Beakers from Bishop Burton. Displayed in Yorkshire Museum, York.
Image credit: A. Brookes (19.9.2010)
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Temp post showing cropmarks and rough position of the original planned wind turbines.
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History Hit
Video showing the amazing chalk drum from Burton Agnes. The archaeologist who discovered it is interviewed, and you see the drum on display next to its cousins the Folkton Drums. It was found in the grave of three children (the three drums were in the grave of one child). Carbon dating of the site has enabled a more accurate date for the Folkton Drums too.
5,000-year-old chalk drum decorated with motifs was discovered in Yorkshire alongside burial of three children
More info :
The remarkably well preserved bronze shield, with a swirling pattern design, formed part of a unique chariot burial, which also contained the upright skeletons of two ponies found on a building site at Pocklington in 2018.
Its owner, a highly regarded member of his community, was in his late 40s or older when he died, between 320BC to 174BC.
He was given a spectacular send-off, with his body placed in the chariot behind the horses, placed to look as if they were leaping out of the grave.
THOUSANDS of years ago it would have stood proud on the horizon, a striking monument which could be seen for miles. The circular monument lay hidden for centuries under farmland, its existence only hinted at in crop marks, spotted in aerial surveys.
Read more at: yorkshirepost.co.uk/news/ancient-henge-discovered-in-yorkshire-1-8930717
Update on an archaeological dig at Pocklington....
Almost 2,000 years after being buried, the remarkably well-preserved remains of 150 skeletons and their personal possessions have been discovered in a small market town at the foot of the Yorkshire Wolds.
The remains of the burial ground that contained skeletons of people from the middle-iron age Arras culture in Pocklington, east Yorkshire is being hailed as one of the largest and most significant iron age findings of recent times.
Some of the 75 square barrows – burial chambers – contained personal possessions such as jewellery and weapons. Archaeologists have also discovered a skeleton with a shield.
It is believed the site dates to the iron age, which in Britain lasted from 800BC until the time of the Roman conquest, which started in AD43.
cont...
theguardian.com/science/2016/mar/17/hugely-important-iron-age-remains-found-yorkshire-site
Archaeologists say dozens of square barrows found in an East Yorkshire market town contained the skeletons and goods of people from the Arras Culture, living in the region in the Middle Iron Age between the 1st century BC and the Roman invasion.
A set of excavations at Burnby Lane, in Pocklington, have investigated 16 barrows and revealed a further ten during construction works to create housing.
“We already know that the area has prehistoric heritage, so we’re very interested to discover what these findings could reveal about prehistoric society and, of course, what we can learn about our ancestors,” says Paula Ware, of MAP Archaeology Practice.
More information about the Parisi tribe here...
pocklingtonpost.co.uk/news/local/your-article-burial-ground-of-international-importance-1-7172344
Lost but not forgotten....
A BRONZE Age monument has been commemorated after a long-running campaign.
The 4,000-year-old Quernhow burial mound, which was obliterated by the upgrading of the A1(M), has been marked with a plaque and stone by the Quernhow Café, near Ainderby Quernhow, by the Highways Agency.
Archaeologists say the site was “of primary importance in prehistoric times” as it stood on the plain between the three great henges of Thornborough to the north and those on Hutton Moor to the south, accompanied by a number of other tumuli nearby.
When it was unearthed in the 1950s, archaeologists found an imposing flat-topped stone cairn with four small pits in its centre, a number of small cremations and broken remains of pottery, human bones and foods vessels.
Near the centre of the cairn, which was initially damaged by roadworks in the 1950s, was a “curious four poster” of upright stones placed near to its north, south, east and west points.
Former Quernhow Café owner Bryan Lye, said he was delighted to the agency, which completed its £318m Dishforth and Leeming motorway upgrade scheme earlier this year, had agreed to mark the site.
He said: “Quernhow will always have a special place in my heart, but more importantly I am delighted the rich local history now has public recognition and can be remembered for generations to come.”
Archeologist Blaise Vyner said the mound was important as few Bronze Age sites of this kind have been found in the Vale of York.
He said: “There are a large number on the North York Moors and in the Dales, but not here because the population was presumably a lot thinner.
“We know they were used between approximately 2200 BC and 1850 BC, but it’s difficult to say exactly when, how many people were buried, or whether these were only for people of a higher social standing.
“That’s what the food vessels that were found indicate, but it’s a fascinating area to explore.”
A Highways Agency spokesman said: “We share the passion of Bryan and Blaise to ensure local history isn’t forgotten, and we hope the commemorative stone triggers interest and makes café visitors think about who may have stood there before them 4,000 years earlier.”
thenorthernecho.co.uk/news/local/bedale/10062125.Ancient_Quernhow_monument_commemorated/?ref=rss
English pre-history photographic exhibition at The Treasure House, Beverley, East Yorkshire.
A bit of shameless self-promotion here.
Alison and I have an exhibition of our work titled ‘Traces’ at The Treasure House, Beverley, East Yorkshire opening on Saturday 4th August and finishing Saturday 29th September. the link below takes you to a pdf from the museum website and we’re on page 6. If I can find a better link I’ll let you know and if anyone’s in the area do come and have a look. Thanks.
OFFSHORE wind farms could help reveal the ancient secrets of East Yorkshire.
Archaeologists believe plans to connect a network of huge wind farms in the North Sea to an existing sub-station in Cottingham offer the chance to unearth dozens of previously unknown settlements.
The Creyke Beck sub-station will be the connection point to the National Grid for up to 1,700 wind turbines expected to constructed in a 3,500 square-mile area of sea on the Dogger Bank.
A consortium of energy companies behind the ambitious project have yet to decide whether to lay underground cables from the coast to Cottingham or build overhead power lines.
A proposed route has also yet to be finalised.
But an expert from the Humber Archaeology Partnership said recent underground gas and water pipeline schemes in the area had revealed over 50 previously unrecorded settlements, monuments and ancient burial mounds.
Partnership manager Dave Evans said close liaison between project engineers and archaeologists would be essential over the next few years.
“Such an approach has paid dividends on both the Easington to Ganstead gas pipeline and the Easington to Paull gas pipeline,” he said.
“The on-site aspects of these two major schemes were undertaken between 2007 and 2010 and both passed through much the same landscape within the Holderess Plain.”
Mr Evans said before extensive fieldwork was carried out on both schemes, a desk-based survey of known records identified mainly medieval and post-medieval features along the routes.
However, geophysical surveys and subsequent trenching and excavations uncovered over 50 Iron Age and Roman settlements and burial sites.
Archaeologists also discovered evidence of major flint-working site near Wawne thought to date from at least 4000 BC.
In a consultation submission on the offshore wind farm scheme, Mr Evans added: “Precisely because the current proposed cable trenches would pass through much the same landscape, a similar density of archaeological settlement, funerary and early agricultural activity may be expected.
“It is clear that any proposed developments within this large area would have substantial archaeological implications, some of which would be readily apparent from visible and recorded remains, others of which may be currently masked beneath the surviving medieval landscape.”
EAST Yorkshire’s oldest lady has come home – after a 21-year absence.
The Iron Age representation of a woman was sent to experts at the British Museum in 1989.
Staff at Hull Council’s archaeology department assumed it had been returned and was somewhere in their stores.
Manager of Humber Archaeology Partnership Dave Evans decided recently to track it down and found it still at the British Museum. He said: “It’s a joy to have her back.”
yorkshirepost.co.uk/news/Back-home-Iron-Age-figure.6462598.jp
Fragments of femur excavated from an Iron Age burial site in east Yorkshire (England) have been analyzed by the department of archaeological sciences at Bradford University. For scientists, bones such as these contain a key piece of information about ancient societies: what people ate. Remarkably, bones retain a chemical signature of what went into making them in the first place: what it was in the diet that provided the raw materials for the bone to grow. By examining bone in this way, the Bradford researchers, led by Dr Mike Richards, have made a number of significant discoveries. The most intriguing is that around 6,000 years ago Stone Age man in Britain seems suddenly to have stopped eating fish and shellfish. This dietary restriction persisted for the better part of 4,000 years, until the Romans arrived.
Mandy Jay has been examining the diet of people buried at the largest Iron Age cemetery in Britain at Wetwang, on the Yorkshire Wolds. The cemetery dates from the 3rd or 4th century BCE, and contains around 450 people. “The cemetery was used over a period of about 200 years, and there is a very particular pattern to the burials,” says Jay. “There are five chariot burials, where bodies have been buried with chariots. It is assumed that these were the highest-status individuals. There are remains of bodies that were buried under specially constructed mounds, or barrows, which presumably was also indicative of status, and finally bodies buried in the ditches surrounding the barrows – suspected to be the lower status.”
“The question I wanted to ask is whether we could see a difference in diet depending on the assumed status of the individuals,” says Jay. Following isotope-ratio analysis on almost 50 samples, Jay has concluded that there is no difference between the three groups in terms of the source of their protein. “All of the samples showed quite a lot of animal protein in the diet,” she says. The proportion of animal and plant protein remained similar throughout the period that the cemetery was being used. This suggests that the community was highly economically stable over this time, with the same farming practices persisting for two centuries. “The other thing that we can say with some confidence is that there is no evidence of any marine protein having been consumed,” says Jay. “Things like fish and shellfish were absent from the diet.” This fits in with a recent finding by Dr Richards that people simply did not eat seafood at this point in history.
“We know that about 6,000 years ago, during the Neolithic period, there was a revolution in the way people lived. People stopped being nomadic hunter-gatherers and started to farm animals and crops, and live in villages.” said Dr Richards. There were big cultural as well as economic changes at this time. Domesticated animals were brought over from the Continent, and wheat and barley appeared. Pottery began to be made, and elaborate burial monuments started to appear. “From a dietary point, before this time there was only wild food,” says Dr Richards. “If you do isotope analysis of bones found at coastal sites, you find evidence of a large amount of marine food in the diet. But after about 4,000 BCE suddenly there is no marine food in the diet. People simply stopped eating fish and shellfish.”
The reasons for this are not clear. One school of thought suggests that a shift in climate at that time, causing sea levels to rise, made fishing difficult. Other archaeologists think that the advent of farming made the food resource much more secure – there was no need to harvest wild food. Dr Richards believes that the radical change in diet reflected larger changes in society. “It coincides with the appearance of pottery and of big monuments and new burial practices,” he says. “My hunch is that there was a spread of a new kind of belief system, a new way of looking at the world, and a big part of that could have been a change in diet. But it is rare that you see such sudden changes.”
Fish seems not to have appeared again on the menu until the Romans arrived, 4,000 years later. The pattern is confirmed in Jay’s findings. She has looked at samples of Iron Age bone from two coastal sites, in Cornwall and East Lothian. These, too, are devoid of any evidence of a marine diet. “We know that the technology for fishing existed and you would have thought that a ready source of food would be exploited. It might have been that seafood in some way became taboo. Even now there are dietary taboos – for example we balk at the thought of eating horsemeat or dog, but these are eaten in some societies. In fact we know that people in the Iron Age did eat dogs and horses.” says Jay.
Source: The Independent (14 January 2004)
(from the Yorkshire Post)
ARCHAEOLOGISTS believe they have solved a 50-year-old riddle about Iron Age remains in the Yorkshire Wolds.
For years they were puzzled by lines stretching more than 16 miles across chalky hillside near the village of Weaverthorpe.
Thought to be Iron Age crop markings, the lines are now believed to be the remains of a huge cattle ranching operation dating from the second century BC.
The lines were discovered by aerial photography in the 1950s and baffled experts until English Heritage aerial investigator Dave MacLeod – working with three other archaeologists, Mark Horton, of Bristol University, Jo Caruth, of Suffolk County Council, and Melanie Giles, of University College, Dublin – took another look.
“Essentially we are looking at the remains of a highly-sophisticated cattle business that is more reminiscent of the High Chaparral, rather than small-scale peasant farming,” said Mr MacLeod.
“Clearly thousands of cattle were being herded.
“Looking at our aerial photographs we can see that the Yorkshire Wolds are covered in a mass of ancient markings, hinting that the rural population 2,000 years ago wasn’t too much different from that today.
“It paints a vastly different picture of the Iron Age. These people were engaged in specialised farming and had the stability, resources and expertise to ranch on a much bigger scale than most people realise.”
The archaeologists will reveal their findings in the BBC2 series Time Flyers in a programme titled Reading Between the Lines, to be broadcast on Thursday.
The Time Flyers team used aerial archaeology techniques combined with ground excavations to examine the lines.
Some of the more fanciful theories for the interconnecting lines, which are broken by huge “funnels”, gaps 100m wide, suggested they were part of a Celtic purification ritual which involved cattle being driven between fires.
“The funnels channelled livestock into broad droveways leading down to the settlements along the Gypsey Race, which is still the only reliable water source on the Wolds,” said Mr MacLeod.
“The cattle would have been driven back up and out of the funnels to the higher pasture to graze and brought down for water twice a day. We think the funnels are part of a much bigger system stretching over 20km.”
He added: “None of these structures survive above ground, so the only way we can understand the scale of what we are dealing with is through interpretation and mapping of thousands of aerial photographs.”
The lines seen in growing crops are the remnants of 6ft-wide ditches.
25 October 2002
Website about the valley of the River Foulness in East Yorkshire since the Old Stone Age – but mostly about Iron Age times, when it was home to one of Britain’s oldest and largest prehistoric iron industries. You can choose the depth of information you want (basic/intermediate/research) on the front page.