British Archaeology

"Archaeologists have unearthed a "stunning" Bronze Age burial chamber on one of Dartmoor’s most isolated hills.

Experts discovered a stone-built box, sometimes known as a cist, at Cut Hill during a three-day dig earlier this month.

Radiocarbon dating of charcoal found inside suggests the chamber, used to bury the dead during prehistoric times, is about 3,900 years old.

Dartmoor National Park Authority (DNPA), which led the project, said the discovery had been prompted by reports of a feature being visible in the peat..."

A piece of the jigsaw puzzle that could unlock 1,000 years of history at a north Wales heritage site has been unearthed – suggesting that local Britons may have lived ‘in harmony’ with the Romans.

An excavation has led to the discovery of a horse bridle mount dating back to the late Iron Age at the Greenfield Valley Heritage Park in Flintshire.

The artefact, which is up to 2,000 years old, was found within the remains of a newly discovered settlement that likely belonged to the Iron Age Deceangli tribe but appears to have continued into the early Roman period.

The region occupied by the Celtic clan, which spread as far west as the River Conwy and included Denbighshire, Flintshire, and Wrexham, was rich in lead and silver, materials highly prised by the Romans.

Archaeologists have uncovered a 2,000-year-old prehistoric settlement as part of development work on the site of the new HMP Highland in Inverness.

The excavation has led to the discovery of a roundhouse settlement relating to Iron Age and Bronze Age occupation of the site, which also contained earlier prehistoric remains dating back to at least 3,000 BC.

A wide variety of prehistoric remains were found at the HMP Highland site, including occupation areas related to domestic and industrial activities and structural evidence from the roundhouses and other timber structures.

The settlement consisted of 16 roundhouses that survived as circular alignments of postholes, where timber posts had once supported substantial hut buildings. Some of the house sites had been enclosed by palisade fencing to protect the interior.

An ancient monument uncovered by a team of amateur archaeologists is exciting and puzzling the experts.

Three years of excavations on the side of a hill in Aspull, Wigan have revealed a Bronze Age burial site surrounded by a ring shaped ditch that is believed to be a religious henge.

The find is thought to be unique to the region and potentially of national importance.

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The archaeologists working at the site believe it marks two different points in history.

"From the Neolithic Stone Age period it would have been a ritual holy site," Mr Aldridge said.

"But then at a later date, when the Bronze Age people came along, they thought it was something special and decided to create their own funerary monument in the middle of it.

"You do get Bronze Age barrows in the north, but they’re quite rare. You usually find them down south in places like Wiltshire.

"And you have to go to the Lake District, Yorkshire, Derbyshire or North Wales before you get henge monuments or Neolithic Stone Age activity.

A 2,000-year-old mosaic has been discovered during excavations at a Roman site in Shropshire.

The piece at Wroxeter Roman City depicts brightly-coloured dolphins and fish.

It was uncovered during work to search for the main civic temple.

"Our excavations were in hope of discovering the walls of this building, but we never suspected we would find a beautiful and intact mosaic, which had lain hidden for thousands of years," said Win Scutt, from English Heritage.

Rare remains of plants have been found on Bronze Age jewellery uncovered in the Highlands.

Archaeologists said the fibrous cords used to knot together bracelets had survived for about 3,000 years.

The ancient hoard, which appears to have been carefully buried, was found at a building site in Rosemarkie on the Black Isle where a Bronze Age village once stood.

It contained nine bronze bracelets and necklaces buried sometime around 1000 BC.

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Rachel Buckley, who led the work, said: "While there are other examples of hoards where it has been postulated that items were bound together due to their positioning, the vegetation in the Rosemarkie hoard has survived for approximately 3,000 years, proving that these artefacts were held together."

Archaeologists said the finds would help to improve knowledge of the lives, beliefs and deaths of Bronze Age people in the Highlands.

A large open space in in Trelai Park that had been used as a playing field since 1933 yielded a treasure trove of prehistoric artifacts during a 2022 land survey conducted by a local school that was building a sports field in a corner of the park. Upon the archaeological site’s discovery, the Caerau and Ely Rediscovering Heritage Project (CAER), an organization promoting community involvement in archaeological research, began collaborations with Cardiff University to excavate the area.

Archaeologists initially expected the discovery would shed new light on everyday life in the region between the late Iron Age and early Roman Era. To their surprise, unearthed shards from a clay pot dated the site to the Bronze Age, around 1500 B.C.E.

The excavation was soon found to constitute two Bronze Age roundhouses—circular dwellings, typically featuring thatched roofs, that were made up of walls built using wooden or stone posts and stuffed with wattle-and-daub, a mixture of twigs, earth, and clay. The roundhouses have been dubbed the oldest houses in Cardiff.

Metal detectors beeped across a quiet, five-acre plot of forest and field on England's eastern Suffolk coast as dozens of American and British service members sifted clumpy, wet soil from a deep impact crater. The tiniest of remains of U.S. Air Force pilot Lt. John Fisher might be here. Exactly 80 years ago Sunday - August 4, 1944 - his B-17 bomber crashed while on a secret mission targeting Nazi rocket sites in Europe during World War II.

"It can make you feel emotional, you know? They've found some personal artifacts that are very endearing," said Garret Browning, a U.S. air repair specialist from Colorado with the U.S. 100th Maintenance Squadron, currently stationed in England.

Experienced in crash damage recovery, Browning is one of about 150 American and British active duty and retired military volunteers looking for a fallen fellow soldier. At 26 years old, Browning is already older than the pilot he was looking for.

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Lt. John W. Fisher Jr., from New York, was just 21 years old when he was killed during Operation Aphrodite, the codename for flying planes on one-way missions to destroy Nazi rocket sites and submarine pens in Europe. Those planes were old, war-weary B-17 "Flying Fortress" bombers, first stripped down for more space, then loaded up with tons of explosives. But Fisher's plane stalled soon after takeoff. He pushed his co-pilot out and sacrificed himself. The plane nosedived into the ground just before the English Channel with France on the horizon.

"This aircraft, it blew apart pretty much in every direction," said Browning. "So something as small as just a bolt or a thread just kind of tells a story."

The remnants these volunteers have found include shattered bits of glass from an oxygen bottle - which might suggest Fisher's remains are nearby. The biggest and heaviest piece of debris was the central part of a propeller with much of its blades sheared off. Other pieces were fragments of the fuselage, engine and even some fabric from a parachute.

Volunteers also found a rusted horseshoe, believed to have been taken on board Fisher's B-17 for luck, and a twisted, fire-darkened nameplate reminding excavators of the origin of the plane from across the Atlantic Ocean: Detroit, General Motors Corporation.

A previously unknown Roman fort discovered in Pembrokeshire in Wales overturns assumptions that the area’s indigenous Celtic tribe was on peaceful terms with the Roman invaders.

The site, which has excited archaeologists, had been hidden until now beneath an enormous, overgrown field. It explains why the land had been unsuccessful for farming: the farmer kept hitting stone.

The discovery was made by Dr Mark Merrony, a leading Roman specialist and tutor at Oxford University, who said: “It is a humongous fort, an incredible find of national importance.”

He is all the more excited because it is right next to a Roman road that he has also identified for the first time.

The fort is thought to date from the first to the third centuries, when the Celtic Demetae tribe inhabited the south-west area of modern Wales.

They were thought to have been pro-Roman, meaning there was less need for a major military presence to quell local resistance.

Merrony said that this fort suggested this part of Wales was considerably more militarised than previously thought: “I now don’t think they were pro-Roman at all, but that the Romans were hitting the area with an iron fist.”

He noted that its form and scale was like the only other Roman fort known in Pembrokeshire, excavated at Wiston near Haverfordwest in 2013. Both forts were now linked to a Roman road network that had not previously been known, he said.

The recent discovery of more than 600 red ochre fragments at a 6,500-year-old ceremonial site near Carlisle, northwestern England, supports an ancient Greek explorer’s account from the 4th century BC in which Britons are referred to as “the painted people.”

Pytheas of Massalia, an explorer from the Greek colony that is modern-day Marseille in southern France, was quoted by later geographers to have spoken of Great Britain as Prettanike, a term derived from the Celtic word Pretani, meaning “the [land of the] painted ones” or “the tattooed folk.”

Julius Caesar, writing in the mid-1st century BC, also mentioned that the inhabitants of Britain had a tradition of painting themselves.

The Carlisle red ochre discovery—the largest find of red ochre pieces found yet in the UK—not only complements the linguistic evidence on ancient Britons’ tradition of body painting but also suggests a long-held gathering or festival which featured body painting rituals, according to The Indepenent.

A number of stones that would have been used to grind ochre deposits into powder were also found along hundreds of thousands of fragments of flint.

Additional findings support the idea that the people that gathered at the Stone Age site in Carlisle, most probably during the salmon-fishing season in spring, originated from across Britain.

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Pytheas of Massalia was the first-ever Mediterranean to reach and explore Great Britain and the Arctic Circle.

He is believed to have traveled as far as Iceland, becoming the first person on record to describe the midnight sun and the first known scientific visitor to see and describe the Celtic and Germanic tribes.

For the past few weeks, the site of redevelopment work at 32 Stodman Street has been host to an archaeological dig by a specialist team from Contour Archaeology Ltd to ensure nothing is missed before building work commences.

The team have explored the history of the town dating back to the medieval period, to develop an understanding of the historical events that occurred on the site, and its place within the history of the town.

Archaeology work has identified Medieval features including walls, wells, enclosure boundaries and pits, one of which contained the fully intact horse burial.

Other finds across the site include roof tiles, pottery, metalwork, and animal bones, such as boar’s tusks as well as cow and sheep bones, which indicate the type of diet medieval people of Newark would have eaten.

Other smaller items are thought to date back as far as the Anglo-Saxon period — with further investigation into this period set to take place.

Archaeologists are finding out more about prehistoric life in Kent from 5,000 years ago at one of the country’s largest ancient burial grounds.

Experts say the multi-year dig at Stringmans Farm on the Lees Court Estate, near Faversham, has uncovered artefacts dating back to the Neolithic or Bronze Age period.

The community excavation project led by a team from the Kent Archaeological Society unearthed a selection of items including flint chippings (leftovers from making stone tools), fragments of rare, decorated pottery created 3,000 years before the Romans came to Kent, and evidence of human prehistoric cremations.

Wigan Archaeological Society members have been unearthing ancient treasures and revealing a previously unknown monument thought to date back to 1650 BC on open land at Aspull.

The enigmatic site first came to their attention in 2019, when a near-circular cropmark was spotted in overhead images seen online.

At first it was thought it might represent the remains of a barrow (burial mound) but investigations were hampered for a long time by the pandemic.

The site – which the archaeologists first called Aspull Ring Feature – lies within sight of Winter Hill and Anglezarke Moor, areas rich in prehistoric monuments and it was thought they might be connected.

There then followed the digging of a series of exploratory trenches, the first of which concluded that the area had been a ditch was deliberately filled in so they changed its name to Aspull Ring Ditch.

Further trenches established the shape of the ditch and uncovered a carefully built structure of alternating layers of sand, rounded stones, and clay. Helpfully, at least two long pieces of burnt wood were also involved in its make-up, allowing experts to take samples for radiocarbon dating which gave them a date from the middle Bronze Age: 1650 BC.

By the close of the 2022 season, they had working theory that the feature had originated as a Neolithic henge monument, which was then repurposed during the Bronze Age, possibly as a funerary enclosure (mortuary).

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A spokesperson for the society said: “While there are still many puzzles and conundrums to unravel at this site, there are two finds that so far defy explanation.

"The first is an irregular stone ball covered with brown and white patinas that hinder identification of the rock type, but it might be granitic, and is certainly not local.

“Our second enigma is a stone inscribed with three deep, parallel grooves, 9mm apart. Then another one turned up, this time with four parallel grooves spaced 8.4mm apart. Better still, it was found in a carefully excavated section, meaning that we can tell it was definitely beneath the burnt layer dated to 1820 BC. Like buses, a third example duly appeared, again in a certain prehistoric context and this time with eight grooves 10mm apart.

“In each case, the grooves are precise and deep, unlike, for example, sharpening stones, where the grooves tend to be at random angles and anything but precise. What they mean, though, is truly mystifying.

Archaeologists have given Britain’s oldest chalk figure a facelift, with work to restore the head and neck profile of the Uffington White Horse in Oxfordshire.

Archaeological work last year, including examination of previous surveys, showed that parts of the ancient chalk horse carved into the hillside have narrowed over time, as grass has encroached and topsoil slipped.

The head and neck area of the 3,000-year-old figure had narrowed to less than half its typical width.

Now archaeologists from the National Trust and Oxford Archaeology have returned the 364ft (111m) long horse, which dates from the Bronze Age, to its typical profile, by carefully cutting the encroaching turf back to the estimated original edge and re-distributing some of the top layer of chalk on the figure.

During the work, soil samples from the lowest layers of the figure have also been taken to see if they can be used to accurately date its creation.

Previous samples taken in the 1990s revealed the horse to be Britain’s oldest chalk figure, but techniques to date archaeological remains have improved so there is an opportunity to refine the date further, the team said.

Volunteers are set to take part in a 12-day archaeological dig in the hope of finding signs of medieval life on a farm.

The excavation at High Tarns Farm in Silloth will begin on 22 July.

It will be led by archaeologist Mark Graham and follows his discovery of crop marks on the land, which suggest it was once the site of a large medieval building.

Mr Graham said he was "excited" but warned it could be a let down, adding: "If you're going to be an archaeologist, you better get used to disappointment."

Due to written records, archaeologists have long known that part of the town was once the site of a medieval farm linked to Cistercian monks.

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The marks looked like a "footprint of a large timber building", he said, adding: "I nearly fell off my chair."

He suspected the building was timber as the marks corresponded with holes required for large wooden posts to hold up such a structure.

No such building is detailed in maps going back to the 1800s, he added, and the marks suggest the building is about 50m (164ft) long and 20m (66ft) wide.

Mr Graham's two main theories about the potential building are that it was once a barn belonging to the Cistercian farm, or it is even older and was the home of a Viking chieftain.

"There have been houses on the scale that we're talking about excavated in Scandinavia but to find such a thing here in Cumbria would be absolutely remarkable," he said.

In an extract from her new book, A Mudlarking Year: Finding Treasure in Every Season, Lara Maiklem describes the thrill of discovering a 16th century sword on a Bankside beach.

Thursday 2 February 2022

I hear from the Museum of London today about the 'sixteenth-century bladed object' I found last year. My Excalibur moment happened at the beginning of December on a murky Saturday afternoon. I don't usually mudlark on the weekend — the foreshore is often busier and I try to keep weekends for family time — but I was in London meeting friends for lunch that day, and as I made my way back to the station, I saw the tide was low. Actually, I knew the tide was low, which is why I took the longer route along the river to the station. How could I not? I only briefly considered my new brogues, which were entirely unsuitable, before unlatching the metal gate and taking the concrete stairs down onto the foreshore at Bankside. The light was fading, and I knew I didn't have long before I lost it altogether, so I headed straight for my favourite patch. People were already there, and I could see from the footprints that it had been well searched, so I walked a little further along and that's when I saw it.

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The handle and hilt loomed out at me from a small area of gritty sand that thinly covered the mud into which the blade disappeared. What caught my eye was its regular shape and the two lines of twisted gold wire embedded in the dark brown material of the handle. The blade was only just beneath the surface, and I gently cleared away the sand until I felt the end of it with my fingers. Easing my hand carefully underneath, I lifted it free quite easily, leaving a perfect impression of where it had lain for the best part of 500 years in the dark grey mud. I held the sword aloft. Excalibur of the Thames! And looked around, but everyone had gone and there was nobody to share the moment with. The handle looked to be made of wood with a square pommel carved into the end, finished off by a four-petalled flower or quatrefoil in what I assumed was copper alloy. The blade was broken at about eight inches long and was encrusted in a thick layer of mud, pebbles and rust. When iron rusts, it often engulfs whatever is lying next to it in the mud and ends up looking like a giant caddisfly larva case. If it had been a Victorian padlock or an old horseshoe, I would have been tempted to knock the concretion off with a stone, but this was too precious.

Pembroke Castle has been a seat of power for centuries. It was the birthplace of Henry Tudor, father of Henry VIII, and is one of the country’s best preserved medieval strongholds, containing a maze of passages, tunnels and stairways, as well as a vast gatehouse tower. Scientists have discovered that the fortress has also been concealing a startling secret. A cave, known as Wogan Cavern, which lies directly underneath Pembroke Castle, has been found to contain a treasure trove of prehistoric material, including ancient bones and stone tools left behind by early Homo sapiens and possibly by Neanderthals.

These remains will provide key information about the settling of Britain in prehistoric times, say scientists, who last week began their first major excavation of the year at Wogan. Work on the site over coming years should provide answers to major puzzles about prehistoric Britain, including the end of the Neanderthals’ occupation about 40,000 years ago.

Early finds at Wogan include a wide range of fossils including mammoth, reindeer, and woolly rhino, as well as the remains of a hippopotamus, a species that last wallowed in British waters 125,000 years ago. Archaeologists have also found that much of the cavern’s floor is covered with a layer of stalagmite which has preserved the soil, bones, proteins and DNA that lie below.

“The site has got fantastic potential,” said Prof Chris Stringer of the Natural History Museum, London. “It’s the best prospect that we have got in providing fresh material that can help us find out how Neanderthals lived in Britain and learn how they were replaced by Homo sapiens.”

An amateur detectorist has described how he unearthed a bronze age hoard, including a rare sword, after getting lost during a treasure hunters’ rally.

John Belgrave, 60, became separated from the main group of detectorists and headed to higher ground to try to spot them when he made what he has called the find of a lifetime.

His device activated as he walked along and when he dug down he uncovered a rapier sword dating back to the middle bronze age.

The 61cm (2ft) rapier had been deliberately broken into three pieces and placed in the ground alongside the remains of a wealthy landowner.

Unusually, the hilt, though cast in bronze, was shaped to mimic a wooden handle. Only two similar rapiers have been found in Britain before and they were incomplete.

As well as the rapier, a palstave axe head and a decorative arm bangle were found, presumably buried as an offering.

Dorset Museum and Art Gallery raised £17,000 to buy the objects, with the proceeds shared between Belgrave and the landowner.

The Castlerigg stone circle, located in the northwestern county of Cumbria within the Lake District National Park, has long been a draw for tourists and was taken into guardianship in 1883—becoming one of the first prehistoric monuments in the country to receive state protection.

The monument is thought to be one of the oldest stone circles on the islands of Great Britain and Ireland, of which there are hundreds of known examples. England comprises most of the island of Great Britain, which it shares with the countries of Scotland and Wales.

Previous estimates based on circumstantial evidence have placed the construction of the Castlerigg stone circle at around 3000 B.C. or slightly earlier. But no solid dating work has been conducted at the site.

Now, Cumbrian archaeologist Steve Dickinson has shed new light on the monument's possible age, proposing—based on his recent research—that at least part of the stone circle was erected around 3700 B.C., he told Newsweek.

The part Dickinson is referring to is known as the "Sanctuary"—a rectangle of large boulders, measuring around 23 feet by 15 feet, that projects into the middle of the stone circle from its eastern interior.

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While the function of the Sanctuary remains a mystery, the plan and size of this structure is similar to that of many small timber structures excavated in Ireland—and one recently uncovered in the English county of Yorkshire—all dated to the early Neolithic archaeological period, Dickinson said. In Britain and Ireland, this period lasted from around 4300 B.C. to 3300 B.C.

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The fact that the Sanctuary displays similarities to examples of small early Neolithic timber structures from Ireland is significant, according to Dickinson.

Radiocarbon dating of these timber structures suggests their construction began around 3730-3660 B.C. and that their use ended between roughly 3640-3600 B.C. This evidence is one of the reasons that Dickinson is proposing an early Neolithic date for the construction of the Castlerigg Sanctuary.

"The first part of my case for an early Neolithic Castlerigg is that the Castlerigg rectangular structure replicates the forms of some of the Irish examples. It monumentalizes them in stone," he said.

"This monumentalizing in stone is a feature of the timber to stone transition widely regarded by many prehistorians as occurring across Britain and Ireland where enclosures and circles marked out with timber posts were turned into, or remodeled in, stone," he said.

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"The second part of my early Neolithic case for Castlerigg is that the Sanctuary there was erected around 3700-3640 B.C.—following the use-life of the Irish structures," Dickinson said.

Dickinson's proposal has not yet been published in a peer-reviewed journal, and will likely require further research to confirm it. But if the theory is correct, it would date the Sanctuary to around 700 years before the first phase of construction at Stonehenge, which occurred around 3000-2900 B.C.—long before the large stones made an appearance.