Stonehenge has always been enigmatic, due to its use of those definitive morticed trilithons, all of which where squared of, more like the structures of the Maltese temples and other stone structures closer to Africa, as opposed to those of the rest of Britain and most of the wider North-west European ritual landscape.
Category: Guide
What might Stonehenge Mean? Dartmoor and Carnac add to the Picture
- Filed under Barrow, Bell Barrow, Britain, Bronze Age, France, Funerary Urns, Hair Braid - Ring, Landscape feature, Megalithic, Mining, Neolithic, News, Radiocarbon Dating, Smelting, Stone alignment, Stone Circle, Stone Row, Wales
- amesbury, Anglesey, archer, boltby, Boltby Scar, britain, Bronze Age, Carnac, Dartmoor, France, Gold Tresses, Great Orme, Hill Fort, Kirkhaugh, Llanymynech, Nabta Playa, nenthead, Neolithic, North Yorkshire, Parys Mountain, Powys, Rouslton Moor, Shropshire, Stonehenge, Tabular Hills, wales, Yorkshire Moors
- 4 comments
Jun 27
Prehistoric mounds, cairns and boundary earthworks in Coverdale
- Filed under Archaeology, Barrow, Boundary Marker, Brigantia, Brigantia England, Bronze Age, Burial Mound, Dark Ages, Dark Ages Brigantia, Early Christian, Early Medieval, Guide, Iron Age, Landscape Archaeology, Landscape feature, Motte and Bailey, Mound, New Sites, Roman, Terraces, Visible Remains
A gazetteer of probable prehistoric mounds, cairns and boundary earthworks in Coverdale. It is not complete and is still being researched.
Jun 16
Hillforts: Defence or Ritual? – Part 1
- Filed under Archaeology, Brigantia, Brigantia England, Britain, Critical Thinking, Defensive Structures, Earthworks, Guide, Hill Fort, Univallet Hillfort, Vitrified Fort
Over the last five years Iron-Age specialists have been re-examining what British hillforts were really for. The question is no longer just “fortress or farm?” but whether many of them were built first and foremost as places of gathering, display and ritual.
- Ad Gefrin, Barry Cunliffe, battle, Bowden, Castle Dykes, Ceremony, Debate, Defence, Hill Fort, Hill of Tara, hillfort, Iron Age, Julius Caesar, Maiden Castle, McOmish, Mortimer Wheeler, Northumberland, Paulinus, Ringforts, ritual, Ritual First, tacitus, Thornborough Henges, vitrified, Yeavering Bell
- Leave comment
Jun 15
Guide: Piles of Stones (OS Maps)
- Filed under Agriculture, Barrow, Burial Mound, Landscape Archaeology, Landscape feature, Ring Cairn, Spoil Heap, Visible Remains
On every late-Victorian and early-20th-century OS sheet the surveyors marked any conspicuous heap of stones they could not instantly classify as a tumulus, beacon, trig-point or boundary stone with the catch-all term “Pile of Stones.”
Jun 11
Guide: Ritual/Ceremonial Mounds
- Filed under Anglo-saxon, Bronze Age, Ceremonial Mount, Dark Ages, Early Christian, Early Medieval, Georgian, Guide, Landscape feature, Medieval, Neolithic, New Sites, Norman
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.
Jun 11
Guide: Spoil Heaps
- Filed under Archaeology, Guide, Industrial Heritage, Landscape Archaeology, Landscape feature, Mining, Spoil Heaps
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.
Jun 10
Guide: Hillfort Mounds of Europe
- Filed under Archaeology, Castro Hillfort, Contour/Plateau Fort, Europe, Guide, Hidden Remains, Hill Fort, Landscape Archaeology, Landscape feature, Multivallete Hillfort, New Sites, Oppidum, Promontory fort, Slavic Gord, Univallet Hillfort, Vitrified Fort
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” …
Jun 10
Guide: Barrows
- Filed under Archaeobotanical, Barrow, Bell Barrow, Bowl Barrow, Bronze Age, Dark Ages, Disc Barrow, Europe, Guide, Iron Age, Landscape Archaeology, Landscape feature, Long Barrow, Neolithic, Ring Barrow, Ritual Landscape, Roman, Round Barrow, Square Barrow, Steppe Kurgan
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.
- AngloViking, Arras Culture, barrow, Barrow Timeline, Bell Barrow, Bowl Barrow, britain, Bronze Age, Burial Mound, Disc Barrow, Eastern Europe, Hallstatt, Iberian Peninsular, ireland, Iron Age, la tene, Long Barrow, Neolithc, Nordic Bronze Age, Ring Barrow, Roman, Round Barrow, ScandinaviaUkraineCentral Europe, Square Barrow, Steppe Kurgan, timeline
- Leave comment
Jun 07
Guide: SAR Doppler Tomography
- Filed under Archaeology, Geophysics, Guide, Hidden Remains, New Sites, Remote Sensing and Analysis, Reports
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.
- 3-D mapping, Airborne P-band, Archaeology, Back-scatter, Baseline (B⊥), Beam-forming Algorithm, Biomass, Capon, Coherence, coherent stack, Cryosphere, D-TomoSAR, differential processing, Doppler spectral cube, Forests, Height Resolution, Heritage monitoring, Infrastructure, InSAR, Interferometric SAR, Look Angle (θ), MUSIC, Penetration Depth, perpendicular baseline (B⊥), radar wavelength, RIAA, SAR, SAR Doppler Tomography, Satellite X-band stack.TerraSAR-X, Synthetic-Aperture Radar, temporal decorrelation, Tomographic SAR, TomoSAR, topography under vegetation, Voxel, Wavelength (λ)
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Jun 01
Guide – Exploring the Past with LIDAR
- Filed under Archaeology, Guide, Landscape Archaeology, LiDAR, New Sites, Reports
Imagine being able to see the landscape around you in a completely new way—an invisible layer revealing the hidden structures of the past, right beneath the surface.
- Archaeology, coverage, data access, data collection, data processing, elevation model, Exploring, laser pulse, LIDAR, mapping, maps, OpenTopography, Past, point clouds, Project-specific analysis, Quantum Spatial, shaded relief maps, Surdex Corporation, Topcon Positioning Systems, UK LIDAR Data Service, visualisation
- Leave comment
Articles
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- Guide – Landscape Archaeology: Post-Ice Age Landscape of Thornborough
- Guide – Archaeological Periods in Western Europe
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- Rome: The Emperors Claim to Divinity
- Syncretism through the ages
- The Border Reivers
- The Gallus Frontier – Brigantia against the Romans
- The growth of Christianity 50AD – 1100AD
- The Kingdom of Venutius
- The use of the word Lady in relation to water related structures
- The walled gardens of Brigantia
- Yorkshire’s “Sacred Vale” – The Dawn of Brigantia
- Brigantia Espania
- Iberian Peninsular
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- Biefing – The Myth of Breogán and the Tower of Heracles
- Briefing – Galicia’s Political History and Separatist Sentiment
- Briefing – Geography and Geology of Galicia
- Briefing – Design of Galician Hillforts
- Briefing – Roman Interaction with Galicia and the Iberian Peninsula
- Church of Santa María de Cambre, Cambre near A Coruña
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Announcing: The Brigantian News!
Portable Antiquities News
An fragment of a copper alloy finger ring of probable Roman date, with an oval setting in the bezel for a now missing gem or intaglio. The hoop had a plano-convex cross section and the bezel is [...]
A large lead alloy bag or bale seal. One side is stamped with a beaded roundel containing initials and date in three lines: *SPB* / SRHB / *1755*. There is a channel for an attachment [...]
A uniface lead alloy token of 20.4mm diameter. One side has a human head in profile (Powell type 10), right, of unclear gender and wearing a laurel wreath. [...]
A post medieval lead alloy bag or bale seal. One side has a garnished shield of arms of the city of London (Argent a Cross Gules in the first quarter a Sword in pale point [...]
A complete copper-alloy strap fitting of medieval date, c.AD 1200 – 1500.The strap fitting comprises a sub-rectangular bar with D-shaped section and moulded relief decoration to the upper surface. One end of the fitting displays a [...]
A copper alloy cast Post Medieval button, 10.9mm in diameter. The button is conical with a pellet at the apex. There is an integral cast rounded loop shank. Circa late 15th-16th century. As Read (2005) [...]
Copper alloy nummus of Constantine I, reverse GLORIA EXERCITVS 1 standard type, mintmark illegible, AD335-7 [...]
A late Medieval cast copper alloy locking buckle. The frame is asymmetrical and rectangular, with flanged sides, a notched pin rest and a groove along the front edge. There is a separate central bar which [...]
Copper alloy nummus of Constantine I, London, obverse IMP CONSTANTINVS AVG, helmeted, cuirassed bust right,spear over shoulder, reverse VICTORIAE LAETAE PRINC PERP type with 2 Victories, mintmark illegible, AD319-20 [...]
A Medieval cast copper alloy bar mount, 19.5mm in length. The mount has a convex, hemispherical cross section decorated with beaded bands and, at each end, a rounded terminal knop pierced for and retaining a copper [...]
Copper alloy nummus of Constantine, London, obverse CON[...], probably a laureate, cuirassed bust right, reverse SOLI INVICTO COMITI, Sol standing left, mintmark -/*//PLN, c.AD310-13 [...]
A cast copper alloy forked spacer from a late Medieval composite strap end. The spacer has a terminal projection in the form of an acorn with a ridged collar, a trapezoidal cupule and conical tip. [...]
A cast copper alloy Medieval single looped oval buckle with a decorated front edge which has flanking lobes to either side of a notched pin rest. The strap bar is narrowed and the pin has been lost. [...]
A Medieval trapezoidal copper alloy strap slide with small internal projections towards the narrower edge. The sides of the frame have a sub rectangular cross section. Circa late 12th - 14th century. [...]
A cast copper alloy Post Medieval strap fitting or strap slide of lobed and waisted type (Maslin 2021). The plate is convex and dumbbell shaped, 22.8mm in length, with two rounded lobes separated by three [...]
A complete copper-alloy apothecaries’ weight of Post-Medieval date, c.AD 1800 - 1890.The weight is square with a rectangular section. It is engraved on one side with the traditional symbol for the apothecary’s unit of measure [...]
Zoomorphic copper-alloy fragment of an unidentified, probably medieval or early post-medieval object, possibly the end of a knife handle. It is cast in the shape of the head and neck of a fantastic or mythical [...]
A silver Post-Medieval groat of Elizabeth I (AD 1558-1603) dating to the period AD 1560 - 1561. First Issue. Square shield on long cross fourchee reverse. Cross crosslet initial mark. Mint of London.North Vol 2, p.133, no.1986.The coin [...]
A copper-alloy Post Medieval knife end cap, 17.3mm in length, in the form of a horse's hoof. The terminal has an oval cross section and is curved, with moulded decoration delineating aspects of the hoof [...]
A foot and catchplate from a Roman cast copper alloy brooch (fibula) of Colchester Derivative type. The bow is narrow and plano-convex in cross section, with two grooves defining a low spine. The catchplate is [...]
Recent Articles and Site Pages
- Great Roe Wood (Roe Wood) Enclosure – Woodhouse
- Camp Green (Danes Camp), Hathersage
- Scoles Coppice Fort
- Roman Rig Defensive Works
- Dryburn Henge, Cumbria
- Kirkhaugh Cairns – Cumbria
- Oval Barrow east of Ulshaw Bridge
- Cleave Dyke Defensive System
- Black Dike – Coverdale
- Tor Dyke
- Prehistoric mounds, cairns and boundary earthworks in Coverdale
- Hillforts: Defence or Ritual? – Part 1
- Guide: Piles of Stones (OS Maps)
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