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Bronze Age Discoveries & Findings

The badger who is in a long term relationship with a local farmer wishes to remain anonymous.

A Bronze Age cremation burial has been discovered near Stonehenge after being accidentally dug up by a badger.

Objects found in a burial mound at Netheravon, Wiltshire, include a bronze saw, an archer's wrist guard, a copper chisel and cremated human remains.

Experts believe the burial may have been that of an archer or a person who made archery equipment.

The artefacts date back to 2,200-2,000BC, senior archaeologist Richard Osgood, of the MOD, said.

http://www.bbc.com/news/uk-england-...al&utm_source=twitter.com&utm_campaign=buffer
 
Bronze Age wheel at 'British Pompeii' Must Farm an 'unprecedented find'

A complete Bronze Age wheel believed to be the largest and earliest of its kind found in the UK has been unearthed.
The 3,000-year-old artefact was found at a site dubbed "Britain's Pompeii", at Must Farm in Cambridgeshire.
Archaeologists have described the find - made close to the country's "best-preserved Bronze Age dwellings" - as "unprecedented".
Still containing its hub, the 3ft-diameter (one metre) wooden wheel dates from about 1,100 to 800 BC.

The wheel was found close to the largest of the roundhouses.
Its discovery "demonstrates the inhabitants of this watery landscape's links to the dry land beyond the river", David Gibson from Cambridge Archaeological Unit, which is leading the excavation, said.
Historic England, which is jointly funding the £1.1m excavation with landowner Forterra, described the find as "unprecedented in terms of size and completeness".
"This remarkable but fragile wooden wheel is the earliest complete example ever found in Britain," chief executive Duncan Wilson said.
"The existence of this wheel expands our understanding of Late Bronze Age technology, and the level of sophistication of the lives of people living on the edge of the Fens 3,000 years ago."

The dig site, at Must Farm quarry near Whittlesey, Cambridgeshire has been described as "unique" by Mr Gibson.
It has proved to be a treasure trove for archaeologists who earlier this year uncovered two or possibly three roundhouses dating from about 1,000-800 BC.
The timbers had been preserved in silt after falling into a river during a fire.

Kasia Gdaniec, senior archaeologist at the county council, said the "fabulous artefacts" found at the site continued to "amaze and astonish".
"This wheel poses a challenge to our understanding of both Late Bronze Age technological skill and - together with the eight boats recovered from the same river in 2011 - transportation," she said.

The spine of what is thought to be a horse, found in early January, could suggest the wheel belonged to a horse-drawn cart, however, it is too early to know how the wheel was used, archaeologist Chris Wakefield said.
While the Must Farm wheel is the most complete, it is not the oldest to be discovered in the area.
An excavation at a Bronze Age site at Flag Fen near Peterborough uncovered a smaller, partial wheel dating to about 1,300 BC.
The wheel was thought to have been part of a cart that could have carried up to two people.

etc...

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-cambridgeshire-35598578
 
Two men stumble across 'very, very rare' Bronze Age burial site
The two men unearthed several rare artefacts in a field in Lancashire, including a chisel and a dagger
Rachel Burnett
5 hours ago

An untouched Bronze Age burial site is due to be excavated thanks to a "lucky" discovery by a pair of metal detector enthusiasts.
Matthew Hepworth and David Kierzek unearthed several rare artefacts in a field in Lancashire, including a chisel and a dagger.
This led to an ancient barrow being located at the site which had lain undiscovered for thousands of years.

Mr Hepworth, 40, said: "This site is untouched which makes it very, very rare.
"It wouldn't have been discovered if we hadn't found those artefacts.
"I've been on the site five times before over 20 years, but metal items do move in the ground.
"It was just a lucky find on the day. The first thing I found was a chisel, which is quite rare, there's only a handful in Britain. Then we found a dagger and other pieces in bronze."
He added: "People can learn a lot from this site, it's part of our heritage. It's knowledge for the future generations as well."

Mr Hepworth, who works as a community nurse, previously discovered a stash of Viking silver in the area, which can now be seen at Lancaster City Museum.
He said finding the burial monument, which was used for around 1,500 years from the late Neolithic period to the middle or lateBronze Age, is "as good as it gets".

He and Mr Kierzek, 51, will be taking part in the dig in July, which will take place with the help of £49,500 funding from Heritage Lottery Fund.
DigVentures is inviting members of the public to join the excavation through a crowdfunding campaign.

Brendon Wilkins, archaeologist and projects director at DigVentures, said barrows are the "best windows we have into the lives and deaths of Bronze Age Britons".

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/u...-matthew-hepworth-david-kierzek-a6929986.html
 
Have a friend that if she ingests capsicum gets D & V within minutes. Usually lasts a couple of hours and then she's fine.
I know off people who've improved arthritis by avoiding all capsicums (tomatoes, peppers chillies).
 
Evidence of largest battle from Bronze Age times found:

http://www.sciencemag.org/news/2016/03/slaughter-bridge-uncovering-colossal-bronze-age-battle

Slaughter at the bridge: Uncovering a colossal Bronze Age battle

About 3200 years ago, two armies clashed at a river crossing near the Baltic Sea. The confrontation can’t be found in any history books—the written word didn’t become common in these parts for another 2000 years—but this was no skirmish between local clans. Thousands of warriors came together in a brutal struggle, perhaps fought on a single day, using weapons crafted from wood, flint, and bronze, a metal that was then the height of military technology.
 
Thousands of hoards have been found dating from the Bronze Age in Britain, full of objects that seem far too important to dump

Ten years ago, when metal detectorists were out near the village of Stixwould in Lincolnshire, UK, they turned up bronze fragments.

These turned out to be the remnants of not just one precious object, but many: swords, ferrules, and one spearhead after another. By the end, 129 bits of spearheads were found in the Tattershall hoard. All of the objects, researchers later determined, dated back to between 3,000 and 2,900 years ago.

Whenever anyone finds a group of prehistoric metal objects in Britain, they are legally obliged to report it to the Portable Antiquities Scheme. The officer assigned to the hoard, Adam Daubney, has handled a lot of discoveries. His Lincolnshire team alone has recorded 75,000 finds over the last 10 years. But this was different. ...

http://www.bbc.com/earth/story/20160503-why-ancient-brits-threw-out-their-most-valuable-possessions
 
See http://forum.forteantimes.com/index.php?threads/bronze-age-discoveries.40792/page-5#post-1567818
(this thread, p. 5) for previous article on this site:

UK's best bronze age site dig ends but analysis will continue for years
Houses full of linen, pottery and weapons, preserved in silt over 3,000 years, are worthy of own museum, say archaeologists
Maev Kennedy
Thursday 14 July 2016 07.00 BST

One winter some 3,000 years ago, a development of highly desirable houses was built on stilts over a tributary of the river Nene in Cambridgeshire, by people whose wealth and lifestyle would still have seemed enviable to medieval peasants. Then six months later it was all over.

Disaster overwhelmed the people and they fled, leaving their clothing and jewellery, tools and furniture, their last meals abandoned in the cooking pots as they tumbled through the burning wicker floors into the water below. Nobody ever came back to retrieve the tonnes of expertly carpentered timbers and the masses of valuable possessions lying in shallow water, which over the centuries all sank together, hidden and preserved by the oozy silt.

An extraordinary archaeological excavation at Must farm, in a working brick clay quarry in the shadow of a chip factory on the outskirts of Peterborough, which has peeled back the millennia on the best bronze age site ever found in Britain, will end in 10 days time. Years of work remain to be done on the thousands of objects astonishingly preserved in the mud.

“Elsewhere we only have the ghosts of what was going on – here we have the whole body,” said Graham Appleby, who is working on the most metal objects ever found on a domestic site of the period, including a spear head so pristine it has been mistaken even by experts for a replica.

Work analysing the finds will continue for years. “We have only found out half of what this site has to tell us,” said the site’s director, Mark Knight, from Cambridge University’s archaeology unit. “On other bronze age sites you’d have a row of post holes and you’d be delighted to find one pot shard. Here we have looked through the window and then walked into the middle of their lives.”

Discoveries are still being made daily. On Monday Susanna Harris, an ancient textiles expert from Glasgow university, studied an unprepossessing bundle of blackened fibres and found a reel of thread spun from plant fibre, finer than a human hair.

Appleby’s moment of disbelief came when Knight rang him to say they’d found a complete spear. “Yeah mate, we’ve got loads of those,” he replied ungenerously. No, Knight insisted, the whole spear. “You’ve got the stick bit too?” Appleby asked, abandoning scientific terms in his amazement. He only knows of one other ever found – but three days later Knight rang again to say they had another one.

Other unique finds include the largest, best-preserved bronze age oak wheel ever found, woven linen finer than the lightest of today’s fabrics, an old sword cut down into a useful kitchen knife, glass and amber beads imported from the continent and the Middle East, and the five round huts themselves, from the wicker floors to the clay chimneys – not just crude smoke holes – in the thatched roofs, still lying where they collapsed 3,000 years ago.

The unprecedented richness of the finds has revealed how the people lived, what they wore, what they ate, the butchered lamb carcasses they cured hanging from their rafters, the remains of a slaughtered red deer still sprawled on a patch of gravel. They farmed animals and cereal crops, including ancient strains of wheat and barley, and though they chose to live over the water, they had such lavish food sources that they virtually ignored the fish swimming just below their wicker floors.

Complete sets of pottery from egg cup to storage jar were found in each house, and all seem to have been made by the same potter. “It was almost like a John Lewis wedding list for each house,” Knight said.

One of the greatest mysteries remains tantalisingly unsolved: was the fire a kitchen disaster among the densely built thatched houses; deliberate destruction and abandonment by the residents; or an attack by enemies who perhaps envied their wealth? No casualties were found: the scraps of human bone, and a single skull, may have been older than the houses.

The scorched timbers and charred thatch are still being studied by a fire investigations expert, Karl Harrison, but his first impressions are that it looks less like an accident started inside a house, and more like a fire deliberately set from outside.

The site is regarded as one of the most important discoveries from the period in Europe, an insight into the unguessed at material wealth of some, perhaps most, in bronze age Britain. When the scale of the finds was revealed at a recent international conference, “jaws were dropping,” Knight said. The excavation won the “discovery of the year” title in this week’s British archaeological awards, voted for by other archaeologists.

The other unresolved question is what happens to the thousands of finds and the remains of the houses when the experts have finished their work. Historic England, which commissioned the excavation, which was also part funded by the quarry firm Forterra, found extra money when the dig planned to end in spring had to be extended twice as objects continued to pour out of the mud.

The team has welcomed archaeologists from all over the world, but public access to a site yards from the giant crater of the working quarry – which probably swallowed the other half of the settlement – is regarded as impossible, and the excavation will be reburied to preserve any underlying archaeology. However all of the timbers, flooring and roof materials of the best preserved house have been saved for conservation treatment and possible reconstruction.

Historic England’s chief executive, Duncan Wilson, said cautiously that discussions are ongoing with all the stake holders, including the local authority, and that there will probably be a Heritage Lottery Fund bid.

Mark Knight, asked whether Must farm and the window it opened on a lost ancient world lying just two metres below our own is special enough to deserve its own museum, said without a moment’s hesitation, “Yes”.

https://www.theguardian.com/science...ite-must-farm-dig-ends-analyis-continue-years
 
BBC doc on the above Cambridgeshire Fen site. Excellent.

Remains of high quality 3000 year old fabrics, jewellery some of which originated in Northern Italy, boats, swords, remains of huts, pots still containing food. Also the earliest wheel ever found in Britain. The settlement was built on stilts over water & probably had a stout wall around it.

They build a house of similar structure then set it alight to see how quickly it burns. They had to get out quick leaving everything behind & never returned. Conflict assumed.
 
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They build a house of similar structure then set it alight to see how quickly it burns.
Didn't you think that was one of those 'this time-consuming experiment won't prove anything but will look good on TV' type of things? Otherwise, a very good documentary, with the adorable Alice Roberts.

EDIT Incidentally, along with Flag Fen that's two impressive bronze age sites within a short distance of Peterborough, an area which has been going downhill ever since that time.
 
Didn't you think that was one of those 'this time-consuming experiment won't prove anything but will look good on TV' type of things? Otherwise, a very good documentary, with the adorable Alice Roberts.

EDIT Incidentally, along with Flag Fen that's two impressive bronze age sites within a short distance of Peterborough, an area which has been going downhill ever since that time.
It started going downhill when I was living there, 16 years ago.
But these finds are good for the local economy, I think.
 
Whereabouts did you live, if you don't mind me asking?
I moved about and over the years lived in different locations. Netherton, near Lincoln road etc.
 
Didn't you think that was one of those 'this time-consuming experiment won't prove anything but will look good on TV' type of things? Otherwise, a very good documentary, with the adorable Alice Roberts.

Not really - the archeologists knew the settlement had been abandoned quickly from the things left behind & food still in pots & were looking for clues as to how quickly the fire could spread. Turns out it was quicker than they thought. Add in close proximity to other huts & it probably got unbearable pretty quickly, then add in the probability they were under attack at the same time.
 
Archaeologists to return to The Hurlers on Bodmin Moor in quest to find potential 'new' stone circle
By cg_graham | Posted: September 10, 2016

A team of archaeologists is about to resume work at the Bronze Age stone circles known as The Hurlers on Bodmin Moor. The excavation, part of the Heritage Lottery Fund-supported Reading the Hurlers project, aims to learn more about a site that was identified by geo-physics in the early 1990s.

Starting on Tuesday and working until September 18, members of the Cornwall Archaeological Unit will be working alongside geologists and volunteers to shed light on the potential for a "fourth" circle at the 4,000-year-old site near Liskeard.
Archaeologist Emma Stockley said: "This is a unique opportunity to expand on our knowledge of this fantastic site and involve volunteers from all walks of life."
Project geologist Calum Beeson added: "To complement the archaeology, we are exploring how geology was intrinsic to the lives and culture of the Bronze Age people."

The excavation will be holding an open day on September 17 when there will be a series of free drop-in workshops and guided walks.

Reading the Hurlers has been surveying the area around the stones in an attempt to identify where they were quarried. More than 100 local school children have been involved.

The Hurlers are a Bronze Age triple stone circle complex dating from at least 1,500 BC, thought to have been used for astronomical purposes.
They are one of the best examples in the South West of England. There have been excavations at The Hurlers since the 1930s.

They were first described in the 16th century. The name comes from the legend that tells of local people being turned to stone for playing hurlers on the Sabbath.

http://www.westbriton.co.uk/archaeo...stone-circle/story-29694413-detail/story.html
 
Lots of new stuff here, so it's probably worth reminding ourselves how the Bronze Age began:
 
Ancient human remains found in Cavan Burren Park
Bones, dug up by a badger outside burial tomb, date back at least 4,500 years

Human remains dating back 4,500 years have been discovered by a local historian in Blacklion, Co Cavan after they were unearthed by a badger.

The bones were found near one of the many ancient burial sites located at the Cavan Burren Park by historian Séamus Ó hUltacháin, as well as archaeologists Sam Moore from IT Sligo, Vicki Cummings of the University of Central Lancaster and Colin Richards of the University of Manchester.

They came across a fresh dig by a badger near a collapsed tomb, along with 14 small pieces of cremated human bone and charcoal flecks in the soil.
“Our badger just threw out the bones,” said Mr Ó hUltacháin. “They were no bigger than my nail, just scraps of bone. It is the oldest discovery in this region, a wonderful discovery.”

At 124 hectares, Cavan Burren Park is regarded as one of the finest integrated prehistoric landscapes in Ireland, featuring historical monuments, megalithic tombs, hut sites, prehistoric rock art and echoes of a dead sea dating back 350 million years ago. ...

http://www.irishtimes.com/news/soci...est&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=news_digest
 
2,000 year old warrior armour made of reindeer antlers found on the Arctic Circle
By The Siberian Times reporter
16 March 2017
Ceremonial suit was embellished with decorations and left as a sacrifice for the gods by ancient bear cult polar people, say archeologists.

The discovery is the oldest evidence of armour found in the north of western Siberia, and was located at the rich Ust-Polui site, dating to between the 1st century BC and the 1st century AD.
Earlier discoveries at the site indicate a bear cult among these ancient people.
Archeologist Andrey Gusev, from the Scientific Research Centre of the Arctic in Salekhard, said the plates of armour found at the site are all made from reindeer antlers.

http://siberiantimes.com/science/ca...-reindeer-antlers-found-on-the-arctic-circle/
 
Father and Son Left Shocked by Bronze Age Finds in Bowes.

METAL detectorists have uncovered a hoard of spear heads and sword parts more than 2,800 years old.
A total of 13 items including five socketed axes, four leaf sword shafts, two axe heads and a pair of spear heads were found in the “Barnard Castle area” in August last year.

http://www.teesdalemercury.co.uk/Ar...ronze-age-finds-in-bowes#sthash.OREvnXox.dpbs


FB_IMG_1473948665844-1.jpg
 
Bronze Age Hipsters.

Danish Bronze Age elite buried in fancy woolly hats and shawls, 3,500-year-old graves reveal
As wealthy classes emerged in Europe, they distinguished themselves with expensive imported clothing.

By Martha Henriques Updated May 30, 2017 13:38 BST

woolly-hat-burial.jpg

A wealthy Bronze Age man was buried in his finest woolly hat in western Denmark.Karin Margarita Frei, National Museum of Denmark / Antiquity
High-status Bronze Age Danes wore intricate wool clothes that were made hundreds if not thousands of miles away, to show how well-travelled and wealthy they were. The first wide-scale study of wool clothes from the period has revealed how this elite class began to emerge in the 2nd millennium BCE.

The most famous of the elite western Danes is one known as Egtved Girl. She was between 16 and 18 years old when she died in 1370 BCE. She was buried wearing a tunic and skirt, a large bronze belt plate decorated with spirals, a delicate earring, a comb and a dagger.

This finely made outfit was preserved, like many others in the region, thanks to the unique conditions created in her burial mound. A layer of iron that was deposited around the oak coffin she was buried in helped to create an oxygen-free and acidic environment around the body. This killed off any microbes that would otherwise have started to break down the materials.

"You get this type of environment where you can preserve these animal fibres, such as wool, for all this time – over 3,000 years, which is amazing," Karin Frei of the National Museum of Denmark, who has researched the burial of Egtved Girl, told IBTimes UK. Frei's previous research on Egtved Girl revealed that she was born and raised outside of Denmark.

This remarkable preservation has allowed archaeologists to trace the origins of the Bronze Age wools found in burials from this time in Denmark. A new study by Frei has looked at where sheep were grazing when they grew the wool that made up the clothing, comparing burials across western Denmark, including that of Egtved Girl.

There was no method to find the origin of the wool, so she began developing one several years ago based on strontium isotopes. ...

http://www.ibtimes.co.uk/danish-bro..._source=socialflowtwitter&utm_medium=articles
 
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