Posts from
- 17th July 2020
What do animals mean to you? For our second blog in the series about prehistoric landscapes, Liz Pearson, our Environmental Archaeologist, explores the tale of two Bronze Age burials, their unusual choice of animal companions and relationship with the land. From the edge of the woodland we see four people lay the body of a...
- 13th July 2020
Fascinating stories are found in the smallest of archaeological clues: charcoal and pollen. Recent analysis of a Bronze Age burial site at Meriden, in the West Midlands, illuminates this prehistoric landscape and the choices made by our ancestors 3,500 years ago. To kick off this blog series, our Environmental Archaeologist, Liz Pearson, sets the scenery...
- 26th October 2018
How can we visualise lost landscapes? We start with the evidence. Scientific dating techniques and geological deposit mapping help us to work out how the hills and rivers changed over time – this gives us the basic lie of the land. The bones of large mammals can then tell us which species inhabited the...
- 31st March 2018
Archaeologists don’t look at fossils, right? Normally this is the case – palaeontology is the study of fossil animals and plants, whilst archaeology is concerned with the human past. Very occasionally though, fossils creep into the archaeological record. This month two fossilised shark teeth were found in a prehistoric pit during a site evaluation...
- 3rd October 2017
Early autumn is a time when many take stock and give thanks for the year’s harvest. In the globalised world of today though, where supermarkets stock globally grown fresh produce all year round, harvest time has become less noticeable and, seemingly, less important to our availability of food. In a world before refrigerators, farm...
- 17th December 2014
The owner of Algars Manor at Iron Acton in Gloucestershire recently lifted some floor boards on the first floor of his house during building renovations, and was surprised to find a bed of material that looked like wheat, chaff or straw beneath. He was interested to find out what this material was, and if it...
- 8th October 2014
It isn’t very often that an in situ pot turns up at the office for excavation in the lab, and it isn’t every day that you find archaeological evidence for the use of honey in the past, but that’s what happened with this pot… Showing pot in situ, you can just make out the outline...
- 3rd September 2013
Worcestershire Archaeology have featured in the news recently following the discovery of a human skull. Here Nick Daffern, Senior Environmental Archaeologist, tells us more about the processes taken to identify the find: “On 20th March 2013 West Mercia Police were contacted by a member of the public. They had discovered what appeared to be a...