You are currently browsing the daily archive for 04/03/2010.
Boadicea Haranguing The Britons
John Opie (1761-1807)
“Melvyn Bragg and guests Miranda Aldhouse-Green, Juliette Wood and Richard Hingley discuss the life and mythologisation of Boudica.”
To be broadcast on BBC Radio 4 on Thursday, 11 March at 09:00. See also – https://heritageaction.wordpress.com/2009/04/23/walking-the-boudica-way-secret-britain/
The Belfast Telegraph reports the find of a “rare Neolithic ring fort”, during work on the Ballymena bypass in County Antrim. The remains of this enclosed area and a number of pits containing burnt bone and Neolithic pottery, were discovered under topsoil, on a hill that was to be dug through and then used for banking material;
“The enclosure was more or less circular, between 40m and 45m in diameter, with two entrances or causeways. One spanned a gap of 25m around the west side of the enclosure, while the other lay towards the south end measuring 3m wide.
Inside the enclosure is what appears to be a series of structures, including rectangular and circular shapes with pits and hearths. Archaeologists have discovered flint chippings, small blades and a leaf-shaped arrowhead.”
We previously wrote about a Heritage Council study of Irish media coverage of such heritage issues. Once read, it may change the way that you process these things. To use a building analogy – when you can see the position of the blocks you can see how, consciously or unconsciously, the features are built and the agenda, or effect, that they are aiming for. Two among the findings it listed were;
– that “most heritage texts related to ‘events’ managed by sources representing business or the State” and
– that “real heritage objects were frequently represented as ‘threatening’ merely notional development proposals.”
What do we have here, then? The article appears to be based on a briefing by the Northern Ireland Department for Regional Development (DRD), a state source, and, in addition to giving these site details, stresses the delay caused by the investigation. The excavation lasted eight weeks, involved twenty archaeologists and that, and the bad weather last year, pushed the completion date for the road back by several months to Summer 2010. With regard to the Heritage Council study, the relevant ‘threatening’ phrases in the article include the following;
“delaying a road dualling scheme”, “costing tens of thousands of pounds“ and “would have been completed…if it hadn’t been for the discovery”
What should it say? The enclosure is one of only four of its type. A strong argument could be made to route the road away from it altogether, so it might be preserved for future generations to study. That doesn’t seem to be the case and a couple of months delay – and a few thousand pounds – seems like a small price to pay for its details to be recorded.
National Heritage and, particularly, a site of this importance, should never be devalued to the status of ‘obstruction’. Continual reference to it, as such, imprints that value on it.
Read more here:
Listening to Pagans.
Well according to Mike Pitts – Digging Deeper blog, he should be on Radio 3 tonight (thursday, 4th March) on Night Waves at 9 pm, talking about the issue of Pagan reburial with Piotr Bienkowski (the Manchester Museum) and Emma Restall Orr (founder of Honouring the Ancient Dead). Should be interesting.
The article can be found here.
Can be found on BBci player here about 18 minutes into the programme.
The Heritage Journal 
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