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I’m not quite sure what you’re saying here:
“I prefer to think of sites as primarily graded by their accessibility, and only secondarily by their significance in relation to the overall.”
Ah, sorry, that wasn't clear--what I meant was that more accessible sites have a much easier time at being 'significant' than very inaccessible sites. I'm sure the work at Bouldnor Cliff was groundbreaking, but its significance is caused by the fact that it was possible to do the work there, which was in large part caused by its relative accessibility (as in its proximity to shore, to a large population centre, etc.). Whether it will remain significant as a fuller big picture emerges I don't know, but I think it's unlikely that what we're finding at the moment is going to remain significant given the potential for bigger and more sensational finds, apart from its important role in the advancement of the discipline.
I mentioned Bouldnor Cliff because I worked on it a great deal! Bouldnor changed the chronology of European prehistory; when it was first discovered, what it came to be acknowledged as was so radical that it was dismissed as impossible.
Yes, to scientists who only follow the evidence it must have been that. I'm not a scientist, just an amateur who likes to speculate on very little evidence. I've long thought (like most archaeologists, too, I'm sure) that we've barely scratched the surface, and some of the work that needs to be done in scratching further is to overcome some of the prejudices that arose from earlier work, a bit like how palaeontologists used to put dinosaur bits together wrongly. In particular, I've long suspected that estimates of ancient populations are often much too low, that we (not all of us) underestimate how much humans were affected by disasters in the past, and that some of the assumptions we have about the progress of history are much too linear, because there, too, there was a lot of progress and regression, and so forth.
I also think that the immense length of time that we're talking about makes it very unlikely that certain kinds of technology weren't invented very early on somewhere--obviously not in some mad UFOs-visiting-the-Maya--and then lost again for a long time, with technology waxing and waning, and I think we'll continue to make surprising discoveries on the technological side, things like the Antikythera mechanism, or much more evidence of non-gold metalworking in the Stone Ages, probably usually confined to relatively small areas, and perhaps lost again before eventually being rediscovered and spread further on a greater scale. What I'm actually most curious about from these times is forms of government, but evidence of that is almost impossible to find or conceive of, of course.
Some of the most inaccessible sites could be the most significant; I’ve dived to -100m looking for evidence of prehistoric coastlines and early human dispersal. Such landscapes are very hard to access at the current sea level, yet are hugely important. Indeed, in areas where the interior landscape was inhospitable, those coastal areas would have need the most accessible and heavily exploited.
Yes, that's what I meant. Such sites will be overwhelmingly significant, we just haven't discovered most of them yet. We know of quite a few ancient cities lost to the sea, but there must be so many more. There are some sites off the coast of India that may have been huge cities once upon a time, but they haven't been surveyed properly yet. Hopefully, there, too, remote sensing will play a big role.
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I think you would have enjoyed it.
Definitely! I love that drawing, too.
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thanks @Oliver Schick, this is the terracing profile of the river thames through several ice ages.. the heave from tectonic plate movement, surface temperature changes producing uplift..
what we see today as highgate, ally pally, chilterns etc. northside.. dulwich, crystal palace, north downs etc. southside of the thames valley.
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The ancient northern Thames is an explanation for the Colne Valley,
the river Colne being the western boundary of Middlesex with Berkshire and Buckinghamshire.It's readily apparent that the current Colne could not possibly have carved that wide valley,
separating Harefield from the Chilterns, and left the prodigious quantities of gravels,
now evident from the lakes in former gravel pits. -
I would love to have seen a huge glacial outflow Thames eroding the Goring gap
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@mespilus
i'm no expert, but perhaps the colne valley and lea valley used to flow in a north easterly direction away from London.At some point with geology changes the course of the river thames then followed a new route from Windsor's lakes to where it is today.
perhaps in fifty thousand years our valley will become a canyon, inhabited by coyotes and road runners..
meep meep
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Good maps!
In the Geological Museum in South Kensington, some time ago, there was an interesting map.
As you entered it was in a small display zone that could only be seen of you immediately doubled back on your right hand side. It was, in effect, on the inside face of the wall you had just walked through. It showed a postulated map of the UK as th last Ice Age retreated,
It featured a snout of the 'last' glacier retreating from what I now know as the Colne Valley.
It could account for the huge quantities of gravel, used for the original Wembley, to Heathrow Terminal 5, as a longitudinal terminal moraine.The British Geological Survey map of this area, has on its reverse side, a suggestion of a northerly Thames breaking through the Chilterns and accessing the Colne valley.
Another item I remember from somewhere: The Bristol Channel is too large for the Severn.
A 'Rhine' that flowed across lower Doggerland, along the (reversed) northern Thames might have had the volume to creat the Bristol Channel. -
Some developments concerning metal detectoring:
Over the last two years or so, there were dozens and dozens of articles in the papers about looting, mostly from places in Britain, with a few people going to jail. Looting seems much worse in Iraq and places like that, but it's certainly extremely undesirable for it to increase in Britain, too.
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I forgot to post this, also quite interesting:
https://www.theguardian.com/science/2020/nov/04/dorset-mega-henge-stone-age
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very interesting article @Oliver Schick thanks.
thanks @mespilus
Something else to consider, and it occurred to me when looking at the map circa 20,000 BC. There was a TV documentary a few years ago, suggesting that the last polar ice cap ended at Finchley Road station. A vast hinterland with glaciers beyond.The polar ice cap could have reached a height 100 meters above ground. And extended across prehistoric Britain, Irish Sea, Ireland all the way to North America. And that our hunter gathering forefathers migrated along that polar ice cap, after arriving from Africa and Continental Europe.
Looking for west beers..
without realising it the overground to Richmond fixed that.
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This starts tonight:
https://www.radiotimes.com/tv-programme/e/mv84js/jungle-mystery-lost-kingdoms-of-the-amazon--series-1-episode-1/Which I assume is the series that the Columbian cliff art above was filmed as part of
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That was good to watch, thanks for the heads up @greentricky
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Tonight's episode of Lost Kingdoms of the Amazon featured the cliff art. The items with the indigenous people I find really interesting, even more so in Covid times when they are talking about how Smallpox and flu impacted them.
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Another nice British find:
Just a little annoying that they chose to photograph the cross with the chain wrapped around it. Is there a reason other than to show the chain it was on, e.g. to prevent people from faking it?
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Ah, I didn't think of that, thanks.
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We must lose so much context all the time because of all the looting:
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This shows in a small way what a big deal the Pyramids of Giza still are, i.e. how such small finds are so well-documented, partly because there was so little actually inside the Pyramids, of course (unless, by some miracle, they still find something, but I've been thinking that must have happened before now given the available technology, so I'm not holding out much hope).
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Roman era Greggs uncovered at Pompeii. I remember hearing about this when the counter was first unearthed. Cool that the whole place is pretty well intact.
https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/europe/pompeii-fast-food-italy-romans-b1779244.html
Sorry, there’s probably an article elsewhere that works better on a phone than the Indy but that’s where I spotted it.
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It's really interesting to see that you can imagine such a place since it's kinda similar to todays shops. A fancy one even. The sentence abou the 50 year old man at the child's bed was a bit unnerving though :/
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Lost cities / archaeology / ancient history
Posted by
@Oliver Schick
I mentioned Bouldnor Cliff because I worked on it a great deal! Bouldnor changed the chronology of European prehistory; when it was first discovered, what it came to be acknowledges as was so radical that it was dismissed as impossible.
I’m not quite sure what you’re saying here:
“I prefer to think of sites as primarily graded by their accessibility, and only secondarily by their significance in relation to the overall.”
Some of the most inaccessible sites could be the most significant; I’ve dived to -100m looking for evidence of prehistoric coastlines and early human dispersal. Such landscapes are very hard to access at the current sea level, yet are hugely important. Indeed, in areas where the interior landscape was inhospitable, those coastal areas would have need the most accessible and heavily exploited.