Archaeology thread

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6 hours ago, Paulie Dangerously said:

Been doing Sutton Hoo in school at the minute. The kids aren't arsed but I think it's boss 

Isnt that the largest pre historic man made hill in England?

 

When I was about 12, one of my elder brothers got married down Salisbury way. Dropped hints to the arl fella that Id like to go and see Stonehenge.

 

He obliged but it was just a drive past on the pretext ma couldnt read the road map and had us going the wrong way home!

 

A few years ago, the old girl and I took a short break and took in the SS Great Britain, the Glous & Warwickshire railway and stonehenge. The henge was really impressive and the thought of manually getting those stones upright never mind dragging some of them all the way from Wales was something else.

 

Had to laugh when in the Visitor Centre as there was this lad from South Africa on one of the stands demonstrating a few things how people lived. I asked him about what footwear would they have had and how would they have kept their feet warm and dry. He said sorry I cant understand what you're saying because of your accent, can you speak a bit slower! I didnt take offence!

 

Outside they had a couple of reproduction huts that people would have lived in. It was as drafty as fuck. Goodness knows what it must have been like in winter. If they'd have lit a fires, you'd be coughing on the smoke it produced.

[AngryOfTuebrook 24,563]

6 hours ago, YorkshireRed said:

I have little knowledge to add to this thread so I will instead share some photos of Dr. Alice Roberts.

 

As my dad used to say. She is an example of “The Thinking Man’s Crumpet”.

 

 

Gotta love Dr Alice - the wanking man's think fantasy.

[Jack the Sipper 599]

1 hour ago, dockers_strike said:

Isnt that the largest pre historic man made hill in England?

 

 

 

That's Silbury Hill. Sutton Hoo's the site of the Viking ship burial.

 

I love a bit of prehistory me, especially Neolithic and early Bronze Age Britain. After hundreds of thousands of years of minimal progress came two revolutionary periods in human history, one after the other, from hunting to farming, then from stone to metal, and all that arose from these changes. I've got visiting the Orkneys and spending a few weeks traipsing around Wiltshire on my bucket list. 

 

Anyone interested in the subject can do worse than reading The Tale of the Axe, Inside the Neolithic Mind and Britain BC. I'm currently reading Alice Roberts' Ancestors, which is pretty good and accessible.

[Fugitive 2,868]

20 hours ago, polymerpunkah said:

Had the good fortune to see the skull of the Taung child in Johannesberg a few years ago. I'd studied it at university, and it was one of those things I'd wanted to do since.

 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Taung_Child

 

 

Two million years old, one of the fossils that led us to realize that we'd come from Africa. 

 

A physical manifestation of the incredibly long, and tenuous, chain of our existence.

[Bobby Hundreds 10,445]

Imagine how much valuable shit is buried just waiting there underground to be converted into cold hard cash. Oh and the things someone could learn from it to put in a book few people will ever read. Invaluable.

 

Dr Alice Roberts looks great in combat trousers must be the same cut as policewomens trousers. 

[Bjornebye 33,830]

22 hours ago, Captain Willard said:

Bought this old Roman lamp on e bay. 2,000 years old. Now it lives in the shed covered in dust. 

If you’d bought in 2000 years ago you might have made some dough off it. How many times have you rubbed it? Did it come in the shoe box? How many OAPs heads have you stoved in with it? 

[Mike D 1,683]

 

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New Time Team episode on You Tube.

 

 

[Strontium 11,255]

The Mossad time machine has been busy again:

 

https://www.iflscience.com/editors-blog/ancient-curse-tablet-may-be-earliest-ever-example-of-hebrew-writing/

 

Quote

Ancient "Curse Tablet" May Be Earliest Ever Example Of Hebrew Writing

We love an accurséd ancient relic here at IFLScience. Whether it be an enormous black sarcophagus filled with delicious mummy juice, a millennia-old and definitely deadly slab of tomb cheese, or the Ark of the Covenant itself, there’s no escaping the fact that the discovery of a connection to our ancestors – especially the really pissed off ones, apparently – is endlessly fascinating to our modern minds.

So the recent unearthing of an ancient “curse tablet” in the West Bank has understandably piqued some interest.

At around 6 square centimeters (1 square inch) in size, the folded lead tablet is only about the size of a postage stamp – but it carries a big message.

“Cursed, cursed, cursed — cursed by the God Yahweh,” reads an inscription written on the inner and outer surfaces of the lead in 40 proto-Hebrew letters. “You will die cursed. Cursed you will surely die. Cursed by Yahweh – cursed, cursed, cursed.”

It’s a warning, and quite an adamant one, to those who break the terms of a covenant.

While the find hasn’t been independently verified or dated and is yet to be peer-reviewed, the excavation team responsible claim the tablet is likely around 3,200 years old. If true, that’s huge news: it would predate all other curse tablets – in fact, all other examples of ancient Hebrew writing – by centuries.

“We now have the name ‘Yahweh’, the biblical God of Israel, in an inscription dating from (Late Bronze Era II), which is earlier than many skeptics would argue that the Bible existed or that there was even the ability to write down a sacred text,” said Scott Stripling, director of the Archaeological Studies Institute at The Bible Seminary in Katy, Texas, who led the excavation.

While “curse tablets” like this have been found in other sites, they’ve never been uncovered at the West Bank before – though the team actually discovered the find by “wet-sifting,” or washing sediments with water, material discarded from excavations on the nearby Mount Ebal more than 30 years ago. That’s rather fitting, as Ebal is known in the biblical books of Joshua and Deuteronomy as “the mountain of curse,” according to a statement seen by IFLScience.

“But this text is not just a curse. It is actually a legal text,” Gershon Galil, a professor of biblical studies from the University of Haifa, told reporters at a press conference about the discovery. “Not just a legal warning – [it] is a kind of sentence.

“It is a legal document … similar to other ancient middle eastern legal economic inscriptions,” he said.

 

[RJ Fan club 1,663]

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24 minutes ago, RJ Fan club said:

Haha, shit happens some times.