You are currently browsing the monthly archive for February 2011.
And please don’t forget, you’re welcome to bring and swap any megalithic books you no longer need (or contribute them to our lending library, available to anyone that signs up to membership – see below).
Incidentally, we’ve been told that after two wet Megameets this one will be blazing hot so bring a sun hat and a picnic.
(For full details of the event see here )
Here at Heritage Action, we’re always trying to think of more ideas for spreading the word about our heritage in the UK, and trying to get recognition for the value in that heritage.
We are currently compiling a small library of books (physical and e-books) on the subject of the ancient monuments of the UK, from the Stone Age through to the Romano-British period. The library is of necessity small at this stage, and available only to our widespread membership on a postal basis. But we’re looking to grow both the library and our membership.
By Ramchand Bruce Phagoo (own work). Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons
If you are an author or publisher of books or magazines on our preferred subject matter and would be prepared to donate one or more review copies to our library, then we would be more than happy to write a short review and publicise it on the web site in return.
Please contact us in the first instance at the usual address info@heritageaction.org.uk if you can help in this endeavour.
The National Trust will be holding an Avebury Landscape Photography Workshop on Saturday, 26 March 2011.
“Professional photographer Mark Philpott will help you look at landscapes in an exciting new way. Learn how to get the best from your camera and be inspired by the Avebury landscape, its stone circle, cosy cottages, fine church and ancient trees.”
More here -
http://www.nationaltrust.org.uk/event-search-2/events/show?id=2108046427&direct=1
News in brief from Wessex Archaeology Blog
Wessex Archaeology is pleased to announce that we are co-ordinating the revision and updating of the Avebury and Stonehenge resource assessments, and will also be writing a single revised research framework uniting both parts of the World Heritage Site into a harmonised volume with a five year currency.
The revised research agenda will be available for public consultation in September 2011, and again in February and March of 2012 with the publication online of the research framework for public consultation. The report will finally be published in 2017 in both hard copy and online.
We hear more and more about the ‘Big Society’, and how the ‘common man’ can help the big government organisations and charities by volunteering. We’ve covered such items before; here, here and here.
To many people, the call to arms brings to mind physical labour or presence, in the form of ground clearance work such as that successfully carried out by CASPN and LAN in Cornwall. Or maybe, regular health checkup visits to a local site. But what can you do if physically impaired, unable to travel or lacking local sites to adopt?
Signage is a thorny problem at many sites – They can be physically intrusive, expensive to install and maintain, limited in the information they can convey, and can be become outdated as new research comes to light. One aspect of improving sites that could be done quite comfortably from home thanks to technology is that of information.
There is a wealth of information about many sites already available on the internet; from the Scheduled Monuments Register descriptions held on the MAGIC web site by English Heritage and others, through enthusiast websites like the Modern Antiquarian and the Megalithic Portal, to websites dedicated to specific areas or single sites (eg the many sites dedicated to the Avebury WHS).
Technology is making this information ever easier to reach and to convey to site visitors, via the medium of QR Codes which can be scanned and interpreted by most of the new generation smart phones, using a freely available app(lication). Thus these codes can provide a gateway to a wealth of information.
So. A challenge for English Heritage, National Trust and other guardians of our ancient sites. Devise a scheme whereby volunteers can register to pull together and be responsible for site information, held on a central website (a wiki?). A very simplistic example of such a hub page can be seen here. Create QR Codes for individual sites, pointing to an information hub page for the site. Redesign existing signage to reduce the visual impact and provide a scannable QR code on the sign, near to the entrance to the site.
Example signage showing QR Code
One small point: This isn’t a bureaucratic exercise. No-one will die if the information given is not 100% correct and tripled checked by highly paid experts and lawyers. The only cost should be for smaller replacement or additional signs (or even stickers on existing signs), improving the visitor experience without the need for trained on-site guides. It could be done incrementally, a site at a time, no need to wait for everything to be in place.
…but how?
Image credit Littlestone
Reporting for BBC News Wales, Neil Prior writes -
“New research has cast fresh doubt on the journey which the Stonehenge Bluestones took from Pembrokeshire to the site of the pagan monument. Since the 1920s, geologists have strongly suspected that the ‘spotted dolerite’ Bluestones, which form Stonehenge’s inner ring, originated from Mynydd Preseli in the north of the county. However, whilst the new findings have also linked a second type of stone – rhyolites – to the area, they call into question how the stones arrived in Wiltshire.”
More here – http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-wales-12544924
Peter Thonemann, writing in The Guardian on Saturday, 19 February 2011 asks if you are, “…keen to help finance the activities of warlords and insurgents across Afghanistan and Pakistan? As I write, eBay is inviting bids on no fewer than 128 ancient Bactrian and Indo-Greek silver and bronze coins, from sellers in Pakistan, Singapore, Thailand and the United States. Probably every one of them is the product of looting over the past 20 years. With luck, you might even pick up one of the tens of thousands of items plundered from the collections of the old National Museum of Afghanistan in Kabul between 1992 and 2001.”
The article focuses on the hoard of treasures discovered at Tillya Tepe in Afganistan which, having survived thirty years of shelling looting and Taliban raids, is now the highlight of a new exhibition at the British Museum.
More here -
http://www.guardian.co.uk/artanddesign/2011/feb/19/afghanistan-crossroads-exhibition-british-museum?INTCMP=SRCH and here -
By Nigel Swift.
You might be forgiven for thinking nothing much happens in the tiny village of Teddington on the borders of Gloucestershire and Worcestershire. Mostly you’d be right (apart from the fact that during the war there was a US army base there and Joe Louis staged a demonstration bout in one of the fields and Glen Miller gave a performance there just one day before his plane disappeared!).
But it does have The Tibblestone…
It can hardly be claimed that its modern setting is attractive. But we shouldn’t complain as ironically it was thanks to the digging of foundations for the garage in 1948 that it was rediscovered and re-erected, having previously been lost (no archaeological navel gazing about leaving it buried in those days!).
It has certainly been of great significance for very many centuries, being listed in the Domesday Survey and having formed the meeting point of the Teddington Hundred, but it is thought it may be far older still and to date from prehistoric times. One strong piece of circumstantial evidence is that despite its apparently highly inappropriate placement it is actually almost exactly at the original intersection of six ancient routes (including known prehistoric ones) as this famous seventeenth century finger post directly opposite illustrates.
But maybe it is the very inappropriateness of its setting that is the most significant aspect of the Tibblestone, for when the world has burned the last litre of oil, the roads have emptied and the filling station has fallen down perhaps the only thing that will endure in Teddington will be the Tibblestone and the hills that were its original setting.
Writing in The Observer yesterday, Laura Cumming reports on the Watercolour exhibition now showing at Tate Britain and running until the 21 August.
The exhibition includes a watercolour of The Vale of the White Horse (circa 1939) by Eric Ravilious. Something, “…conjured entirely out of cross-hatchings, strokes, dabs and striations of faint colour, frail contour against pale line, with the white page breathing airily in between, is almost nothing, a see-through dream. But it is uniquely strange, starting in reality and ending in its own radiant elsewhere.”
More here - http://www.guardian.co.uk/artanddesign/2011/feb/20/watercolour-tate-britain-review-cumming
