Current Archaeology: Prehistory

Here are some of the latest discoveries in prehistory covered in the magazine Current Archaeology.

Boxgrove Man

The recent discovery of 'Boxgrove man' revealed a leg bone of a man who may have lived half a million years ago. Current Archaeology went behind the scenes to tell of the fiasco of the press launch, and then estimate the real importance of the discoveries. (CA 138)

Waverley Wood

Waverley Wood once stood by the banks of the great river that flowed across the Midlands before it was truncated by the ice sheets. Here prehistoric man dropped a couple of fine handaxes: Philip Wise describes how these have now been dated to half a million years ago. (CA 133)

Ballygalley

At Ballygalley, in Northern Ireland, a neolithic 'house' is being excavated. However the site is producing so much pottery and so many exotic stone axes that it must have been something rather special, and perhaps rather more than just a 'house'. (CA 134)

Walton

At Walton, on the Radnorshire borders of Wales, an important Neolithic/Bronze Age ritual centre is being revealed by aerial photography. Numerous monuments are being discovered, but when a mound was excavated, it proved to be not a burial site at all, but something rather different ... (CA 143)

Druim Dubh

Cranborne Chase

On Cranborne Chase in Dorset, numerous prehistoric ritual sites cluster round the Neolithic site knows as the 'Dorset cursus'. Down Farm is one of the farms that covers the end of the cursus, and here the farmer, Martin Green, decided to give up farming and do archaeology instead. He has therefore put his entire farm into 'intervention' - courtesy of the EEC - and devotes himself to archaeology. His excavations have revealed a pond barrow, a ring ditch, a henge monument, a timber avenue, a middle Bronze Age settlement and many other sites, and he has been able to build up one of the finest small museums in the country in an old henhouse. (CA 138)

Neolithic on the A41

To the surprise of the archaeologists, work in advance of a new road, the A41 in Hertfordshire, lead to Neolithic discoveries including apparently a Neolithic village. This is in the wrong place. Neolithic man was not supposed to live on heavy clay lands of Hertfordshire, only on the chalk downlands of Wessex. Perhaps Neolithic man was rather tougher than we have believed. (CA 136)

Bronze Age barrows

When is a barrow not a barrow? The Bronze Age is still producing surprises, and in CA 146 threre were two articles, both written entirely independently of each other, which both end up with the same message; that some barrows, at least do not appear to have any primary burials, and may have been used mainly as places of celebration and feasting - not unlike the henge monuments!

The Lockington barrow

Buckskin

And then there is the surprising story of the Buckskin barrow. In 1967, a barrow was excavated at Buckskin, just outside Basingstoke. At the time it appeared to be a rather boring barrow, with no central burial, but it was very carefully excavated, and soil samples were meticulously collected. Now the samples have all been analysed, and the barrow re-interpreted. It was not a burial barrow at all, argue Mike Allen and Barbara Applin, but a feasting centre surrounded by stake circles: a place where agreements were made, contracts drawn up and friendships established and cemented. (CA146)

The Brecon Beacons

Corn Du and Pen-y-fan are two cairns sitting on top of the Brecon Beacons. Unfortunately both are threatened by tourists, who are wearing them away, so they had to be excavated and re-instated. Yet when excavated, they proved to be Bronze Age: the grass was still green underneath, preserved by the compaction of the overlying cairn. (CA 133)

Blawearie

Blawearie is a Bronze Age cairn in the bleak Northumberland uplands, originally excavated by Canon Greenwell. Stan Beckensall describes how the site was tidied up by a team of volunteers, but in the process a completely new archaeological interpretation emerged. (CA 143)

A Face from the past

A cairn near Callanish

In the course of road straightening near Callanish in the Isle of Lewis, a Bronze Age cairn was discovered. This lay a mile away from the famous stone circles, but it was on the alignment of the main avenue. Was it significant? There has been considerable discussion - and indeed controversy - about this; here we present the basic 'facts'. (CA 147)

Linga Fold

In the Orkneys there are large numbers of Neolithic chamber tombs. At Linga Fold, Jane Downes has been excavating Orcadian tombs, but these are not Neolithic but Bronze Age. In addition she has also found what she believes to be a 'mortuary chapel'. (CA142)

Pict's Knowe

Pict's Knowe, near Dumfries, is a large henge monument situated in a rather damp valley bottom. Excavation revealed extensive timber deposits in the waterlogged ditch that surrounded it, including what appeared to be an ard, that is a primitive plough, which has subsequently been radiocarbon-dated to the Iron Age. (CA 141)

The Dover boat

How did prehistoric man cross the channel? In the heart of Dover the first cross channel ferry has been discovered - a Bronze age boat with the timbers "sewn" together. A similar "sewn" boat was discovered at North Ferriby before the war but the architecture of the Dover boat is rather different. It was perhaps a little precarious by today's standards, but it offers a fascinating insight into how Bronze Age man crossed the Channel. (CA 133)

A Bronze Age miner's shovel

On Alderley Edge, in Cheshire, there was a wooden shovel, hanging on the wall in the schoolroom, said to come from one of the old mines. What was its date? In 1953, Alan Garner, then a 17-year old schoolboy, became convinced that it was Bronze Age, but no-one would believe him. Now, 40 years later, radiocarbon dating has proved him right, and Alan Garner, now a famous author, here tells the story of the shovel and how his youthful hunch was vindicated. (CA 137)

Flag Fen

Flag Fen near Peterborough has featured in a number of articles in Current Archaeology. Originally this was thought to be a Bronze Age Lake Village, but this story is too simple. Large numbers of ritual objects have been discovered together with an alignment of timber posts running across the fen. Francis Pryor takes us back into the Bronze Age to read the environment and he then suggests that the site was important as an element of stability in times of change. (CA 137)

A Bronze Age Saltern

One of the most neglected forms of prehistoric industry was salt working. Extensive traces of salt working are known from the Iron Age, but now an extensive saltern has been discovered at Tetney in Lincolnshire dating to the Bronze Age. (CA 136)

The East London Trackways

In East London the Thames foreshore is being tidied up and Tescos are moving in. At two of their stores and at a number of other sites, timber trackways are being discovered in the peat. What were they doing there, leading down to the shore of the Thames? (CA 143)

The White Horse

The White Horse is a prime example of Celtic art, carved into the hillside in Berkshire and scoured white from time immemorial. David Miles has been investigating and the Oxford Laboratory has come up with some new dates based on the new technique of silt dating, which suggest that the White Horse is Bronze Age. Which do you believe? Do you believe in science? Or do you believe that such an obvious example of Celtic Art could not possibly date to the Bronze Age? (CA 142)

Vitrified forts

In Scotland there are a number of hillforts which have been 'vitrified', their ramparts turned glassy by intense burning. Archaeomagnetic dating of six of these forts demonstrated that they had been destroyed between the 2nd century BC and the first century AD. (CA 133)

Navan fort - Emain Macha

In 94 BC Cathbad the Druid decided to immolate the warriors of his tribe. He built a grand wickerwork image in which to burn them but the warriors objected and insisted on a substitute. So they quarried away an old cairn, built a new cairn inside the structure and this cairn was immolated instead. The farmers then came and made offerings of soil and there the cairn remained until it was excavated between 1965 and 1971.
The site is Navan fort, the Emain Macha of the Irish epics. We know the druid's name, because he is named in the Irish epics; we know the precise date, because it is given by tree-ring dating; and at the site itself a new visitor centre has now been opened. Chris Lynn who is writing up the excavation now has a more imaginative story to tell as well as a precise date. (CA 134)

The Snettisham Torcs

The most spectacular Iron Age treasure ever discovered in this country has recently been excavated by the British Museum at Snettisham. This consisted of a large number of torcs, the neck rings that perhaps formed the regalia of one of the royal tribes of the Iceni. But why was it buried? The latest work suggests that it was surrounded by a ditched enclosure, apparently constructed 150 years after the treasure had been deposited. Is this a co-incidence? Or did the treasure really retain its awe and sanctity 150 years later? (CA 135)

The Ratcliffe on Soar shield

A most unusual recent discovery is of an Iron Age shield from Ratcliffe on Soar in Leicestershire. This is not exactly a new discovery - in fact it was discovered almost a century ago in 1895 and has lain in the reserve collections of Leamington Spa Museum. When the reserve collections were recatalogued .... (CA 141)

Brochs and Wheelhouses on the Valtos peninsula

The archaeology of the Western isles (the Outer Hebrides) is dominated by the mysterious and exotic structures known as brochs and wheelhouses. On the Cnip peninsula, on the Isle of Lewis, Edinburgh University, under Professor Dennis Harding has been carrying out long term excavations to investigate these structures: a broch on the Loch na Berie, an island dun on Loch Varavat, and a wheelhouse at Cnip. These are currently the subject of special colour pages on this web.

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