Uproar in the Daily Mail. Developers are planning to move London Stone a way down the road.
Most of you won't know about London Stone. It's a lump of limestone in Cannon Street. It's been there for a long time - Shakespeare mentions it. Some say it's Roman, some Druidic. Needless to say, some think it's a sacrificial stone. Needless to say, "some" in this context means "Blake".
It's sat in a little cage and it's easy to walk past and you don't even notice it as your rush past - which is true for so many truly great things in London. I don't want it moved up the road - I want it where it is, nestling there, watching the centuries go by. And yes, I know it's been moved around in the past. But I don't care.
h/t for the story (I don't read the Mail, myself) to Pagans for Archaeology. But if you want to hear from the Stone itself, you'll have to go here.
Where Albion slept beneath the Fatal Tree
And the Druids golden Knife,
Rioted in human gore,
In Offerings of Human Life
They groan'd aloud on London Stone
They groand aloud on Tyburns Brook
Albion gave his deadly groan,
And all the Atlantic Mountains shook
Showing posts with label Archaeology. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Archaeology. Show all posts
Saturday, 28 January 2012
Saturday, 31 December 2011
Clearing out the Garage - the Archaeological Report
I'm pleased to release the official archaeological report from the excavation of the Beaker Garage. We had just three days to clear out the garage, prior to hoping to get a couple of cars parked in it in the New Year.
The initial excavation revealed the sort of things you expect on the top layer of a garage - empty cardboard boxes from various electrical devices, old car tyres, a couple of bikes someone was hoping to get round to fixing, and an old fridge-freezer that has been "on its way to the dump" for several years.
Just below the carrier bags that underlay this stratum, we found Burton's old Harley Davidson. He bought it during his second, "difficult", mid-life crisis, rode it once, was terrified and put it at the back of the garage to avoid temptation. He was so pleased he went off to ride it round the grounds.
As we dug down we found evidence of a tea light-using community, as evidenced by thousands of half-burnt tea lights and old matches. We suspect that they may have had a particular fondness for Mother Julian of Norwich, to judge by the number of hazelnuts they had piled up - certainly they weren't eating them. They also used a variety of sandstone, limestone and mud-stone pebbles in worship, leaving us to believe that these people may have been the origin of the traditional Beaker saga, "When Hnaef had a holiday in Dorset". A copy of "The Hymns of Sydney Carter" could be found in this layer with burn marks and a meat skewer driven into it, leading us to think it may have been ceremonially sacrificed.
Under an unexpected layer of Betamax videos - suggesting we were dealing with a community that habitually made the wrong choices - we uncovered a civilisation so incredibly old that they still thought that Filofaxes were a pretty neat idea. However the Filofax evidence was mixed up with some broken Go-Go Hamsters and a collection of Pokemon cards, leading us to think that what we were looking at was a previous, failed attempt to get the garage cleared. The evidence being so badly contaminated - we found a Spectrum 48K, a hula-hoop and a Rubik's Cube in the same layer at one point - we had to progress carefully using small trowels and brushes. The skull of Piltdown Man we found in this layer was almost certainly a fake, and there's certainly no way he would ever have used the Philips Radiogram.
So we are pleased that the evidence has been fully analysed. We have discovered that the garage has been in use continuously for anything up to 50 years, by a series of peoples who combined being incredibly profligate with the goods they used, with never wanting to thrown anything away just in case it came in handy. In deference to their sacred memory, we've loaded the lot up in a series of skips and sent it for landfill.
Meanwhile, we're very excited about the chance to use the garage for parking cars in, which we're pretty sure was their original purpose. And we're going to be parking those cars in the garage, just as soon as Hnaef has removed all the boxes, expanded polystyrene and old wrapping paper that he's parked in there "for a week or so, so I can get the front room clear after Christmas". And once Bernie has removed the old cooker that he's just cleared out to be replaced with his new exciting Beaker peat stove. And when we've worked out whether we can fix Burton's Harley, which he's just ridden into a tree. Thankfully, being Burton, he was only doing about 4mph at the time.
In fact, from where I'm standing, the garage looks just as bad as it did before we started. Maybe next year.
The initial excavation revealed the sort of things you expect on the top layer of a garage - empty cardboard boxes from various electrical devices, old car tyres, a couple of bikes someone was hoping to get round to fixing, and an old fridge-freezer that has been "on its way to the dump" for several years.
Just below the carrier bags that underlay this stratum, we found Burton's old Harley Davidson. He bought it during his second, "difficult", mid-life crisis, rode it once, was terrified and put it at the back of the garage to avoid temptation. He was so pleased he went off to ride it round the grounds.
As we dug down we found evidence of a tea light-using community, as evidenced by thousands of half-burnt tea lights and old matches. We suspect that they may have had a particular fondness for Mother Julian of Norwich, to judge by the number of hazelnuts they had piled up - certainly they weren't eating them. They also used a variety of sandstone, limestone and mud-stone pebbles in worship, leaving us to believe that these people may have been the origin of the traditional Beaker saga, "When Hnaef had a holiday in Dorset". A copy of "The Hymns of Sydney Carter" could be found in this layer with burn marks and a meat skewer driven into it, leading us to think it may have been ceremonially sacrificed.
Under an unexpected layer of Betamax videos - suggesting we were dealing with a community that habitually made the wrong choices - we uncovered a civilisation so incredibly old that they still thought that Filofaxes were a pretty neat idea. However the Filofax evidence was mixed up with some broken Go-Go Hamsters and a collection of Pokemon cards, leading us to think that what we were looking at was a previous, failed attempt to get the garage cleared. The evidence being so badly contaminated - we found a Spectrum 48K, a hula-hoop and a Rubik's Cube in the same layer at one point - we had to progress carefully using small trowels and brushes. The skull of Piltdown Man we found in this layer was almost certainly a fake, and there's certainly no way he would ever have used the Philips Radiogram.
So we are pleased that the evidence has been fully analysed. We have discovered that the garage has been in use continuously for anything up to 50 years, by a series of peoples who combined being incredibly profligate with the goods they used, with never wanting to thrown anything away just in case it came in handy. In deference to their sacred memory, we've loaded the lot up in a series of skips and sent it for landfill.
Meanwhile, we're very excited about the chance to use the garage for parking cars in, which we're pretty sure was their original purpose. And we're going to be parking those cars in the garage, just as soon as Hnaef has removed all the boxes, expanded polystyrene and old wrapping paper that he's parked in there "for a week or so, so I can get the front room clear after Christmas". And once Bernie has removed the old cooker that he's just cleared out to be replaced with his new exciting Beaker peat stove. And when we've worked out whether we can fix Burton's Harley, which he's just ridden into a tree. Thankfully, being Burton, he was only doing about 4mph at the time.
In fact, from where I'm standing, the garage looks just as bad as it did before we started. Maybe next year.
Saturday, 10 December 2011
World's oldest mattresses found
The History Blog notes that the world's oldest mattresses have been found in South Africa, dating from c 77 thousand years ago.
I'm afraid they've missed one of the key findings. At about halfway down the archaeologists found the remains of the world's oldest teenager - those remains being a pizza box and a can of cola. When the scientists reached this layer, the teenager himself mumbled "yes, all right - I'll get up in a minute", and went back to sleep.
I'm afraid they've missed one of the key findings. At about halfway down the archaeologists found the remains of the world's oldest teenager - those remains being a pizza box and a can of cola. When the scientists reached this layer, the teenager himself mumbled "yes, all right - I'll get up in a minute", and went back to sleep.
Sunday, 22 May 2011
Shattered dreams and reconstructing visions
I still can't get over the way my assumptions have been overthrown, my whole Weltanschauung made a mockery of by this turn of events.
I refer, of course, to the discovery of an Early Bronze Age battle site in Germany. Here at the Beaker Folk of Husborne Crawley we've always assumed that the people of the Bronze Age were gentle, wise and spiritual. Living in peace with their neighbours, the environment and themselves. We don't have any evidence for this, but it fits our philosophy on life. The discovery of the site of a major battle is a real shock. What on earth were these gentle folk doing, hitting each other with lumps of wood shaped like baseball bats and croquet mallets? I mean - it sounds like the last time we had an expressive-form Sports Day.
Even the belief in their respect for the environment is destroyed when I consider that they flung the bodies of the dead into the river - polluting the water course and depositing the bodies way downstream.
I have only two hopes to cling to here. The first is that this was the site of Beaker People defending their community bravely against some genuinely evil outsiders - such as the Corded Wear Folk, or the Guinea Pig Folk of Nordrhein-Westphalia.
But the other - well, this is an outside shot, but depends upon wishful thinking to such a degree that it may actually be true. The scientists have found evidence of "a millet diet". Would it be so far-fetched to think that these, gentle, peaceful Beaker Folk died defending their homes against an attack of evil giant budgerigars? Scientists have, so far, been unable to disprove this theory. So I think we can safely assume it's true.
I refer, of course, to the discovery of an Early Bronze Age battle site in Germany. Here at the Beaker Folk of Husborne Crawley we've always assumed that the people of the Bronze Age were gentle, wise and spiritual. Living in peace with their neighbours, the environment and themselves. We don't have any evidence for this, but it fits our philosophy on life. The discovery of the site of a major battle is a real shock. What on earth were these gentle folk doing, hitting each other with lumps of wood shaped like baseball bats and croquet mallets? I mean - it sounds like the last time we had an expressive-form Sports Day.
Even the belief in their respect for the environment is destroyed when I consider that they flung the bodies of the dead into the river - polluting the water course and depositing the bodies way downstream.
I have only two hopes to cling to here. The first is that this was the site of Beaker People defending their community bravely against some genuinely evil outsiders - such as the Corded Wear Folk, or the Guinea Pig Folk of Nordrhein-Westphalia.
But the other - well, this is an outside shot, but depends upon wishful thinking to such a degree that it may actually be true. The scientists have found evidence of "a millet diet". Would it be so far-fetched to think that these, gentle, peaceful Beaker Folk died defending their homes against an attack of evil giant budgerigars? Scientists have, so far, been unable to disprove this theory. So I think we can safely assume it's true.
Sunday, 20 February 2011
Time Team - the Disappointment
Yes, it was a bad day.
Tony Robinson and his friends (is it me or do the Time Team archaeologists get younger and more female as you get older?) came along and at first were very excited.
The lovely Greensand they knew about - a sandstone layer that is a gorgeous green when first hewn. And that, of course, makes the church look so lovely. But the "Husborne Crawley layer" - small stones, with an intermixed organic matter showing signs of burning - they assumed at first that it was proof that the Late Stone Age Husborne Crawley (populated by the original Beaker People) had suffered a shocking invasion, and was burnt to the ground.
Sadly not. Further investigation revealed that the small stones were from our "Encountering the Spirit of the Pebble" service a couple of years ago, while the burnt organic matter was deposited by the "Night of a Thousand Tea Lights" explosion. There's some very grumpy archaeologists headed back off down the A421 towards the Rollright Stones, and we're not gonna be on telly after all.
Tony Robinson and his friends (is it me or do the Time Team archaeologists get younger and more female as you get older?) came along and at first were very excited.
The lovely Greensand they knew about - a sandstone layer that is a gorgeous green when first hewn. And that, of course, makes the church look so lovely. But the "Husborne Crawley layer" - small stones, with an intermixed organic matter showing signs of burning - they assumed at first that it was proof that the Late Stone Age Husborne Crawley (populated by the original Beaker People) had suffered a shocking invasion, and was burnt to the ground.
Sadly not. Further investigation revealed that the small stones were from our "Encountering the Spirit of the Pebble" service a couple of years ago, while the burnt organic matter was deposited by the "Night of a Thousand Tea Lights" explosion. There's some very grumpy archaeologists headed back off down the A421 towards the Rollright Stones, and we're not gonna be on telly after all.
Sunday, 10 January 2010
An older post than Stonehenge
I would like to thank Hnaef and Ukviewer for their sincere birthday wishes, and also Drayton Parslow for his. Drayton assures me that the card was meant to do that, but I suspect that actually the device malfunctioned.
With time and - one hopes - maturity comes a certain recherching of temps perdu. And it was delightful on this of all days to find an old bulletin on druidic matters I would like to share with you.
I owe the tip of the archdruidical pointy hat to Stroppy Rabbit, always a thoughtful commenter on neo-pagan matters. But the page itself on ley line congestion is here.
With time and - one hopes - maturity comes a certain recherching of temps perdu. And it was delightful on this of all days to find an old bulletin on druidic matters I would like to share with you.
I owe the tip of the archdruidical pointy hat to Stroppy Rabbit, always a thoughtful commenter on neo-pagan matters. But the page itself on ley line congestion is here.
Monday, 20 October 2008
A case of mistaken Identity
OK, I can see that it was an easy mistake to make. If you're slightly denser than the living gods that the Guinea Pig Worshippers of Stewartby worship.
Álvaro Arbeloa is the right-back for Liverpool Football Club.
Arbor Low is a stone circle in the Peak District. It does not sign autographs, nor is it a friend of "Stevie G". It doesn't overlap Dirk Kuyt. It just kind of lays there, looking like a knocked-over henge monument.
Hope that clears up any confusion.
Álvaro Arbeloa is the right-back for Liverpool Football Club.
Arbor Low is a stone circle in the Peak District. It does not sign autographs, nor is it a friend of "Stevie G". It doesn't overlap Dirk Kuyt. It just kind of lays there, looking like a knocked-over henge monument.
Hope that clears up any confusion.
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