Floods threaten Silbury Hill and Rotherwas Ribbon

By Maeve Kennedy The Guardian

Rain was falling remorselessly on Silbury Hill yesterday, pooling on the sodden fields at its foot, and dangerously seeping down into the core of the most enigmatic prehistoric monument in Europe. The entire hill near Avebury in Wiltshire is artificial, built around 4,500 years ago by stupendous human effort with an estimated 35m baskets of chalk. Yesterday, archaeologists and engineers were engaged in urgent discussions on how to save Silbury, after the torrential rain caused further damage to a structure already weakened by earlier floods. [snip]

In floods five years ago, a chasm opened at the top of the hill, where a poorly filled 200-year-old shaft collapsed, and water poured down into the structure, seeping into voids left by generations of later diggers, including the tunnels from a major excavation in the 1960s. The plan, now left in chaos by the weather, was to empty those tunnels completely of their previous loose fill, and then pack them solidly again with chalk. Instead rain is still seeping into the mound, from the summit where the earlier domed repair has already partly washed away, causing damage which can't even be fully assessed until the rain stops.

Silbury is not alone. As well as the human tragedies, the floods have been washing away thousands of years of history, across a swath of central and southern England. Silbury has been unmissable for millennia, but in Hereford, rain has been scouring away parts of a mysterious structure uncovered only a few weeks ago: the Rotherwas Ribbon, a serpentine path surfaced with deliberately burned stones, winding up a shallow hill - slap in the path of an unpopular new road plan.

FULL ARTICLE

I posted about the Rotherwas Ribbon several weeks ago.

Unique Bronze Age site discovered in England

Raphael G. Satter Associated Press Jul. 8, 2007

The stones were likely heated in a fire and quickly doused in cold water, cracking before being placed along the serpentine earthen mound. The result: a curving paved structure possibly used in a ritual by Britain's Bronze Age inhabitants.The archaeologist who announced the discovery of the 65-yard-long "Rotherwas Ribbon" in western England said so-called "burnt stones" that cover the 4,000-year-old mound could shed more light on early civilization.

Mounds of burnt stones litter northern Europe and some experts believe they were once used in cooking.

But their presence on the snakelike mound also suggests the stones were used in rituals, Herefordshire County archaeologist Keith Ray said Wednesday.

"It's the only structure we have from prehistory from Britain or in Europe, as far as we can tell, that is actually a deliberate construction that uses burnt stones," Ray said. "This is ... going to make us rethink whole chunks of what we thought we understood about the period."

AP article continues

BBC News article with aerial photograph

Bob Widdowson, Chair of Herefordshire Campaign for the Protection of Rural England (CPRE), said: "I am bemused by the plan to 'preserve' the site beneath the road. How comforting to know that this extraordinary find is there but no one can see it until a more enlightened generation tears up the road! A site of 4000 years and apparently of major international importance is to be preserved (buried) so that a road that most sensible people agree is in the wrong place and not needed can be finished 'on time'." link

Thanks to Pagan Nation

Keywords: megalithic, archeology, England, UK, Herefordshire, road, ritual, stone, fire, Rotherwas, Rotherwas Ribbon

New Stone Circle Revealed in Shetland Islands

A team of archeologists from Bath University has uncovered an early Bronze Age or late Neolithic stone circle on the island of Foula, one of the Shetland Islands. The circle is oriented to the midwinter sunrise. Foula (population 30) has the world's largest colony of Great Skuas, known locally as "bonxies."

Bath and Camerton Archaeological Society (BACAS)
http://www.bacas.homecall.co.uk/

Foula (Visit Shetland site)
http://www.visitshetland.com/area-guides/foula/