November/December issue of British Archaeology out now

Submitted by Andy B on Sunday, 08 October 2006 Page Views: 3579

Mike Pitts introduces the latest issue: Excavation within the Stonehenge world heritage site has revealed up to nine houses, from a time when such structures are extremely rare. The closest parallels may be as far north as Orkney. Julian Thomas says the two largest may have been former homes "venerated and elaborated", or perhaps had been "shrines" from the start. One could have been a chief’s house contemporary with Stonehenge.

On the cover:

Is the English landscape dead?
In a provocative look at the story of the changing English landscape in the 20th century, Trevor Rowley argues that for the first time what we see today is new, and owes little or nothing to what went before. JB Priestley’s “Old England” has become cocooned and polished. Industrial England has all but disappeared, except where absorbed into old England as part of “Theme-Park England”. The new landscape is no longer directly linked to the land on which it lies: it belongs to the modern age, without historical roots.

Other stories include

* Jeremy Clarkson on illegal dig?
In his September 10 Sunday Times column, Jeremy Clarkson described a trip to Botswana on which he and his family joined “an archaeological search party” and “unearthed an early iron age burial ground”. If this is true, say Philip Segadika and Paul Lane, they were breaking the country’s antiquities laws

* Stone age yogurt eaters
The detection of degraded fats in unglazed pottery sherds has led to the discovery that Britain’s first farmers were milking animals 6,000 years ago. It had been doubted that milk was used this early, because adults lose the ability, present in small children, to digest the lactose in raw milk. But butter, cheese and yoghurt contain little lactose, and burial trials show that fats from raw milk decay much faster. If neolithic people were processing milk, this would explain why milk fats survive in cooking pots, and would also have made it possible to avoid the lactose problem, and to store milk products. Milk may have been one of the reasons why sheep, goats and cattle were domesticated.

* Finding the way home
When Tim Vickers was asked to hold a summer school for a group of 11–14 year olds, to introduce them to archaeology and the place where they lived, it was a new challenge. And it was in Luton

* Revealing a lost community
A recent major survey of excavated medieval burials across the country showed a surprising variety of practices. How did this pattern bear up when most of a medieval church cemetery in Leicester was investigated? Tony Gnanaratnam reports on bodies wedged into coffins or laid on beds of charcoal, a mass grave predating the Black Death and bones sorted by people digging their allotments in the 18th century

* Still angry, still campaigning
The campaigning organisation Rescue, founded in 1971 to combat the loss of archaeological heritage due to a then unregulated development industry, looks back on the publication of its 100th newsletter

* Anglo-Saxon brooch mystery
Culture minister David Lammy placed a temporary export bar to allow interested parties to raise £7,000 for a gilded mount and £15,000 for a square-headed brooch. An announcement on the future of these two exceptional Anglo-Saxon brooches is expected as we go to press, and will no doubt be accompanied by photos and a story of the wonderful artefacts. But British Archaeology thinks you should ask, why are their provenances unknown?

* Mick’s Travels
Filming for Time Team took Mick Aston to Anglesey, where he revisits teenage haunts

* Off the record
Eric Houlder considers photography at excavations for press and publicity

REGULARS

* Letters
Phoenicians, zodiac signs, straight tracks and an MP
* On the web
Finding the news, and the Archaeology Data Service
* In view
The naked archaeologist goes off kilter
* Spoilheap
Jeremy Clarkson goes digging and archaeologists take a spin
* Books
Illicit trade, mesolithic Britain and awards short list
* Opinion
David Mattingly has had enough Romanization
* Science
Neolithic farmers milked their animals
* News
Aeroplanes, boats, baths and houses
* Briefing
The comprehensive listing of archaeological activities, with exhibition news
* Council for British Archaeology News
Young archaeologists have been busy
* Editorial
Brian Fagan remembers drinking and a guy called Burkitt

You subscribe and can also read past issues of British Archaeology on their web site.

Note: Ancient houses near Stonehenge astonish archaeologists

Contributor Bio for Andy B: Megalithic Portal Founding Editor.

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