Archive

Look what we found Our archaeology unit was digging in a really small sub-urban area surrounded by agricultural lands in the south of Worcestershire when a sharp-eyed field archaeologist spotted an incredible find …an ancient piece worked flint. You might think that finding a flint shard is not that uncommon and on some sites that...

  The cold and ice of the last glacial reached its worst about 21,000 years ago. Since then the earth has become warmer, allowing humans to return to Britain 15,000 years ago across Doggerland, the area now covered by the North Sea. But the impact of the Ice Age remains all around us. Today, about...

  Few areas of science generate as much controversy and debate as human evolution. The teapot sherd discovered during an excavation at Kilbury Drive, Worcester, shows a snippet of a scene in which apes dressed in human clothes are brawling in a tavern. It is an example of a popular Victorian ‘meme’: satirising the idea...

  There isn’t one Ice Age: there have been at least five. Some were millions of years ago and one even billions of years ago. The most recent, the one we all call ‘The Ice Age’, is known geologically as the Quaternary. It lasted from two and a half million years ago until about 12,000...

  Our species evolved in an Ice Age world. 99% of the span of human life in Britain falls within the Ice Age. There have been at least four human species in Britain over the last million years. For most of human history, there have been multiple human species living at the same time. Today,...

  The Ice Age was not always cold: hippos once wallowed in Worcestershire’s warm pools. Over the last 2.5 million years – a period we call ‘The Ice Age’ and known geologically as the Quaternary – the climate fluctuated between icy glacials and warmer interglacials. As temperatures rose species were able to expand into new...

Members of our staff are speaking at the next four Worcestershire Archaeological Society’s evening talks, explaining about some of the projects and work we have been running.   Monday 8 October The Broad View: Investigations on the Broadway Flood Alleviation Scheme Richard Bradley Over the course of several months a team of archaeologists carried out an...

We’ve an exciting series of talks to coincide with the Ice Age exhibitions in The Hive & Worcester Art Gallery and Museum. We’ve been thrilled at seeing how many people have come to see the exhibitions, coming face to face with a replica mammoth and real mammoth bones, entering an ice age shelter and walking...

Mammoths in Staffordshire? Yes! A mammoth bone was recently discovered along the River Tame in Staffordshire. Megafauna remains are incredibly important for understanding deep history and past landscapes, but they’re more common in the West Midlands than you’d think. Most archaeology occurs within the first metre or so below ground, except for traces of Ice...

Just before Easter, our archaeologists were called out to investigate the discovery of a mammoth tusk at Tarmac’s Clifton Quarry, just south of Worcester. The tusk was spotted by a sharp-eyed excavator driver at the site: realising the importance of what he had uncovered, he reported it to the quarry management. Tarmac immediately suspended operations...