientists-image-vast-subglacial-water-system-underpinning-west-antarctica%E2%80%99s-thwaites-glacier/ 


Evidence for a water system transition beneath Thwaites Glacier, West Antarctica

Dustin M. Schroeder,
Donald D. Blankenship, and
Duncan A. Young

Abstract

Thwaites Glacier is one of the largest, most rapidly changing glaciers on Earth, and its landward-sloping bed reaches the interior of the marine West Antarctic Ice Sheet, which impounds enough ice to yield meters of sea-level rise. Marine ice sheets with landward-sloping beds have a potentially unstable configuration in which acceleration can initiate or modulate grounding-line retreat and ice loss. Subglacial water has been observed and theorized to accelerate the flow of overlying ice dependent on whether it is hydrologically distributed or concentrated. However, the subglacial water systems of Thwaites Glacier and their control on ice flow have not been characterized by geophysical analysis. The only practical means of observing these water systems is airborne ice-penetrating radar, but existing radar analysis approaches cannot discriminate between their dynamically critical states. We use the angular distribution of energy in radar bed echoes to characterize both the extent and hydrologic state of subglacial water systems across Thwaites Glacier. We validate this approach with radar imaging, showing that substantial water volumes are ponding in a system of distributed canals upstream of a bedrock ridge that is breached and bordered by a system of concentrated channels. The transition between these systems occurs with increasing surface slope, melt-water flux, and basal shear stress. This indicates a feedback between the subglacial water system and overlying ice dynamics, which raises the possibility that subglacial water could trigger or facilitate a grounding-line retreat in Thwaites Glacier capable of spreading into the interior of the West Antarctic Ice Sheet.

Stripes at West Kennet Avenue?

Many thanks to Pete Glastonbury and Tim Daw for the following pics:

 

Both of our colleagues have mentioned the discovery of "periglacial stripes" at West Kennet.  Not sure that I can see anything obvious in these photos which would lead me to say that these features are reminiscent of the strange stripes in the Stonehenge Avenue.  Maybe they are just very subtle here? 

From Pete Glastonbury:  On the West Kennet Avenue dig today the Between the Monuments project uncovered periglacial stripes.  The dig is being run by Dr Mark Gillings and Dr Josh Pollard.
The dig started with a lightning storm, which always bodes well in archaeology, and today they uncovered the edge of Mr Keillers trench last dug 79 years ago!

Would Pete and Tim care to convince us that there are stripes there?  We'll leave to one side for the moment the idea that they may be "periglacial" -- that term seems to be thrown about all the time, without the archaeologists having any clear idea what it actually means or what the processes of formation are supposed to have been.

Stonehenge incomplete

You know that big book called "Stonehenge Complete"?  Well, maybe there should be another now, taking account of some modern thinking, called "Stonehenge Incomplete".  Should be a good seller -- anybody volunteering to be the editor?  Would EH publish it?   Hmmm-- I just remembered that before long, EH won't exist any more........

Anyway, thinking of all that, it was my birthday yesterday, and the family gave me a birthday card with this on the front.  Very apposite.

How to use a book

Since Myris and Tony referred to this book thing, and since scrolls and papyrus are obviously still popular in certain quarters, I thought I'd share this wonderful little sketch from Norway......

Back from the hols

Hello everybody -- just returned safely from 8 weeks in Sweden, having enjoyed a delightful North Sea voyage on the romantically named MV Transpulp.  Hundreds of containers of paper and 4 passengers...... and nothing to waste money on....

Have tried to publish everything I'm aware of -- but apologies if anything has gone astray.  There was a period when I was not able to pick up or send Emails properly.

Will soon be back in the swing of things....

Mesolithic lunar calendar?

 

Latest wonderful breakthrough -- Warren Field, Crathes Castle, Aberdeenshire -- according to Prof Vince Gaffney and assorted others a Mesolithic lunar calendar associated with the invention of time itself.....

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland-north-east-orkney-shetland-23286928

A rough alignment of pits and a lot of computed jiggery-pokery?  Does anybody else share my sense of profound scepticism about all of this -- or is it just me?