Excavation of prehistoric tomb expected to start

The excavation of the prehistoric site is expected to start on Monday

An archaeological excavation of a prehistoric tomb in Alderney is due to begin later, Guernsey Ports says.

The site, known as Houguette de la Taille, is located outside the current perimeter of Alderney Airport.

It is one of three historic sites identified by planners as part a wider refurbishment of the airport, which was granted in May.

One of the conditions of that planning approval was written documentation of an investigation into any archaeological remains, before any construction work started.

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How hard working 'Lady of the Little Orme' was years ahead of her time

This 5,500-year-old skeleton named Blodwen on display at Amgueddfa Llandudno Museum 

(Image: Amgueddfa Llandudno Museum)

The roles of men and women have become more equal in recent decades with women excelling in traditionally male-dominated industries such as science, technology, the military and football. Indeed the pensionable age in the UK for both is now the same at 66.

But researchers have found a Neolithic woman who more than pulled her weight with heavy lifting as long ago as 3,500BC. Her remains, which were discovered in a crevice on Llandudno's Little Orme in the 19th Century, shed light on women's emancipation as long ago as the Stone Age.

Scores of history buffs will be able to learn all about this Lady of the Little Orme at Llandudno Museum this year. Her remaining bones are among an astonishing 9,000 artefacts at the centre, although there isn't room for all of them to be on display.

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Bones Reveal Bog Man's Secret Life Before His Violent End in a Foreign Land

Vittrup man's teeth reveal his maritime origins.
Arnold Mikkelsen/Fischer et al., PLOS One, 2024)

Violently bludgeoned to death and left in a Danish bog, the Stone Age individual known as 'Vittrup man' was discovered in 1915 by peat cutters in the midst of harvest.

His murder – thought to have been part of a ritualized sacrifice – occurred sometime between 3300 and 3100 BCE, during the height of the local Funnelbeaker culture.

Archeologists now have the strongest evidence yet that this is not where his life began.

The first hint that Vittrup man was a foreigner in Denmark came from a study investigating Mesolithic and Neolithic gene pools of Eurasia.

This revealed that Vittrup man's DNA was distinct from the other skeletons from this time found in the area, which prompted archeologist Anders Fischer from the University of Gothenburg in Sweden and his colleagues to investigate further.

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11,000-year-old Stone Age structure discovered underwater

 

Researchers have found a prehistoric man-made stone wall that could be dating back some 11,000 years just off the coast of modern-day Germany. Jacob Geersen, a marine geologist now at the Leibniz Institute for Baltic Sea Research, found the wall during a night lecture with his students who were mapping with echosounders a swath of seafloor off the coast of Germany. “The idea would be to create an artificial bottleneck with a second wall or with the lake shore,” Geersen told the Guardian. According to experts, the stone wall is more than half a mile long and dates back to the Stone Age.

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4,000-year-old copper dagger found in Poland

A rare copper dagger dating back more than 4,000 years has been discovered in a forest near Jarosław, southeastern Poland. Shaped like a flint dagger from the period, it is just over four inches long, but that is actually a large dagger compared to similar such finds because the metal was hard to come by and very valuable. This is the oldest dagger ever discovered in the Subcarpathian Voivodeship (province).

The blade was discovered last November by metal detectorist Piotr Gorlach from the Historical and Exploration Association Grupa Jarosław, an organization of local history enthusiasts who search for archaeological materials with the permission of government heritage officials. Gorlach was looking for military objects from the World Wars that day without success. He had given up and was heading towards his car when his detector signaled the presence of metal under the forest floor. He saw the metal piece aged with a green patina and quickly realized it was much older than shrapnel from World War I. He alerted the voivodeship’s conservator of monuments and archaeologists from the Orsetti House Museum in Jarosław were deployed to examine the find.

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These Ancient Remains and Relics Reveal Poland’s Bronze Age Rituals

Though the lake near Papowo Biskupie is now drained and dry, nearby lakes (including Lake Starogrodzkie in Poland’s Chełmno County) provide a picture of what the ancient waters could’ve looked like when bodies and bronze treasures were deposited beneath the surface.
(Credit: Mrugas PHOTOgraphy/Shutterstock)

There’s no better place to put bodies and bronze treasures than in the bed of a small, shallow lake. At least, that’s what the Bronze Age people of Poland believed, according to a new article in Antiquity.

Published in the journal in January, the article reports that researchers recently found a stash of Bronze Age remains and relics that trace as far back as 1000 B.C.E. Recovered from an ancient, long-lost lake in an archaeological area near Papowo Biskupie in Poland, the stash challenges common conceptions about Poland’s past and suggests that the site possessed some sort of ancient, sacrificial significance.

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Stone Age 'megastructure' under Baltic Sea sheds light on strategy used by Paleolithic hunters over 10,000 years ago

Northern and Central Europe in the Late Upper Palaeolithic (white areas = ice-co

Archaeologists have identified what may be Europe's oldest human-made megastructure, submerged 21 meters below the Baltic Sea in the Bay of Mecklenburg, Germany. This structure—which has been named the Blinkerwall—is a continuous low wall made from over 1,500 granite stones that runs for almost a kilometer. The evidence suggests it was constructed by Paleolithic people between 11,700 and 9,900 years ago, probably as an aid for hunting reindeer.

The archaeologists investigating the Bay of Mecklenburg used a range of submarine equipment, sampling methods and modeling techniques to reconstruct the ancient lake bed and its surrounding landscape. This revealed that the Blinkerwall stands on a ridge running east to west, with a 5km-wide lake basin a few meters below the ridge to the south.

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Archaeology Classes on the Oxford Experience summer school 2024

Tom Quad, Christ Church, Oxford University – image David Beard

The Oxford Experience summer school is held at Christ Church, Oxford. 

Participants stay in Christ Church and eat in the famous Dining Hall, that was the model for the Hall in the Harry Potter movies.

This year there are twelve classes offered in archaeology.

You can find the list of courses here…

Ice Age Hunters in Europe Weren't One People but Multiple Cultures, Study Discovers

The Venus of Brassempouy: One of the earliest known realistic representations of a human face. From the Gravettian, probably made 26,000 to 24,000 years ago
Credit: Jean-Gilles Berizzi

From our earliest days, humans have split off into cultures: large groups that share beliefs, customs and behaviors. Culture is a powerful social tool that can create a sense of common purpose, help us accomplish great projects, or survive in the toughest conditions. It is also a concept that can easily move us to hate and attack those we perceive as being different from us.

Just how far back in human (pre)history this fragmentation goes is now highlighted by a study that looks at cultural differences between European hunter gatherers living just before the peak of the last Ice Age.

The research, published Monday in Nature Human Behaviour, analyzed statistical differences between the ornaments used by the Gravettians, an Upper Paleolithic culture that spanned from Iberia to modern-day Russia from roughly 34,000 to 24,000 years ago.

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Excavated dolmen in Sweden one of the oldest in Scandinavia

The chamber under excavation. East side mold removed. The plastic tubes are samples for environmental DNA.
Credit: Karl-Göran Sjögren

Last summer, archaeologists from Gothenburg University and Kiel University excavated a dolmen, a stone burial chamber, in Tiarp near Falköping in Sweden. The archaeologists judge that the grave has remained untouched since the Stone Age. First analysis results now confirm that the grave in Tiarp is one of the oldest stone burial chambers in Sweden.

"It's an early grave which dates to the Early Neolithic period, about 3500 BCE," says archaeologist Karl-Göran Sjögren. However, the odd thing is that parts of the skeletons of the people buried are missing.

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Enormous Storegga Tsunami Wiped Out Communities In Stone Age Britain

 

A research team from the University of York has discovered there was a large population decline in northern Britain at the same time when the Storegga slide occurred between 6,225 and 6,170 B.C. The Storegga Slide is the largest known exposed submarine landslide in the world, which triggered a tsunami that inundated the coasts of northern Europe. Scientists think the number of deaths was so high that it may have led to a massive dip in Stone Age Britain's population.

Northern Britain had a small population of about 1,000 people at this time. Still, according to Dr. Jon Hill, an environmental scientist at the University of York who led the research, the tsunami caused a tragedy, and the consequences were severe.

"A giant tsunami of this size would have devastated Stone Age coastal communities as it occurred in the autumn, when they would have been gathering resources for the winter. The scale of the waves coming in would have been completely different to anything experienced by the people living there—a truly terrifying experience," Dr. Hill said.

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3000-Year-Old Shipwreck Emerges From Bottom of Mediterranean Sea

Ancient shipwreck from the Mediterranean Sea.
Credit: Philippe Groscaux / Mission Adriboats / CNRS / CCJ

The Zambratija, the oldest boat in the Mediterranean built entirely by hand, is about to begin a new phase in its long history. This ancient shipwreck, lying on the Adriatic seafloor in Croatia for thousands of years, is now getting ready for a special trip to France.

There, experts will work to preserve and study it. This historic boat was found in the Bay of Zambratija close to Umag on Croatia’s Istrian peninsula.

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Hoard of Bronze Age jewelry discovered in Poland was part of ancient water burial ritual, study finds

A selection of Bronze Age jewelry found at a dry lake bed in Poland.
(Image credit: A. Piasecka; Antiquity Publications Ltd.)

Archaeologists in Poland have discovered a collection of more than 550 pieces of Bronze Age jewelry that were once part of an ancient burial ritual.

Known as Papowo Biskupie, the dried-out lake bed site was occupied from roughly 1200 to 450 B.C. by the Chełmno group, a community from the larger Lusatian culture that lived in northern Europe during the Late Bronze Age and Early Iron Age, according to a study published Wednesday (Jan. 24) in the journal Antiquity.

The Lusatians are best known for their ritual depositions of metal hoards in bodies of water. However, the Chełmno group was not known for engaging in this practice.

But the new jewelry finding, made by metal detectorists in 2023, upends that perception.

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