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Silbury Dig tour - 31st AugustThis afternoon I attended an English Heritage tour of the digs taking place at Silbury in the Swallowhead Spring Meadow and the next hillside meadow. Many people attended; the dig is looking specifically at the Roman settlement that appeared on a geophysics survey published in an English Heritage report about five years ago. The findings are being reported here http://latersilbury.wordpress.com/ and there are information posters at the site of each individual dig (I didn't count them but about six in all). The last dig we looked at seemed the most intriguing as may be the site of a well. There were small sarsens buried here, the reason why has not yet been determined but it could have been something simply like field clearance. Bits of Roman pottery lying around - everything found will be subjected to optically stimulated luminescence (OSL) tests. |
Posted by tjj31st August 2010ce Edited 1st September 2010ce |
Archaeologists Find Huge Artificial Lake With Ceramic-Lined Floorhttp://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2010/08/100826083803.htm Science daily above. Mayan Water Reservoir in Mexican Rainforest: Archaeologists Find Huge Artificial Lake With Ceramic-Lined Floor ScienceDaily (Aug. 27, 2010) — Archaeologists from the University of Bonn have found a water reservoir the size of a soccer field, whose floor is lined with ceramic shards, in the Mexican rainforest. It seems that in combination with the limestone on top, the shards were supposed to seal the artificial lake. The system was built about 1,500 years ago. It is the first example of this design found for the Maya. It is not yet known whether the reservoir's entire floor is tiled. Since 2009, researchers from Bonn and Mexico have been systematically uncovering and mapping the old walls of Uxul, a Mayan city. "In the process, we also came across two, about 100 m square water reservoirs," explained Iken Paap, who directs the project with Professor Dr. Nikolai Grube and the Mexican archaeologist Antonio Benavides Castillo. Such monster pools, which are also known from other Mayan cities, are called "aguadas." Similar to present-day water towers, they served to store drinking water. But the people of Uxul seem to have thought of a particularly smart way to seal their aguada. "We conducted a trial dig in the center of one of the water reservoirs," explains Nicolaus Seefeld, a young scholar. "We found that the bottom, which is at a depth of two meters, was covered with ceramic shards -- probably from plates -- practically without any gaps. But we don't know yet whether it's like this throughout the entire aguada." If so, that would be a minor sensation -- merely due to the quantity of ceramics required. The aguadas in Uxul were each as large as ten Olympic-size pools. Maybe there used to be even more artificial lakes. After all, the precious commodity had to be enough to last a population of at least 2,000 through the 3-month dry season. The Mayan term "uxul," by the way, means "at the end" in English. Karl Ruppert and John H. Denison from the Carnegie Institution of Washington, who discovered the city, had named it that in 1934 -- exhausted and sick after a long expedition through the jungles of Mexico's Yucatán peninsula. The city's original name remains unknown to this day. If Uxul was "at the end of the world" in the 1930's, not much has changed today. "You can only get to the ruins via 120 km of jungle paths clear across the Calakmul Biosphere Reserve, far from modern roads and settlements," explains Dr. Iken Paap. These are difficult conditions for the archaeologists and the German-Mexican excavation team. This year, they spent three months in the forest to explore the Mayan city. Flourishing trade center What is becoming more and more obvious as the excavations progress is the fact that Uxul was nowhere near "at the end" or isolated in the jungle during its heyday in the Classical period (250 to 900 A.D.): Uxul was located in a densely populated area between the big Mayan cities of El Mirador to the south and Calakmul to the northeast. It had trade connections as far as present-day southern Guatemala and the Central Mexican Plateau. Uxul was settled for several epochs of the Mayan culture. So much was concluded by the Bonn scholars after analyzing the dig and its settlement layers. "This year, we were able to excavate a sequence of layers that was over three meters deep, ranging probably from the late Pre- to the End- or Post-Classical periods," explains Iken Paap. Inscriptions report that, around 630 A.D., Uxul was annexed under the rule of Calakmul, which was at a distance of about 26 kilometers. To what extent was life in the city and the surrounding area affected and influenced by such changes in power? Did Uxul have its own trade connections that continued to exist during Calakmul's rule? Did the population experience the crises of the elites directly in their own daily lives? Or were these disputes between the ruling powers, which have been given more importance due to being recorded on steles and altars than they were accorded by contemporary strata of the population? "This Spring for the first time we found tombs that had not been destroyed by grave robbers in their search for ceramics and jade jewelry," said Professor Dr. Nikolai Grube. "We are hoping that this and new studies on the drinking water system and history of vegetation will provide us with new insights into the living situation of the population of this Mayan city." |
Posted by Arcturus 31st August 2010ce |
Dry weather reveals archaeological 'cropmarks' in fieldshttp://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-11128297 BBC news link above. Hundreds of ancient sites have been discovered by aerial surveys, thanks to a dry start to the summer, English Heritage has said. The surveys show marks made when crops growing over buried features develop at a different rate from those nearby. The newly-discovered Roman and prehistoric settlements include a site near Bradford Abbas, Dorset. The Roman camp was revealed in June after three sides became visible in sun-parched fields of barley. The lightly-built defensive enclosure would have provided basic protection for Roman soldiers while on manoeuvres in the first century AD and is one of only four discovered in the south west of England, English Heritage said. The dry conditions also allowed well-known sites to be photographed in greater detail. "It's hard to remember a better year" Dave MacLeod English Heritage Bumper year Newton Kyme, near Tadcaster, North Yorkshire, was shown to not only be home to a Roman fort dating back nearly 2,000 years but also a larger, stronger defence built in 290AD. English Heritage senior investigator Dave MacLeod said: "It's hard to remember a better year. "Cropmarks are always at their best in dry weather, but the last few summers have been a disappointment. "This year we have taken full advantage of the conditions. We try to concentrate on areas that in an average year don't produce much archaeology." Flights over the Holderness area of the East Riding proved particularly productive with about 60 new sites, mainly prehistoric, found in just one day including livestock and settlement enclosures. English Heritage said some sites which have not been visible since the drought of 1976 reappeared this summer. http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-11128889 Aerial photos above. |
Posted by Arcturus 31st August 2010ce |
The 10,000-year-old boy's bones:Mexican Cave.http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-1305929/Ancient-skeleton-prehistoric-child-removed-Mexican-underwater-cave.html Daily Mail article with photos. on link above. The remains of a prehistoric child that were found in an underwater cave in Mexico four years ago have now been removed by a team of divers. The skeletal remains of the boy, dubbed the Young Hol Chan, are more than 10,000 years old and are among the oldest human bones found in the Americas. Scientists hope that the well-preserved corpse will offers clues to ancient human migration. An archaeologist takes a picture of the skeleton of a child found at the bottom of an underwater cave near Tulum The corpse was discovered in 2006 by a pair of German cave divers who were exploring unique flooded sandstone sinkholes, known as cenotes, common to the eastern Mexican state of Quintana Roo. He appears to have been a young boy and was found with his legs bent to his left side and his arms extended to either side of his body. No other ancient skeleton has ever been found in this position. Scientists spent three years studying the remains where they lay before deciding it was safe to bring the skeleton to the surface for further study. Anthropologists from the National Automonous University of Mexico think that the body was placed in the cave in a funeral ceremony performed late in the Pleistocene epoch when the sea level was around 488 feet lower than it is today. Scientists say that this finding will reveal information on how the continent was populated Experts recovered 60 percent of the skeleton, including bones from both arms and legs, vertebrae, ribs, the skull and several teeth - all fantastically preserved, Divers have also found the partial skeletons of three other people, known as the Woman of Naharon, the Woman of Las Palmas and the Temple Man, all of which were discovered inside other flooded caves, Scientists believe that the latest discover 'strengthens the hypothesis that the American continent was populated starting with several migrations coming from Asia'. In an announcement the university said that the burial sites 'reveal migrations coming from southeastern Asia before those known up to now as Clovis groups, which are said to have crossed from northern Asia, also via the Bering Strait, at the end of the Ice Age.' Some scientists believe that the Clovis people crossed into America from Asia around 14,000 years ago and gradually made their way down, over many generations to settle in northern Mexico. Others believe that the first people in America actually crossed from the Pacific on boats, possibly even earlier than the Clovis. The finds at the caves in Quintana Roo appear to predate earlier Clovis finds from similar areas in Mexico. The institute is co-ordinating a study of early human migration to eastern Mexico that aims to deepen understanding of the movement of people across the Bering Strait at the end of the last Ice Age. The Young Hol Chan, named after the cenote where he was discovered, was found in a darkened cave 27 feet beneath the surface. Quintana Roo The remains were found in the Eastern Mexican province of Quintana Roo. |
Posted by Arcturus 30th August 2010ce |
Archaeologists find new clues why the Maya lefthttp://www.usatoday.com/tech/science/2010-08-25-maya-pompeii_N.htm YUCATAN, Mexico— Bird calls ring from the forest, echoing amid the crumbling ruins whose darkened doorways have long beckoned explorers and scholars. The Maya ancients who built the ruins of Kiuic (kee-week) here fled those doorways in a hurry, an international archaeology team now realizes. Left behind may be frozen-in-time clues to the fabled collapse of their civilization. "Why did they leave? That's the question," says archaeologist George Bey of Millsaps College in Jackson, Miss. The ancient Maya fled Kiuic, nestled in the Puuc (pook) foothills of the Yucatan, around 880. "Things were going full-bore, construction was underway. And things stopped," Bey says. TRANSCRIPT: Prof. George Bey answered your Maya questions Archaeologists have explored Kiuic's ruins for more than a century, but working since 2000, Bey and colleagues are now reporting the first evidence of this rapid abandonment. USA TODAY was invited to the site to see what has been uncovered in the latest excavations. The "classic" Maya peopled the lowland forests of Central America during Europe's Dark Ages, building a civilization of pyramids, palaces and slash-and-burn "milpa" farms made by burning trees and planting seeds in the ash. Maya rulers oversaw city-states that warred with one another, created elaborate calendars and lasted centuries. The abandonment of those monument-strewn centers stands as one of archaeology's most-debated mysteries. The "collapse" was underway in modern-day Guatemala by 800, but didn't take place at Kiuic until almost a century later. Preserved almost like Pompeii Farther north, at centers such as Mayapan, pyramids and temples stayed in business until the arrival of Spain's conquistadors in the 1500s. The Maya people themselves remained, of course, with millions living today in Central America, from modern-day El Salvador to Mexico. Scholars are entranced with the ruins at Kiuic that still bear the last traces of their owners' flight, a Maya version of Pompeii, the entombed town of Roman archaeological fame. Overlooked and overgrown for more than a millennium, a variety of clues now beg for interpretation: • Walls, perfectly laid out with corner and vault stones, lying flat on the ground and waiting to be erected atop the second floor of a palace. • A half-finished plaza, one side stuccoed and completed, the other composed of bowling-ball-sized stones. • Pots and grinding stones left neatly in homes, awaiting their owners' return. At Kiuic, "the evidence for rapid abandonment now appears more compelling," says archaeologist Takeshi Inomata of the University of Arizona-Tucson, who heads efforts to investigate the Maya settlement of Aguateca in Guatemala, a site suddenly abandoned in 830 during warfare. "It is a very important discovery." Pumas roam the forest lining the overgrown trail leading out of Kiuic. Stones crumble underfoot on the tree-bedecked hillside, threatening to tumble visitors to the forest floor. Once a stair built of the stones, the Escalero al Cielo (Stairway to Heaven) leads to ruins of a temple courtyard and many homes that await 200 feet above. "The climb kept away looters, and also sometimes older archaeologists," says Tomás Gallareta Negrón of Mexico's National Institute of Anthropology and History, a co-director of the site with Bey and William Ringle of Davidson (N.C.) College. Gallareta Negrón has pioneered efforts to turn the site into a nature reserve and education center. Kiuic has been visited by archaeologists since at least 1841, when John Lloyd Stephens, the so-called American Traveler, recorded the site for his Incidents of Travel in Yucatan, a best seller of the pre-Civil War era. Some of the ruins he noted at that time still stood there this summer, such as the three-story-tall Yaxché pyramid and Kuche palaces. But the Stairway to Heaven homes high above the site now attract as much, or more, attention from the archaeologists. During excavations last year, archaeologists found pottery and stone tools left in place inside homes, including a wealthy farmer's kitchen room perched on the edge of the hill. Corn grinding stones called metates still rest on their sides next to doorways, at the ready for preparing another meal. In June, excavations revealed more pottery left neatly under another collapsed roof in the farmer's home. And under the floor of the main room, researchers found the site of a double burial. "We think these are ancestors of some kind," a burial arrangement in line with the practices of the ancient Maya, says archaeologist Stephanie Simms of Boston University. "They certainly merited special treatment," she says, buried with jade beads and elaborate stone tools. The owners never returned, Simms says. "People left the hill in haste, they didn't take everything with them, a lot of artifacts were found." Says anthropologist Rani Alexander of New Mexico State University-Las Cruces: "Rapid abandonments are rare finds for archaeologists. The new information at Kiuic offers another take on the Maya collapse." Drought, disease, warfare, corn-borers, worn-out soils — almost as many theories as ruins abound to explain the collapse. "The Maya were not a single people. There were numerous regional languages and numerous regional cultures," Ringle says. Whatever led to the rapid abandonment at Kiuic will offer only clues to collapses elsewhere, not some sort of final word on the large-scale emptying of centers that took place across the Maya world. The Puuc region has its own particular architecture, marked by small columns along tops of walls, the "colonette" style. But the palaces and temples conform to classic Maya styles, long row-houses facing each other across a central plaza. They built rooms whose narrow stone vaults simply leaned into each other, unlike true arches. Maya elite took the high ground Towering trees bite into the limestone blocks fronting the ruins at Kiuic, and they hide dozens of ruins there from visitors' eyes. Once the trees only hugged the ridge tops, and the land below was cleared for plazas and corn. Today the site is thick with trees, vegetation and ticks, and years of swallow droppings have left a signature stench. Kiuic's population boomed, reaching perhaps 4,000 inhabitants, just as the centers more than 200 miles farther south, at Tikal, Copan and Aguateca, suffered abandonment. "Undoubtedly there were some people who arrived here from that time, but Kiuic had already been thriving then for centuries," Bey says. The growth saw the elites move up the Stairway to Heaven (Gallareta acknowledges he is the Led Zeppelin fan behind the name) from which they could survey their fields. Around that time, 850, populations swelled throughout the Puuc foothills, perhaps most notably at the city of Uxmal. Now a World Heritage Site about 20 miles north of Kiuic (as the crow flies, not by driving), Uxmal became a capital of the Yucatan Maya for centuries afterward. The newcomers likely added to already-growing populations. But that growth just stopped in the hills at Kiuic and nearby sites, which had been occupied from 900 B.C. onwards by the Maya. "When they left, they didn't come back," Bey says. "We know where they went — there are millions of Maya living today closer to the coast. Why would they leave here and not return for the things they left?" Warfare, suggests Inomata, whose Aguateca site in Guatemala is surrounded by walls. However, Kiuic and the other towns close by show no signs of fortifications. The only warlike signs discovered are spear points dug up in the central plaza. Another possibility is a long-term drought that dried up the choltuns, large holes dug in the limestone floors of the forest to contain water. Still that wouldn't explain why people never returned after 1,900 years of occupation. Choltuns seem to have only come into widespread use in the Puuc a few centuries before the abandonment, so people had made do without them before. The careful packing of homes at the Stairway to Heaven points to a methodical retreat, not a plague or war, as well as another riddle. The whole ancient Maya way of life centered on ritual destruction of old homes and goods (smashed bits of pottery underlying the floors of structures serve as one of the handiest dating devices available to archaeologists) as a starting point for building anything new. The whole idea of a widespread catastrophic collapse of the classic Maya is overstated, Alexander says, suggesting centers likely went through many cycles of building, abandonment and reuse. So for now, the archaeologists will continue exploring these questions next summer. Residues in the pottery at the Stairway to Heaven should precisely time its abandonment, through carbon dating. Burnt wood left amid the burials should similarly time the site's construction. The team will keep asking questions with each new bit of evidence, aiming to uncover clues to Kiuic's collapse and the wider fall of a civilization. "Kiuic is just one of many sites," Bey says. "What's important is the research there. What we are learning at Kiuic is crucial for a rethinking about the rise and fall of the Maya civilization in this part of the world." Archaeologist George Bey of Millsaps College answered your questions on the Maya civilization. |
Posted by Arcturus 30th August 2010ce |
Echoes of the past: The sites and sounds of prehistoryhttp://www.newscientist.com/article/mg20727741.600-echoes-of-the-past-the-sites-and-sounds-of-prehistory.html?full=true New Scientist above. Did our ancient ancestors build to please the ears as well as the eyes? Trevor Cox pitches into the controversial claims of acoustic archaeologists. And in our web-only article Acoustic archaeology: The secret sounds of StonehengeSpeakerMovie Camera, he explains how the acoustic footprint of the world's most famous prehistoric monument was measured "The wind, playing upon the edifice, produced a booming tune, like the note of some gigantic one-stringed harp. No other sound came from it... Overhead something made the black sky blacker, which had the semblance of a vast architrave uniting the pillars horizontally. They entered carefully beneath and between; the surfaces echoed their soft rustle; but they seemed to be still out of doors..." This atmospheric description of a "temple of the winds" comes from the dramatic climax of Thomas Hardy's novel Tess of the d'Urbervilles. The setting is Stonehenge, arguably the most famous prehistoric monument of all. Its imposing ring of standing stones is visible for miles on Salisbury plain in southern England. On the day of the summer solstice its outlying "Heelstone" is exactly in line with rays of the rising sun. A more perfect example of the visual impact of an ancient monument would be hard to find. Might we be missing here something that both Hardy and our prehistoric ancestors understood? Some archaeologists have begun to think so. They argue that sound effects were an important, perhaps even decisive, factor in how early humans chose and built their dwellings and sacred places. Caves that sing, Mayan temples that chirp, burial mounds that hum: they all add up to evidence that the aural, and not just the visual, determined the building codes of the past. But is that sound science? Assessing the claims of "acoustic archaeology" rapidly encounters a fundamental problem: sound is ephemeral. Pottery fragments, coins, bones and bits of buildings can survive for centuries, waiting to be analysed, interpreted- and reinterpreted. The sounds of the past, by contrast, have long since died away. Where historical records make mention of acoustic intent in designing structures, the claims are often based on faulty science (see "Sound design?"). Going back into prehistory, we do not even have the luxury of knowing what our ancestors were thinking- or often a clear idea of the original layout and acoustic properties of the structures we are interpreting. There is, however, a plausible argument that sound must have been important to our ancestors, perhaps more so than it is to us now. "Today we guzzle sounds and make a lot of noise," says UK archaeologist Paul Devereux, an advocate of the claims of acoustic archaeology. "We are visually very sophisticated, but acoustically very primitive." Our ancestors, by contrast, would have been "acoustically more calm and attentive in a much quieter world", he says. Without artificial light, listening intently would have been imperative to ward off night-time predators. In a time before writing, moreover, information was principally communicated orally. It seems reasonable that prehistoric humans would have paid more attention to their acoustic landscapes than we do today. "Senses as a whole were more fused," says Julian Thomas, an archaeologist at the University of Manchester, UK. "There wasn't the separation of vision from the other senses as there has been over the last few centuries. Nowadays we tend to prioritise vision." Sounding stones We also know that our ancestors appreciated their ability to exploit their environment to make sound early on. The discovery of three flutes in 2009 in a cave in south-west Germany, the best preserved of them made from a vulture's wing bone and containing five finger holes, pushes the origins of music back to the middle Palaeolithic era, 40,000 years ago. Lithophones or rock gongs- stones that create a tone when hit- are found around the world. A cave at Fieux à Miers in the Midi-Pyrénées region of the south of France contains a 2-metre-tall feature which resonates like a gong when struck. Recalcified fractures on the lithophone indicating where it was struck can be dated back to the upper Palaeolithic, around 20,000 years ago (Oxford Journal of Archaeology, vol 4, p 31). Outdoor examples include Kupgal Hill in Karnataka state, southern India, where an outcrop of dolerite boulders emits loud ringing tones when hit with granite stones. Nicole Boivin of the University of Oxford suggests that shamans might have used the rock gongs during formal rituals. Dating the wear marks in boulders is impossible, but the presence of Neolithic rock art indicates that the site was used for many thousands of years (Antiquity, vol 78, p 38). Imagery such as cave paintings, markings or etchings also provides tantalising clues to how prehistoric humans might have exploited their surroundings to make sound. Iegor Reznikoff of Nanterre University, Paris, has examined the caves of Rouffignac in the south of France and showed that paintings are located where the most interesting sound effects are heard. Devereux, in his book Stone Age Soundtracks, cites numerous other examples around the globe of seemingly premeditated placing of petroglyphs or pictographs, including sites where art is painted on concave rock walls that give distinct echoes. Raised voices Systematic analyses of such sites are few and far between. Rupert Till, a musicologist from the University of Huddersfield, UK, says acoustic archaeology is where conventional archaeology was a century or more ago. "The subject is in its infancy," he says. "It's like the days of the Victorian gentleman wandering around digging holes in the ground." It is one thing to show that our ancestors were aware of their acoustic environment. It is quite another to prove that they intentionally designed their surroundings with acoustics in mind. As soon as humans began constructing their own dwellings and other structures, this question of "intentionality" looms large. One focus of this debate lies with enclosed spaces such as burial mounds, underground temples and burial chambers dug out of rock and earth. In the 1990s, Devereux and his colleagues measured the acoustics of six sites in the UK and Ireland dating from around 3500 BC to 400 BC, and found that all of them have resonant frequencies between 95 and 120 hertz, within the range of a male voice. Chant in a drone at the right frequency and you can map out the shape of the acoustic resonance, hearing the sound loud in one place and hardly at all in another- a dramatic and impressive sound effect (Journal of the Acoustical Society of America, vol 99, p 649). "Certainly this would have been a dense sensory experience," says Thomas- one accentuated by tight squeezes, poor light and the stench of rotting bodies. Devereux thinks this is no coincidence: the spaces were tuned to maximise the acoustic impact of ritual chanting. The burial mounds consist of a stone chamber and entrance passage covered in earth. In theory, at least, the builders could have moved stones around and tuned the chamber before piling on the earth, perhaps copying previous burial mounds with particularly good acoustics. Similar claims of acoustic tuning for religious purposes have been made of pre-Inca temples in Peru (New Scientist, 6 September 2008, p 37). It's a nice theory, but not everyone is convinced. Matthew Wright, an acoustics researcher at the University of Southampton, UK, is scathing in his commentary. "If you are going to conclude that particular burial mounds were designed for chanting, then you have to also conclude that my bathroom was made for singing," he says. If you're going to conclude that burial mounds were designed for chanting, then my bathroom was made for singing Till thinks that this argument overlooks how unusual stone buildings were in the past, and therefore underestimates the amount of thought that would have gone into building them. Both he and Devereux accept that acoustic intent in the design of burial mounds is far from proved, and it will be difficult to do so conclusively. Till suggests that proof might come in identifying repeat features in burial mounds that change over time, indicating an empirical development process. Nevertheless, he thinks that some of the evidence brought for ancient acoustic effects is judged too harshly. If artefacts or monuments look good, then we believe with little hard evidence that they were designed to look good. Where interesting sound effects are heard, though, we dismiss them as flukes or demand evidence for acoustic purpose- perhaps because, in our noise-filled modern environments, we are far more attuned to visual cues than acoustic ones. Acoustic consultant David Lubman agrees. In 1998 he suggested that the curious echo reflected from the steps of the El Castillo pyramid at the Mayan site of Chichen Itza, Mexico, was no accident. The steps had been designed, he said, to generate a sound that resembles the chirping of the quetzal, the sacred bird of the Mayans. Many archaeologists dismissed his idea. "Some of this is understandable," says Lubman. "Many outsiders promote unscientific, ignorant, and even superstitious ideas." But acousticians have a crucial role, he says, in getting archaeologists to recognise the visual bias they bring to their studies. |
Posted by Arcturus 30th August 2010ce |
Acoustic archaeology: The secret sounds of Stonehengehttp://www.newscientist.com/article/dn19276-acoustic-archaeology-the-secret-sounds-of-stonehenge.html Audio/video of the acoustic sounds on link above. Trevor Cox reveals how the acoustic footprint of the world's most famous prehistoric monument was measured Read more: Echoes of the past: The sites and sounds of prehistory Just after sunrise on a misty spring morning last year, my fellow acoustician at the University of Salford, Bruno Fazenda, and Rupert Till of the University of Huddersfield, UK, could be found wandering around Stonehenge popping balloons. This was not some bizarre pagan ritual. It was a serious attempt to capture the "impulse response" of the ancient southern English stone circle, and with it perhaps start to determine how Stonehenge might have sounded to our ancestors. An impulse response characterises all the paths taken by the sound between its source – in this case a popping balloon – and a microphone positioned a few metres away. It is simply a plot of the sound pressure at the microphone in the seconds after the pop. The first, strongest peak on the plot represents the sound that travelled directly from the source to the microphone. Later, smaller peaks indicate the arrival of reflections off the stones. The recording and plot shows the impulse response Bruno and Rupert measured with a microphone positioned at the centre of Stonehenge and a popping balloon at the edge of the circle. This impulse response represents an acoustic fingerprint of the stones. Back in the lab, it can be used to create a virtual rendition of any piece of music or speech as it would sound within the stone circle. All that is needed is an "anechoic" recording of the raw music or speech – a recording made in a reflection-free environment such as the open air or, better, a specialist anechoic chamber such as we have at Salford. The anechoic recording and the impulse response can then be combined using a mathematical operation called convolution. We've done with with a recording of drumming: here is the anechoic original, and here it is convolved with the measured impulse response of Stonehenge. The difference is easily appreciable: there is more reverberation or ringing to the drumming sound thanks to the reflections off the stones. What's more, the tonal balance of the sound is entirely different: it has become much deeper, as if the treble has been turned down. Replica henge The popping of a balloon is not the standard or best way to measure an impulse response, but more sophisticated equipment was not allowed at Stonehenge. At a full-size replica of the monument at Maryhill, Washington state, however, Bruno and Rupert were able to use powerful loudspeakers and special test signals to get more accurate results. Maryhill also has the advantage that it is complete, whereas some of the stones of Stonehenge have fallen or disappeared over the years. That makes a noticeable difference to the drum sounds convolved with Maryhill's impulse response: the more complete stone circle makes the sound echo for longer, with the extended reverberation being most noticeable after the last drum. Over many decades, a sophisticated understanding of how to interpret impulse responses has been built up. For example, we now know how features within the impulse response, such as the time it takes for reverberations to die away, relate to peoples' perceptions of the nature of the sound. The hope is that by applying that expertise to ancient monuments such as Stonehenge, we can better appreciate their acoustical effects on our ancestors –and perhaps begin to answer the question whether these effects were the product of accident or design. |
Posted by Arcturus 30th August 2010ce |
The Ridgeway (Ancient Trackway) |
Ridgeway: Barriers keep crime at bay"BARRIERS installed along Britain's oldest road have helped cut poaching and hare-coursing, according to police. "Oxfordshire County Council installed the temporary barriers between Hill Road, Lewknor and Hill Road, Watlington, on the Ridegway National Trail. And they have already seen results with a drop in crime. The blocks were fitted in April to stop poachers, harecoursers and deer stalkers in cars accessing the track, known as the Icknield Way, and to stop thieves driving to isolated farm buildings. "The pre-historic Ridgeway track runs from Avebury, Wiltshire, to Ivinghoe near Dunstable, across South Oxfordshire." More here - http://www.oxfordmail.co.uk/news/8356258.Barriers_keep_crime_off_the_Ridgeway/ See also - http://heritageaction.wordpress.com/2010/02/14/avebury-is-not-dudley/ |
Posted by Littlestone28th August 2010ce |
News |
Oldest evidence of arrows foundResearchers in South Africa have revealed the earliest direct evidence of human-made arrows. The scientists unearthed 64,000 year-old "stone points", which they say were probably arrow heads. Closer inspection of the ancient weapons revealed remnants of blood and bone that provided clues about how they were used. http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-11086110 |
Posted by juamei27th August 2010ce |
Echoes of the past: The sites and sounds of prehistorySound recording at reconstruction of Stonehenge in Maryhill Monument, USA........ Did our ancient ancestors build to please the ears as well as the eyes? Trevor Cox pitches into the controversial claims of acoustic archaeologists "The wind, playing upon the edifice, produced a booming tune, like the note of some gigantic one-stringed harp. No other sound came from it... Overhead something made the black sky blacker, which had the semblance of a vast architrave uniting the pillars horizontally. They entered carefully beneath and between; the surfaces echoed their soft rustle; but they seemed to be still out of doors..." This atmospheric description of a "temple of the winds" comes from the dramatic climax of Thomas Hardy's novel Tess of the d'Urbervilles. The setting is Stonehenge, arguably the most famous prehistoric monument of all. Its imposing ring of standing stones is visible for miles on Salisbury plain in southern England. On the day of the summer solstice its outlying "Heelstone" is exactly in line with rays of the rising sun. A more perfect example of the visual impact of an ancient monument would be hard to find. Might we be missing here something that both Hardy and our prehistoric ancestors understood? Some archaeologists have begun to think so. They argue that sound effects were an important, perhaps even decisive, factor in how early humans chose and built their dwellings and sacred places. Caves that sing, Mayan temples that chirp, burial mounds that hum: they all add up to evidence that the aural, and not just the visual, determined the building codes of the past. But is that sound science? Assessing the claims of "acoustic archaeology" rapidly encounters a fundamental problem: sound is ephemeral. Pottery fragments, coins, bones and bits of buildings can survive for centuries, waiting to be analysed, interpreted- and reinterpreted. The sounds of the past, by contrast, have long since died away. Where historical records make mention of acoustic intent in designing structures, the claims are often based on faulty science (see "Sound design?"). Going back into prehistory, we do not even have the luxury of knowing what our ancestors were thinking- or often a clear idea of the original layout and acoustic properties of the structures we are interpreting. There is, however, a plausible argument that sound must have been important to our ancestors, perhaps more so than it is to us now. "Today we guzzle sounds and make a lot of noise," says UK archaeologist Paul Devereux, an advocate of the claims of acoustic archaeology. "We are visually very sophisticated, but acoustically very primitive." Our ancestors, by contrast, would have been "acoustically more calm and attentive in a much quieter world", he says. Without artificial light, listening intently would have been imperative to ward off night-time predators. In a time before writing, moreover, information was principally communicated orally. It seems reasonable that prehistoric humans would have paid more attention to their acoustic landscapes than we do today. "Senses as a whole were more fused," says Julian Thomas, an archaeologist at the University of Manchester, UK. "There wasn't the separation of vision from the other senses as there has been over the last few centuries. Nowadays we tend to prioritise vision." New Scientist http://tinyurl.com/36eddvm A photo of the 'Stonehenge' Maryhill site; http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Maryhill_stonehenge_WWI_monument.jpg |
Posted by moss27th August 2010ce |
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