Archaeology News: 2023.12.08

Was the Hebrew Bible written earlier than previously thought? That’s what a 2016 study published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences suggests. The study was led by Tel Aviv University (TAU) doctoral students Shira Faigenbaum-Golovina, Arie Shausa and Barak Sober. The TAU researchers analyzed multi-spectral images of 16 Hebrew inscriptions, which were written in ink on ostraca (broken pottery pieces), using a computer software program they developed. The ostraca, which date to 600 B.C.E., according to the researchers, were excavated from the Judahite fortress at Arad in southern Israel. When was the Hebrew Bible written? Ostraca with Hebrew inscriptions excavated from the Iron Age fortress at Arad in Israel may provide clues, say researchers from Tel Aviv University. Photo: Michael Cordonsky, courtesy Tel Aviv University and the Israel Antiquities Authority. The researchers say they were able to identify at least six different handwriting styles on the inscriptions, which contained instructions for the movement of troops and lists of food expenses. A TAU press release notes that “the tone and nature of the commands precluded the role of professional scribes.” “The results indicate that in this remote fort, literacy had spread throughout the military hierarchy, down to the quartermaster and probably even below that rank,” state Faigenbaum-Golovina, Shausa and Sober in their paper. “Now our job is to extrapolate from Arad to a broader area,” explained TAU Professor of Archaeology Israel Finkelstein, who heads the research project, in the TAU press release. “Adding what we know about Arad to other forts and administrative localities across ancient Judah, we can estimate that many people could read and write during the last phase of the First Temple period. We assume that in a kingdom of some 100,000 people, at least several hundred were literate.” Israel Museum curators have called “Gabriel’s Revelation” the most important document found in the area since the discovery of the Dead Sea Scrolls. Read the original English publication of “Gabriel’s Revelation” along with Israel Knohl’s BAR article that made scholars around the world reconsider links between ancient Jewish and Christian messianism in the free eBook Gabriel’s Revelation. So when was the Hebrew Bible written? What does literacy in the Iron Age have to do with it? Scholars have debated whether the texts of the Hebrew Bible were written before 586 B.C.E.—when the Babylonians destroyed Jerusalem, razed the First Temple and exiled the Jews—or later on, in the Persian or Hellenistic period. If literacy in Iron Age Judah was more widespread than previously thought, does this suggest that Hebrew Bible texts could have been written before the Babylonian conquest? The Tel Aviv University researchers think so, based on their study of the ostraca from Arad. Not quite, says epigrapher Christopher Rollston, Associate Professor of Northwest Semitic languages and literatures at the George Washington University. In a lengthy blog post analyzing the TAU study, Rollston contends that there is not enough information from these ostraca to make estimates about the literacy of Iron Age Judah. Rollston points out that, according to a publication by Yohanan Aharoni, the original excavator ... Continue Reading...

Where is Biblical Bethsaida? One contender is the site of et-Tell, a mile and a half north of the Sea of Galilee. Photo: Duby Tal and Moni Haramati, Albatross/Courtesy of Bethsaida Excavations. The ancient village of Bethsaida is believed to be located on the northern shore of the Sea of Galilee, but where precisely the abandoned city lies remains a fiercely-debated question among scholars. Recent discoveries at the site of el-Araj have called into question the decades-old claim that et-Tell on the eastern shore of the Jordan River is this lost Biblical city. Along with Jerusalem and Capernaum, Bethsaida is frequently mentioned in the Gospels. When Jesus was first calling his disciples, he traveled to Galilee and found there Philip, who is described as being of Bethsaida along with Peter and Andrew (John 1:43-44). The town—including its nearby shore—is identified as the location where Jesus performed some of his most indelible miracles. Here he led a blind man away from the village, restored his sight, and instructed the man not to reenter the town nor to tell anyone of the miracle he had performed (Mark 8:22–26). Bethsaida is also said to be the fishing village where Jesus fed the masses with just five loaves and two fish (Luke 9:10–17; Mark 6:30–44). Discovering Biblical Bethsaida. Could a mosaic inscription at the site of El-Araj be the smoking gun archaeologists are looking for to determine the true location of biblical Bethsaida? Read More in this BHD article. A consortium of schools headed by the University of Nebraska, Omaha, claim to be excavating Biblical Bethsaida at the site of et-Tell on the east bank of the Jordan River and have published their findings as the Bethsaida Excavations Project since 1991. For years, director Rami Arav has asserted that et-Tell’s archaeological remains sync up with historical accounts of the ancient village, including ancient Jewish historian Josephus’s report that under Philip the Tetrarch (one of Herod the Great’s sons), the town was improved, “… both by the number of inhabitants it contained, and its other grandeur” (Antiquities 18:2). In 30 C.E., Philip had renamed the city Julias after Livia-Julia, Roman emperor Augustus’s wife and mother of Tiberius, the reigning emperor at the time. Arav cites occupation and substantial growth of the town throughout the Roman period as evidence corroborating Josephus’s account.1 FREE ebook: The Galilee Jesus Knew First Name:* Last Name:* Email Address: * * Indicates a required field. SUBMIT If you don’t want to receive the Bible History Daily newsletter, uncheck this box. This claim, however, has not gone without criticism from other scholars. Most notably, Dr. Steven Notley, Professor of Biblical Studies at Nyack College, New York, has charged that et-Tell, a mile and a half from the Sea of Galilee, is too far from the ... Continue Reading...

This Bible History Daily article was originally published in May 2013. It has been updated.—Ed. Who were the Minoans? The Minoan civilization is remembered for its ornate frescoes, including this Prince of the Lillies from the palace at Knossos. Who were the Minoans? Their civilization in Crete has long been considered Europe’s first great Bronze Age society. The floruit of the Minoan civilization, which spread across Crete in the third millennium B.C.E., occurred in the 18th–16th centuries B.C.E., in the late Middle Bronze Age and the start of the Late Bronze Age. The island is dotted with magnificent palaces, including labyrinthine Knossos, Phaistos and Mallia, and Minoan art and traditions have captivated and influenced the Mediterranean world for thousands of years. Despite their celebrated legacy, the Minoan civilization remains shrouded in mystery. We do not know what language was spoken on Crete, and the scripts of the early Minoan civilization—Cretan Hieroglyphs and Linear A—have eluded translation attempts for over a century. Despite extensive archaeological research exploring the history of Crete, the Minoan civilization has always kept close ties to the world of mythology. Sir Arthur Evans, the first person to carry out extensive excavations in Crete, named the society after the mythological king Minos. Crete’s  landscape serves as the setting for countless legends, including the birthplace of Zeus, the labyrinth where Theseus killed the Minotaur and the prison that Deadalus and Icarus fled with their ill-fated wings. But who were the people that left us with such grand mysteries and ornate palaces? Become a Member of Biblical Archaeology Society Now and Get More Than Half Off the Regular Price of the All-Access Pass! Explore the world’s most intriguing Biblical scholarship Dig into more than 9,000 articles in the Biblical Archaeology Society’s vast library plus much more with an All-Access pass. Sir Arthur Evans claimed that the ancestors of the Minoan civilization came from North Africa, but more recent scholars have suggested dozens of additional forefathers. On May 14, 2013, Nature Communications published the study “A European population in Minoan Bronze Age Crete,” analyzing mitochondrial DNA from Minoan osseous tissue found in caves at the Cretan Lassithi plateau. It suggests that the Minoan civilization was comprised of local Europeans rather than outsiders. The Greek and American research team writes that “Our data are compatible with the hypothesis of an autochthonous development of the Minoan civilization by the descendants of the Neolithic settlers of the island” and that “shared haplotypes, principal component and pairwise distance analyses refute the Evans North African hypothesis.” FREE ebook: Island Jewels: Understanding Ancient Cyprus and Crete. Read the fascinating history of these mythical Mediterranean islands. First Name:* Last Name:* Email Address: * * Indicates a required field. SUBMIT If you don’t want to receive the Bible History Daily newsletter, uncheck this box. Who were the ... Continue Reading...

Do the blue tzitzit strings of this traditional Jewish prayer shawl reflect the shade of blue in the Bible, called tekhelet in Hebrew? Evidence suggests the tekhelet that colored ancient blue tzitzit was sky-blue and derived from murex dye. In the Bible, a shade of blue called tekhelet was God’s chosen color for the ancient Israelites. Tekhelet drapes adorned Solomon’s Temple, and tekhelet robes were worn by Israel’s high priests. According to Baruch and Judy Taubes Sterman in “The Great Tekhelet Debate—Blue or Purple?” in the September/October 2013 issue of BAR, even ordinary Israelites “were commanded to tie one string of tekhelet to the corner fringes (Hebrew, tzitzit) of their garments as a constant reminder of their special relationship with God” (Numbers 15:38–39). The tradition of blue tzitzit still exists today. But what was the actual color of ancient tekhelet and blue tzitzit? Was it a shade of blue or was it closer to purple? Blue tzitzit and tekhelet-colored fabrics were widely worn and traded throughout the ancient Mediterranean, but by the Roman period, only the emperor could wear tekhelet. By the seventh century C.E., with the Islamic conquest of the Levant, the tekhelet’s source and method of manufacture were lost. FREE eBook: Life in the Ancient World. Craft centers in Jerusalem, family structure across Israel and ancient practices—from dining to makeup—through the Mediterranean world. First Name:* Last Name:* Email Address: * * Indicates a required field. SUBMIT If you don’t want to receive the Bible History Daily newsletter, uncheck this box. A century ago, Isaac Herzog, who would later become Israel’s first chief rabbi, researched tekhelet for his dissertation. He concluded that blue in the Bible was a bright sky-blue derived from the secretions of a sea snail, Murex trunculus.* This species was known to produce a murex dye the color of dark purple. Decades after Herzog’s death, chemist Otto Elsner proved that murex dye could in fact produce a sky-blue color by exposing the snail secretions to ultraviolet rays during the dyeing process. Sky-blue tzitzit, then, could be made with murex dye. Despite Elsner’s discovery, the debate around the color of tekhelet continued. Dissenters argued that the ancient dyers, who created dyes in covered vats, likely didn’t know how to adjust the dye colors using the sun’s ultraviolet rays. Eleventh-century Biblical exegete Rashi described tekhelet as a deep blue or dark violet. A violet swatch of wool discovered during excavations at the first-century Herodian fortress of Masada was proven to have been colored by murex dye. In a letter to BAR, Professor Zvi C. Koren, director of the Edelstein Center for the Analysis of Ancient Artifacts at the Shenker College of Engineering and Design in Ramat Gan, Israel, criticizes the Stermans’ analysis, to which the Stermans have replied. Visit the BAS Scholar’s ... Continue Reading...

HEZEKIAH IN THE BIBLE. The royal seal of Hezekiah, king of Judah, was discovered in the Ophel excavations under the direction of archaeologist Eilat Mazar. Photo: Courtesy of Dr. Eilat Mazar; photo by Ouria Tadmor. The royal seal of King Hezekiah in the Bible was found in an archaeological excavation. The stamped clay seal, also known as a bulla, was discovered in the Ophel excavations led by Dr. Eilat Mazar at the foot of the southern wall of the Temple Mount in Jerusalem. The discovery was announced in a press release by the Hebrew University of Jerusalem’s Institute of Archaeology, under whose auspices the excavations were conducted. The bulla, which measures just over a centimeter in diameter, bears a seal impression depicting a two-winged sun disk flanked by ankh symbols and containing a Hebrew inscription that reads “Belonging to Hezekiah, (son of) Ahaz, king of Judah.” The bulla was discovered along with 33 other stamped bullae during wet-sifting of dirt from a refuse dump located next to a 10th-century B.C.E. royal building in the Ophel. In the ancient Near East, clay bullae were used to secure the strings tied around rolled-up documents. The bullae were made by pressing a seal onto a wet lump of clay. The stamped bulla served as both a signature and as a means of ensuring the authenticity of the documents. FREE ebook: Ten Top Biblical Archaeology Discoveries. Finds like the Pool of Siloam in Israel, where the Gospel of John says Jesus miraculously restored sight to a blind man. First Name:* Last Name:* Email Address: * * Indicates a required field. SUBMIT If you don’t want to receive the Bible History Daily newsletter, uncheck this box. Who Was King Hezekiah in the Bible? King Hezekiah in the Bible, son and successor of Ahaz and the 13th king of Judah (reigning c. 715–686 B.C.E.), was known for his religious reforms and attempts to gain independence from the Assyrians. The Ophel excavation area at the foot of the southern wall of the Temple Mount in Jerusalem. Photo: Andrew Shiva. In Aspects of Monotheism: How God Is One (Biblical Archaeology Society, 1997), Biblical scholar P. Kyle McCarter, Jr., summarizes Hezekiah’s religious reforms: According to 2 Chronicles 29–32, Hezekiah began his reform in the first year of his reign; motivated by the belief that the ancient religion was not being practiced scrupulously, he ordered that the Temple of Yahweh be repaired and cleansed of niddâ (impurity). After celebrating a truly national Passover for the first time since the reign of Solomon (2 Chronicles 30:26), Hezekiah’s officials went into the countryside and dismantled the local shrines or “high places” (bamot) along with their altars, “standing stones” (masseboth) and “sacred poles” (’aásûeµrîm). The account of Hezekiah’s reform activities in 2 Kings 18:1–8 is much briefer. Although he ... Continue Reading...

Archaeological NoteRomula (today Reșca, Dobrosloveni Village, Romania) was the largest urban and economic center of Dacia Inferior (Malvensis), a Roman province located in the north of the Lower Danube region. In this context, the city market included workshops for the production of ceramic, metal, stone, bone, and glass objects. In 2013, 2015, and 2018, during excavations of the former Roman city, two rectangular glass furnaces were discovered. One has only one chamber, the other has two chambers. A melted glass layer was found on the walls of furnace no. 1, as well as in one room of furnace no. 2. Continue Reading...

ArticleThis article presents evidence for a new reconstruction of the presentation scene portrayed on the Late Bronze Age ivory pyxis excavated at Mochlos. Previously undetected locks of hair, anatomical parts, dress, and attributes facilitate a recreation of the figures. It argues against Soles’ assertion that the goddess holds a lily to crown the shorter male as king and that the leading male is a hero or god based on imagery on the Ur III cylinder of Gudea. Continue Reading...

Museum ReviewThe exhibition Open Horizons: Ancient Greek Journeys and Connections at Melbourne Museum explored stories of ancient and modern journeys. Featuring ancient artifacts on loan from the National Archaeological Museum in Athens as well as photographs from Melbourne Museum’s own collection which illustrated the history of Greek migration to Australia in more recent centuries, the exhibition invited its viewers to consider the impact of travel of both objects and people on how ideas spread. Continue Reading...

127.4 Read Article Edited by Stefan Ritter and Sami Ben TaharReviewed by David L. Stone1Book Review Continue Reading...

127.4 Read Article By C. Riley AugéReviewed by Thomas E. Emerson1Book Review Continue Reading...

The shield, on loan from Yale University, was found in Syria in the 1930sThe body armour was discovered in 2018 in Kalkriese, north-west GermanyThe world's only intact Roman shield and body armour that was found in a German field after being buried for more than 2,000 years are set to go on display in a new exhibition at the British Museum.The shield, which is on its maiden transatlantic loan from Yale University in the US, was found in Syria in the 1930s.Although discovered in pieces, it was restored to its former glory by experts and will be seen by the British public for the first time in the Legion: life in the Roman army exhibition, which opens on February 1 next year. Read the rest of this article... Continue Reading...

The 1,000-year-old noblewoman’s skeleton was found without a face.(Image credit: Jan Woitas/dpa)The skeletal remains of a man and a woman buried in Germany caught archaeologists off guard when they discovered that the skull of one of the skeletons was completely hollowed out.Archaeologists made the unusual finding during ongoing excavations near a 1,000-year-old former royal palace built by Roman Emperor Otto the Great (also known as Otto I) in Helfta, a village in the German state of Saxony-Anhalt.The two skeletons were buried directly next to each other, suggesting that they were "possibly a married couple," Oliver Dietrich, an archaeologist with the German Archaeological Institute in Berlin who worked on the excavation, told Live Science in an email.Read the rest of this article... Continue Reading...

Israel’s repeated airstrikes on Gaza have destroyed more than 100 cultural landmarks and historic sites according to a preliminary report by the Catalonian NGO Heritage for Peace that was released earlier this month.The airstrikes, which took place after the October 7 Hamas attack that killed 1,400 Israelis and involved the taking of 240 hostages, have “destroyed or damaged” roughly 45 percent of housing in Gaza, leading to what the United Nations has called a “humanitarian catastrophe.”Historic religious sites, museums, and archaeological sites have been destroyed, the report says, noting that Gaza has been a cultural hub for every civilization that has conquered the region, from Egypt in the early 15th century BCE, to the Greeks under Alexander the Great, to the Roman and Byzantine Empires.Read the rest of this article... Continue Reading...

Lesser know sections and parts of Hadrian's Wall. Denton West, a section next to the busy A69 at West Denton.A new guide aims to ensure that visitors to Newcastle don’t miss the Roman heritage under its streets.The conviction that Newcastle was missing a trick in highlighting its rich heritage had for some time for some time occupied an organisation based in the city’s West End, where there are several examples of visible remains of Hadrian’s Wall. The route of the Wall threads through the main thoroughfares of Newcastle, but the Hadrian’s Wall national path, opened in 2003, diverges from that line and instead skirts the city via a riverside route.The national trail leaves the line of the world heritage monument at Heddon-on-the Wall and does not rejoin it for another 12 miles until they meet at Segedunum fort in Wallsend. The argument is that visitors are both not following the Wall and are also missing many other nearby historical features from across centuries of Newcastle’s history.Read the rest of this article... Continue Reading...

 Credit: Polish Centre of Mediterranean Archaeology, University of WarsawThis autumn, the Polish-Georgian Gonio-Apsaros expedition completed the 10th season of excavations at the Roman fort of Apsaros, south of Batumi on the Black Sea coast of Georgia. The fieldwork of the team headed by Dr. Radosław Karasiewicz-Szczypiorski (Polish Centre of Mediterranean Archaeology, University of Warsaw) and Prof. Shota Mamuladze (Gonio-Apsaros Archaeological and Architectural Site) has delivered several interesting discoveries.Based on this observation, Radosław Karasiewicz-Szczypiorski suggested that the material required for making official inscriptions and other complex stonework, such as marble, or high-quality limestone, was brought to Apsaros from afar. Fragments of these stone varieties are rare at the site. Their scarcity is certainly the result of their use in later periods as valued raw materials for the production of lime needed for construction purposes.Read the rest of this article... Continue Reading...

Earlier this year, I described how to create and pan-sharpen a multi-spectral 3-band composite Landsat-8 raster. Although I’m all for using free satellite imagery, sometimes it isn’t enough and you need to buy high-resolution satellite imagery from a suitable provider. Such was the case for my work on the archival material from Hogarth’s excavations in the necropolis of Gebel Asyut el-Gharbi in 1906-7. As part of the project, we were able to purchase some high-resolution Worldview-3 satellite imagery of the site, and a 2m digital surface model (DSM), generated from stereo-pair Worldview-2 images. In order to make the best use of these remotely-sensed data, I needed to process the satellite imagery to create a pan-sharpened and orthorectified image as a base map for my research. Satellite imagery – what you get In order to understand why I needed to process the satellite imagery, we need to dig into what it comprises and how it’s delivered to the user. The precise nature of satellite imagery varies somewhat depending on which sensor it comes from, who you obtained it from, whether you paid for it, and what level of processing was already applied when you received it. I received the Worldview-3 satellite ‘ortho-ready’, meaning that it was prepared for me to pan-sharpen and orthorectify it. Each satellite image comprised two folders both named by the same numeric code, one filename ending ‘_MUL’ and one filename ending ‘_PAN’. The MUL folder contains the multi-spectral bands and the PAN folder contains the higher-resolution panchromatic band. PAN files for Worldview-3 ortho-ready imagery. Each folder contains a series of .tif tiles, each of which covers part of the area purchased, while the .TIL file, covers the entire area occupied by those .tifs in a single raster file. There are also .IMD files, .RPB files, .XML files, and several .txt files with additional information in each folder. The Worldview-3 multispectral data showing the individual tifs (left) and the .TIL file (right). (Worldview-3 imagery © 2018 DigitalGlobe Inc. supplied by European Space Imaging) Pan-sharpening As with the Landsat-8 data, the Worldview-3 multispectral bands are lower (c.1.3m) resolution than the panchromatic band (c.0.3m) and need to be pan-sharpened to create a 0.3m resolution multispectral image. Because the Worldview-3 data is provided as a series of .tifs, it’s necessary to pan-sharpen each of the multispectral .tif files separately using the equivalent panchromatic .tif file. Once all the .tif files have been pan-sharpened I will mosaic them into a new raster. As with the Landsat-8 imagery, I pan-sharpened all the .tif files using the ‘Create Pansharpened Raster Dataset‘ tool of the Data Management>Raster>Raster processing toolset of ArcGIS ArcTools. I used the Gram-Schmitt method, as it allowed me to automatically weight the bands by choosing ‘Worldview-3’ under ‘Sensor’. Although it’s also possible to pan-sharpen using Symbology tab of the layer’s properties and in the Image Analysis Window I chose to use the ‘Create Pansharpened Raster Dataset’ tool because it allows me to specify which bands should be included in the resulting raster rather than relying ... Continue Reading...

In my previous post, I explained how to pan-sharpen individual .tifs of high-resolution Worldview-3 satellite imagery. Worldview-3 satellite imagery is provided as a series of .tif tiles covering the area purchased, but because each .tif tile has a slightly different histogram (the frequency of each colour within the image varies from .tif to .tif) the imagery exhibits abrupt discontinuities at the edges of the .tifs. Mosaicking These .tifs now need mosaicking into a single raster image, providing a consistent colour map, and permitting further research into the entire dataset. There are various mosaicking tools available in ArcGIS. Which you choose depends on what you intend to do with the data, but I am going to use the Mosaic to New Raster tool of the Data Management>Raster>Raster Processing toolset of ArcTools. The tool asks for the rasters to mosaic, the output folder, the output filename, the coordinate reference system, pixel type, number of bands, and the mosaic and colourmap operators. Most of these are fairly straightforward, but it’s worth noting that the filename needs to include the (e.g. .tif) extension, and the number of bands needs to match the number in the original rasters. The final part of the Mosaic to New Raster tool asks for the ‘mosaic Operator’ and the ‘Mosaic Colour Map Mode’. The ‘Mosaic Operator’ refers to the method of mosaicking overlapping areas. The Worldview-3 tiles shouldn’t have a significant overlap, but I prefer to use the ‘Blend’ operator, which blends the data in the overlapping area. Similarly, the Mosaic Colour Map Mode’ determines which of the tiles should provide the colour map for the new mosaicked raster. Again I prefer ‘Match’, which considers all the colourmaps. You can watch a video of me mosaicking the pan-sharpened .tifs on my Youtube Channel or in the embedded link above. The resulting pan-sharpened, mosaicked imagery provides a much better base map of the Asyut area: Comparison of the Worldview-3 imagery after pan-sharpening (left) and after mosaicking (right). (Worldview-3 imagery © 2018 DigitalGlobe Inc. supplied by European Space Imaging) Acknowledgements All the images in this blog post were created using ArcGIS® software by Esri. ArcGIS® and ArcMap are the intellectual property of Esri and are used herein under license. Copyright © Esri. All rights reserved. For more information about Esri® software, please visit http://www.esri.com. Worldview-3 imagery © 2018 DigitalGlobe Inc. supplied by European Space Imaging. Subscribe Follow me on: Google Scholar Academia Researchgate Social media Twitter YouTube Instagram LinkedIn Facebook Search my website Find out more Asyut Region Project Research About Publications Contact me Freelance Archaeology Related posts October 25, 2023 Pan-sharpening a Worldview-3 satellite imagery of Gebel Asyut el-Gharbi September 27, 2023 Mosaicking pan-sharpened Worldview-3 satellite imagery of Gebel Asyut el-Gharbi March 29, 2023 Pan-sharpening a composite 3-band 4-3-2 RGB true colour Landsat-8 satellite image of Gebel Asyut el-Gharbi 1 2 3 … 5 Next Page Continue Reading...

Stonehenge needs little introduction! A UNESCO World Heritage Site, Stonehenge is perhaps the most famous archaeological site in England. It is a Neolithic stone circle enclosed within a ditch and bank (the ‘henge’) and surrounded by an extensive prehistoric landscape of barrows, henges, cursus monuments, and other features that reach as far as Avebury and Silbury Hill. For centuries the main road to the south-west of England, now numbered the A303, has run past the stones. Unfortunately, the A303 is now a highly congested modern route, producing considerable noise and pollution. Its proximity to Stonehenge and its location within an important World Heritage Site prevents any road widening schemes, while the traffic impacts visitor understanding and appreciation of the prehistoric landscape. Stonehenge in its landscape. The photo largely avoids including the roads, but one is visible on the far right of the image (Photo by Sofu00eda Rabassa on Pexels.com) Since the late 20th century, various proposals have been made for improving the A303, including locating the part closest to Stonehenge within a tunnel, thereby removing the noise and pollution from the vicinity of the stones, allowing the road to be widened, and improving the safety of the road and the Stonehenge visitor experience. These schemes have had long germination, with over 20 years of planning, research, and preparation. Archaeological research has been taken alongside the planning, with various desk-based assessments, archaeological surveys, and evaluation excavations informing the design, engineering, and other planning. As of 2023, the government has given approval to a new dual-carriageway road scheme between Amesbury and Berwick Down, with a tunnel bored through bedrock past Stonehenge. The approval of the scheme has provoked a great deal of outrage and some genuine concern that it represents an existential threat to either Stonehenge itself or other similarly important remains within the World Heritage Site. As an archaeologist who formerly worked in planning I set out to determine whether these fears were justified. Highways England video detailing the approved scheme. A planning-archaeologist’s perspective In my previous blog post, I discussed how planning archaeology works in England and how my experience of commercial or ‘developer-funded’ archaeology runs parallel to the 25-year history of the development of the Stonehenge Tunnel scheme. I never worked on the Stonehenge scheme itself or for the archaeological unit most involved with it, Wessex Archaeology, and I have no access beyond the publicly available documents. Nevertheless, I have worked on similar large infrastructure projects, with long periods of planning, including Crossrail and the Thames Tideway Tunnel, and the essential problems and priorities of the Stonehenge scheme are the same as for any development; avoid impacts upon nationally and internationally significant archaeological remains; mitigate impacts upon remains of lesser significance through timely archaeological investigation, analysis, and publication. What then are the risks and mitigation necessary for the Stonehenge tunnel as approved? What might I have written if this scheme had landed on my desk for desk-based assessment? World heritage wobbles Aerial view of Stonehenge, showing the busy A303 on the left ... Continue Reading...

I have previously written about how archaeological sites as experienced by the public differ from sites as experienced by the archaeologist, how this feeds into misunderstandings of archaeology, and their impact on our society. These issues have once again come to the fore as the summer of 2023 provokes further debate about the approved A303 tunnel scheme near Stonehenge. As with the Prittlewell Prince, the debate reveals a great deal about the public understanding of archaeology, exposing misconceptions about both the nature of archaeology and the role of archaeologists. It also reveals how little many people know about archaeology in the planning process. Stonehenge in its landscape. (Photo by Kyle Stehling on Pexels.com) Archaeology and efforts to mitigate the effects of development on archaeological remains have been a part of the British planning system since 1992. Since then, Planning Policy Documents 15 and 16 (or PPG15 and PPG16), and their 2010 successor ‘Planning Policy Statement 5′ (PPS5), and the ongoing Historic Environment section of the National Planning Policy Framework, produced a vibrant commercial archaeology sector dealing with archaeology threatened by development. This sector is paid for by developers (hence ‘developer-funded archaeology’) under planning conditions imposed by local authorities. The aim of the process, from planning guidance to commercial archaeologists and archives is to identify archaeological remains likely to be affected by any new development and plan, execute, publish, and archive a process of archaeological mitigation commensurate with the importance of those remains. Excavations at the Rose Theatre, Bankside, London 1989, which prompted changes to planning policy to include archaeology. (Image by Christopher Hilton from Wikimedia Commons CC BY-SA 2.0) My career in archaeology spans almost exactly the same, almost 25-year time period as the development of the Stonehenge Tunnel scheme. I spent my first nearly 15 years working predominantly in British commercial archaeology, with some research excavations alongside. The last 5 years of my commercial archaeology experience were spent researching and writing pre-planning historic environment desk-based assessments and environmental impact assessments. These are planning documents written before any work takes place, predicting the type of archaeological remains likely to be present on any given development site (if any) and proposing suitable mitigation strategies. This process involved researching what archaeological remains had been found in and around the site previously, predicting whether such material was likely to be found there again, assessing the significance of that material, and determining a suitable course of action based on that significance. Understanding the nature of site significance and how that affects the chosen archaeological mitigation strategy is crucial to understanding both the current proposals for the Stonehenge Tunnel and the development of those proposals alongside archaeological evaluation over the last 20 years. An absolutely typical commercial archaeological excavation at Monks Field, Partney. A cobblestone foundation for structure is visible centre back. In the foreground are several negative features (pits or ditches probably) that have been ‘sectioned’ (cut in half) and half emptied. In addition, to textual records, the site will be drawn in plan ... Continue Reading...

NOTE: This post includes mention and some distant images of mummified people (sahw). A 3-d display of amulets as they would be situated within a sahw. This popular display was reinstalled from a previous display in the Egypt and Sudan Gallery. (Author Photograph) In February 2023, the Manchester Museum reopened following a major refit. In April I visited the museum, including the refurbished Egypt and Sudan Gallery, and the Golden Mummies exhibition.  The museum is open from 10am Tuesday to Friday and Sunday (from 8am on Saturday) and closes at 5pm every day except Wednesday when closing is 9pm. The Egypt and Sudan Gallery is a relatively small space on the first floor of the museum. Despite its size, the display is weighty, both in terms of the objects and the interpretation provided in the new signage. All the objects are displayed alongside their object numbers, although I found some of the signage a little confusing. Amidst the new display and signage, old favourites are still present; several people on Facebook were delighted to learn that a three-dimensional display of amulets, showing how they would be located within a sahw (mummified person), could still be found in the gallery (first image). Chronology Limestone relief with inlaid coloured paste (Manchester Museum #5168), mastaba of Nefermaat and Itet, Maidum. (Author photograph). Like most displays of ancient Egyptian material, the gallery includes both chronological and thematic elements to orientate the visitor as to the history and culture of ancient Egypt. While the chronological material is relatively typical for a display of this type, it does include a number of fascinating objects. There are the unusual sunken paste reliefs of the mastaba of Nefermaat and Itet at Meidum (Manchester Museum #5168 and #3594); and a beautiful shell-shaped palette (Manchester Museum #1695). Although the object label describes it as ‘diorite’ this shell palette is unmistakably anorthosite gneiss from the Gebel el-Asr quarries, which is often erroneously described as ‘diorite’. Another fascinating and important object is the linen and plaster mask, possibly of Bes or Aha (Manchester Museum #123), found at the town of Kahun , which shows signs of having been worn in life and may be a piece of ritual equipment (Horváth 2015). Shell-shaped anorthosite gneiss palette (Manchester Museum #1695). from Dendera. (Author Photograph) Part of a statue of Ramses II (Manchester Museum #1783), the back of his head embraced by Horus. (Author Photograph) Themes The major theme of Egypt and Sudan is the ancient Egyptian way of death. This is hardly surprising. Manchester has long had a strong interest in Egyptian mummification, ranging from Margaret Murray‘s ‘scientific’ unwrapping of Khnum-Nakht at Manchester in 1908, to the Manchester Mummy Project of the late 20th century and the current Golden Mummies exhibition. Furthermore, like many museums, much of Manchester’s collection was created during the late 19th and early 20th century, when desert cemeteries were a major focus of both archaeological excavations and antiquities hunters. As a result, the vast majority of objects in such collections relate to tombs, graves, and sahw with ... Continue Reading...