Venutius

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Bishopdale

Bishopdale lies within the northern limb of the Askrigg Block, its underlying bedrock dominated by Carboniferous limestones with intermittent shales and sandstones of the Yoredale Series. The Great Scar Limestone, a thick, massive unit formed around 330 million years ago in a shallow tropical sea, underpins the dale’s steeper scarps and cliff lines, while the thinner-bedded limestones and intervening mudstones of the Yoredale Group create the characteristic terraced flanks on which many of Bishopdale’s field systems are laid out

Kilburn White Horse

Kilburn White Horse

The Kilburn White Horse is a large chalk hill figure cut into the limestone of Roulston Scar, the steep escarpment that defines the western edge of the Hambleton Hills in North Yorkshire. Carved in November 1857 and measuring roughly 97 by 67 metres, it was conceived not as an ancient relic but as a deliberate Victorian creation

Castle Dykes Henge, Thoralby – North Yorkshire

With kind permission of YAAMAPPING

Castle dykes it is a small class one henge, 90m across, perched on the high ground up in the North Yorkshire dales. The bank survives up to 1.5 m high in places, and the ditch up to 3 m deep. Early 20th-century reports (1908) noted its intact form, and recent LiDAR-based surveys have confirmed its classic henge profile with minimal later disturbance.

Guide: Ritual/Ceremonial Mounds

Marlborough mound 20240518 looking southwards

These are raised platforms created first and foremost for cult, procession, assembly or conversion—not for fortification or routine boundary-making. They tend to be much more significant and monumental than other mounds and raised platforms. Some are the largest structures known of their type. In Britain, possibly the best known example is Silbury Hill in Wiltshire.

Guide: Spoil Heaps

Ochre mine in the Lion Cavern in Eswatini southern Africa - Credit - Jörg Linstädter

These are artificial hills made from the unwanted rock, shale and tailings that come up with coal, metal ore, stone or clay when it is being mined or quarried. Because extractive industry is both deep and long-lived, single collieries or pits can generate tens of millions of cubic metres of spoil; pushed out by locomotive, conveyor or tippler wagon and dumped in successive layers, the piles quickly become a distinctive landform.

Guide: Hillfort Mounds of Europe

Trelleborg airphoto

Guide: Common Features of Iron Age Hillforts This article attempts to serve as a guide for many of the features of the hillforts found in Britain, in Read more Guide: Iron-Age minting: Ceramic Pellet-mould trays This article explores the most tangible evidence we possess for indigenous minting north of the Humber: the smashed ceramic “pellet-mould” …

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Guide: Barrows

royal kurgans barrow, interior

A barrow is a mound of earth and/or stones raised over a grave or group of graves. Used from the Neolithic through to the Iron Age (roughly 4000 BCE to 500 CE), barrows were often constructed to honour elite individuals, such as tribal leaders, warriors, or chieftains. They are frequently found singly or in cemeteries known as barrow fields.

Guide: SAR Doppler Tomography

a close up of a red and white pattern on a white background

Synthetic-aperture radar (SAR) already relies on Doppler shifts: echoes from scatterers in a side-looking radar beam have slightly different frequencies as the platform flies past, and focusing those micro-shifts yields a two-dimensional image.

Guide: Classification of Henge Monuments

Avebury Landscape

Archaeologists use the word “henge” for later-Neolithic and earliest Bronze-Age earthen rings whose ditch lies inside the bank, creating a deliberately bounded interior. The term itself was coined in 1932 by Kendrick; it was refined in the 1950s by Richard Atkinson, whose system still frames most discussion.

Drumanagh Promontory Fort – First Ever Intact Roman Pot Found in Ireland

Roman samian ware

RTE Ireland has reported that more recently they have made yet another remarkable discovery—an intact Roman pot. the first one to be uncovered on Irish soil, and providing more tantalising clues about ancient Roman-Irish interactions.

Although the Roman Empire they never reached Ireland (except, seemingly, in myth). That does not mean, that Roman influence and goods did enter Ireland, and it means that Drumanagh continues to headline as one of Irelands most tantalising archaeological sites for that same reason – exactly what were the Romans doing in Ireland?

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