Tag Archives: archaeology

Maybe the Oldest Pagan Fashion Statement

The ongoing excacations at the Mesolithic site of Star Carr in Yorkshire has turned up what is now thought to be the oldest house in Britain—10,500 years.

Archaeologists describe finding “red deer skull tops which were worn as masks.”

“And the artefacts of antler, particularly the antler head-dresses, are intriguing as they suggest ritual activities.”

(Red deer are essentially the same as North American elk.)

So there you have it: antler headdresses and masks go way back.

Despite the recent slump in housing prices, the Star Carr home, originally built for a cost of three flint choppers, is now worth at least fifty bear skins.

Robots, Foreward!

Robots are set to explore the Great Pyramid. Just think, ever since the Napoleon’s scientists put ancient Egypt back on the map of the public imagination during his 1798–1801 campaign, we remain fascinated by this structure.

No one knows what the shafts are for. In 1992, a camera sent up the shaft leading from the south wall of the Queen’s Chamber discovered it was blocked after 60 metres by a limestone door with two copper handles. In 2002, a further expedition drilled through this door and revealed, 20 centimetres behind it, a second door.

“The second door is unlike the first. It looks as if it is screening or covering something,” said Dr Zahi Hawass, the head of the Supreme Council who is in charge of the expedition. The north shaft bends by 45 degrees after 18 metres but, after 60 metres, is also blocked by a limestone door.

Now technicians at Leeds University are putting the finishing touches to a robot which, they hope, will follow the shaft to its end. Known as the Djedi project, after the magician whom Khufu consulted when planning the pyramid, the robot will be able to drill through the second set of doors to see what lies beyond.

Medieval Castle, Medieval Methods

13th-century-style castle under construction in France

The Chateau de Guedelon, currently under construction

The BBC describes an ongoing project in France to build a 13th-century castle using local materials and the tools and techniques of that era.

I am always fascinated by what people learn by building old things in old ways, be they ships (like Tim Severin’s “Brendan boat”) or buildings or whatever.

How They Built Stonehenge?

Maybe the work crews were smaller than we think.

I found that I, working alone, could easily move a 2400 lb. block 300 ft. per hour with little effort, and a 10,000 lb. block at 70 ft. per hour. I also stood two 8 ft., 2400 lb. blocks on end and placed another 2400 lb. block on top. This took about two hours per block. I found that one man, working by himself, without the use of wheels, rollers, pulleys, or any type of hoisting equipment could perform the task.

What, no levitation?

Avebury Pagan Remains to Remain on Display

Although some British Pagans have demanded NAGPRA-style reburial for Neolithic (and thus “Pagan” in some sense) human remains found at the famous ceremonial site of Avebury, English Heritage have decided against doing so.

These Neolithic human remains were excavated in the Avebury area by Alexander Keiller between 1929 and 1935. In 2006, Paul Davies of the Council of British Druid Orders requested their reburial. English Heritage and the National Trust followed the recently-published DCMS process in considering this request, and went out to public consultation in 2009 on a draft report which set out the evidence and different options.

English Heritage and the National Trust have now published a report on the results of this consultation, and a second report on the results of a public opinion survey. Our summary report concludes that the request should be refused for four main reasons:

  • the benefit to future understanding likely to result from not reburying the remains far outweighs the harm likely to result from not reburying them;
  • it does not meet the criteria set out by the DCMS for considering such requests;
  • not reburying the remains is the more reversible option;
  • the public generally support the retention of prehistoric human remains in museums, and their inclusion in museum displays to increase understanding.

I expect that the Pagans for Archaeology group will be pleased.

800 Bags of Roman ‘Shit’

Noted Classics professor Mary Beard visits the sewers and cesspits of Herculaneum, it being one of the two Roman towns buried by the famous eruption of Mount Vesuvius in 79 CE.

A lot of the sieved organic remains are now being studied in Oxford, and they certainly show that the residents were consuming  eggs, nuts, figs and sea-urchins.

Read more about ongoing archaeological work there at Blogging Pompeii.

Most urban dwellers in the Roman empire lived in apartment blocks called insulae, from the Latin word for island.

Watch a  video-recreation of an insula in the Iberian city of Conímbriga (YouTube).

Nova Roma, a group “dedicated to the restoration of classical Roman religion, culture and virtues,”  has its own YouTube channel.

Style note: My headline attempts to copy the BBC News style, wherein certain words are set off in [Am] single quotation marks/[Br] inverted commas  for no discernible purpose except to express some sort of arms’-length, looking-down-the-nose Beeb-oid attitude.

Nothing thrills an archaeologist…

… like a mass grave. Maybe it helps if said grave is 1,000 years old.

To find out that the young men executed were Vikings is a thrilling development. Any mass grave is a relatively rare find, but to find one on this scale, from this period of history, is extremely unusual.

For Any Roman Reconstructionists Reading This

Make sure that you get the night-time garments (or lack of) right.

Around the Pagan Blogosphere

• “Hard versus Soft Polytheism is a False Dichotomy.”

• A recently discovered statue described as the god Odin and welcomed by some reconstructionist Norse Pagans, is–by Viking Period artistic conventions–either a woman or the goddess Freya, says a Swedish archaeologist. 

• The Necronomicon: “It’s like the Bible but different” (YouTube video). Via Plutonica.net.

• At The Soccer Moms’ Guide to Wicca: Unintentionally outed by the school district.

• Something that I wish more people would think about about: When is a wild animal an omen, and when is it just a wild animal?

Cannibalism in ‘Old Europe’?

Archaeologists have found evidence of possible long-term cannibalism at a 7,000-year-old Neolithic settlement in what is now southern Germany.

Human sacrifice at Herxheim is a hypothesis that’s difficult to prove right now, but we have evidence that several hundred people were eaten over a brief period,” [Bruno] Boulestin says. Skeletal markings indicate that human bodies were butchered in the same way as animals.

Other researchers suggest that the people were merely cleaning up the bones of the dead for a ceremonial reburial. But vultures, etc., would do that job for free–and still do in some parts of the world.

But wait, this is Marija Gimbutas’ Old European Culture, the peaceful ancient matriarchies. Were they eating each other?

I think that it is safe to assume that prehistory was much more complicated than we imagine when we look at it through lenses of theory.