Archaeology in the NEWS

OLD OSWESTRY HILLFORT
1. Constructed and occupied during the Iron Age (800 BC to AD 43).
2. Encloses diamond shaped area that may encompass a small settlement
3. Multivallate/multirampart hillfort
4. Welsh Marches / NW Shropshire
5. Positives and negatives
  1. Allowing development
    1. Changes to planning laws
    2. 2012 - Introduction of the National Planning Policy Framework
      1. making sure the local plan - produced by communities - is the keystone of the planning system making planning much simpler and more accessible, reducing over 1,000 pages of often impenetrable jargon into around 50 pages of clearly written guidance establishing a presumption in favour of sustainable development that means that development is not held up unless to approve it would be against our collective interest guaranteeing strong protections for the natural and historic environment, and requiring improvements to put right some of the neglect that has taken place raising design standards so that the requirements for design are the most exacting yet
        The new framework includes specific references to encouraging development on brownfield sites - a phrase that had been missing from the draft version - to "offer reassurance".
      2. The revised national planning policy framework will guide councils in both drawing up their "local plans", which set out their development policies. Planning inspectors must take it into account when judging applications. Councils without an existing local plan will start to use it immediately. Those which have a plan already will have a year to bring it into line with the framework.
    3. Used in conjunction with Historic Environment Planning Practice guide
    4. Simplification of planning laws to address shortage of housing in Britian
    5. Part of Shropshire County Council
      1. Sam dev plan
        plan to make Old Sswestry a touristt hotspot - 2020 town plan
      2. reach target 2600 houses by 2026 - some heritage may need to be compensated for the expanding population
      3. NOt enough development land for next 5 years
    6. Site Allocation and Management of Development plan ( SAMdev)
    7. Meet government set target to provide land to build 2600 more homes
      1. We’re currently consulting on reducing regulations on house builders to encourage more house building and local economic growth. And we’re offering finance options to self-builders from a specially created fund of £30 million.
        We’ve identified enough formerly used, surplus public sector land to support up to 100,000 new homes and are looking to sell this quickly to help get Britain building.
  2. Not allowing development
    1. One Europe's best preserved hillforts
    2. Successive historical usage/meaning
      1. Wilfred Owen completed training on grassy mounds, the birthplace of King Arthur's wife Guinevere, AE houseman spent time there
    3. 200 Luxury homes - for 'rich retirees and holiday cottage landlords
      1. Not affordable to most members of the public
    4. Setting destructive precedents for the furture building on historic sites
    5. Visual and landscape impacts
    6. HOOOH campaign (Hands off Old Oswestry Heritage) backed by English Heritage
    7. 2010 - Archaeological survey showed scope for further study in the and surrounding fort
      1. Found man made structure in fields north east of the fort . Evidence of an Iron Age road connecting with the fields nearby
    8. Council not fully accepting of the sites significance
    9. Potential for fruther research - as most information comes frm the excavations in 1939
6. Contrast
  1. Wincobank hillfort
    1. Iron Age hillfort in the district of Sheffield
    2. Stands on the summit of a steep hill above the River Don, it is oval in shape and covers about 10,000 square metres (108,000 ft²), surrounded by a ditch that was originally 1.5–2 m deep and a bank consisting of a rubble core with stone facings held together with timbers
    3. Bank is vitrified indicating that it was subject to some intense heat at some point in history
    4. Material taken from a drainage ditch dug through the north east rampart of the fort in 1979 was radiocarbon dated to c500 BC.[1]
    5. constructed by the Celtic Brigantes tribe
    6. The fort is one of a series of forts which run across our region.
    7. Wincobank hill was threatened with planning development in 2012- the application was eventually turned down
      1. However properties were built in the vicinity possibly ruining archaeological opportunities in this prehistoric landscape
    8. The land is designated open space with Greenfield status
    9. It within 200m of the Wincobank hillfort which is a scheduled monument
    10. To build on this site is to strangle access to the hill and will prevent current and future generations opportunities to gain meaningful perspectives on Sheffield's earliest settlement.
    11. A housing project for 24 new homes is expected to be given the green light.
    12. Opponents claim the development is also on the route of a Roman ridge, a series of ancient earthworks but developers have said there is no evidence of this. - there is clearly evidence as the desk based assessment survey revealed
      1. The Roman ridge, possibly built for defensive purposes, is thought to have stretched for about 10 miles (16km) in South Yorkshire but little of it has survived.
        The developers claim their archaeologists have found no evidence for the ridge.
        Katrina Hulse, from the developer's planning consultants DLP Planning Ltd, said: "We employed professional archaeologists to undertake studies guided by the council's archaeological advisory service. "Extensive field trenching down to the bedrock found there was no evidence of the ridge and the archaeologists have concluded that it was unlikely it passed through the development site."
    13. Plans to build 24 homes close to an ancient monument in Sheffield are expected to be given the go ahead by councillors later.
    14. More than 400 people have objected to proposals for the development off Sandstone Road and Beacon Road.
RICHARD III
1. Remains finally to be reburied in Leicester Cathedral
2. Richard III to be given a dignified reburial, and finally laid to rest. ‘
3. Richard III will then lie in state in the cathedral for a number of days to allow members of the public to pay their respects, after which he will be buried in a tomb (the revised design of which is to be unveiled in 3-4 weeks) just a few feet from the ledger stone currently dedicated to him in the cathedral’s choir
4. They claimed DNA samples matched that of a descendant of the king's maternal line, while the skeleton's spinal curvature also matched accounts of the humpback royal. Read more:
  1. Radio-Carbon Dating revealed that the Skeleton it was around the same time the king was killed during the Battle of Boswroth in 1485.
5. The remains were uncovered by archaeologists at former church in Leicester, which is now a social services car park. Read more:
  1. The skeleton also showed a number of non-fatal injuries to the head and rib and to the pelvis, which is believed to have been caused by a wound through the right buttock. Read more:
6. his body was taken 15 miles to Leicester where it was displayed as proof of his death, before being buried in the Franciscan friary.
7. Distant relatives opposed plans to bury him in the city after his remains were discovered in a council car park. They said he should be placed in York Minster because it was a wish of 'the last medieval king of England'.
Dunragit intersection : a new bypass route A75 in Dumfries and Galloway
1. Scotland Earliest house discovered Neolithic home 6000 BC
2. two cemeteries carrying 20 Bronze Age cremations, a pair of rare jet necklaces and thousands of flint tools used in Mesolithic coastal industries
3. Exceptional quality necklaces originated from Yorkshire
Concerns for sites in Libya
1. Worry that Libyan antiquities are falling prey to extremists.
2. vandals demolished the marble pillars of an ancient church in Shahat. Along with nearby Cyrene (which lent its name to today's Cyrenaica region),
3. City home to many greek and Roman Artefacts
4. blamed local authorities for failing to prevent the destruction.
Turkish archaeologists excavating a harbor site on the European side of the Bosphorus have unearthed a 1,200-year-old wooden object which they claim is the ancient equivalent of a tablet computer. The device was a notebook and tool — in one.
1. found within the remains of one of the 37 ships unearthed in the Yenikapi area of Istanbul, a site which has been at the center of excavations for the past 10 years.
  1. Secret sliding panels = for writing in wax and also for small weights used as an assay balance to determine the metal content in ore or the kind of precious metal in an alloy.
    1. A research team from Istanbul University is now restoring the ship, 60 percent of which has survived in good condition, with the aim of having her set sail again by 2015.
angsan Museum in South Gyeongsang opened an exhibit of 68 treasures from the Gaya period, the confederacy of territories in southern Korea between the first and sixth centuries.
1. treasures were on temporary loan from Tokyo National Museum and that when the exhibit ended on Jan. 12 they would return to Japan - for good.
2. The 1,500-year-old treasures, which include a gilt bronze crown, earrings and necklaces, were excavated nearly a century ago from the Yangsan Bubuchong Tomb, a mere 80 kilometers (49.7 miles) from the museum. Bubuchong means tomb of husband and wife, and historians are still unclear on the exact status of the people buried in that tomb.
3. Japan took the relics during their colonization of Korea, and they ended up in Tokyo National Museum. Legally it is their permanent home.
4. 1965 treaty between Korea and Japan that normalized diplomatic relations
5. Korean government acknowledged that the Bubuchong artifacts were taken by the Japanese government during the colonial period.
6. he Korean government said in the 1965 agreement, it signed away the artifacts “taking into consideration the strong wishes of the Tokyo National Museum to display them in a new Korean exhibit which is under construction in the East Asian wing and that we have superior relics”
7. 1965 treaty, Seoul requested 4,479 artifacts taken by Tokyo be returned. So far 1,432 have been returned.
8. Korean government only realized in 2004 that some artifacts were given away to Japan after documents from the 1965 Korea-Japan agreement were made public.
9. Shin Yong-cheol, head of Yangsan Museum, said he begged Tokyo National Museum for the right to “display the cultural assets that came from that region even for a short period of time.”
10. legalities will make it difficult to have the Bubuchong relics returned. “But we plan to ask for a long-term loan, which is almost the same.”

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