Bronze Age sailors, metal prospectors, and traders regularly travelled between northern and southern Europe – a distance of more than 2,000 miles – according to new research looking at similarities in the depiction of boats in rock carvings in Sweden, Denmark, Spain, and Portugal.
Several recent reports have suggested that participation in cultural activities is good for one’s well-being. Under the headline ‘Daily dose of art as important to health as 5-a-day’, The Telegraph reported that cultural engagement not only slows down ageing, but is a ‘human necessity’.
My recent ‘Odd Socs’ column on the Ancient Tree Forum (CA 436) proved to be unexpectedly topical when, on 18 June, it was announced that Sherwood Forest’s 1,200-year-old Major Oak had died. The expressions of sadness that followed showed that many people loved this tree and considered it an important part of our national heritage.
Looking for signs of hope that heritage and culture will be safe in the hands of future generations, Sherds spotted a number of media reports recently that claimed to know the minds of young people. Recent surveys have stated that Zoomers (Gen Z, born between 1997 and 2012) are currently into churchgoing, barn dancing, and buying telescopes.
Parallel tracks have been found in fossilised mud at White Sands National Park, New Mexico, USA, and interpreted as the marks left by a travois: a timber frame used by Native Americans for transporting goods. Particularly associated with Indigenous peoples of the Great Plains region of North America, a travois is made by joining two long poles and a third shorter one to create an A-shaped frame.
The Westminster Government has published its revised National Planning Policy Framework amid a flurry of boosterish phrases about ‘backing builders not blockers’, ‘unleashing billions in economic growth’, and introducing ‘seismic reforms to help builders get shovels in the ground quicker’.
Sherds adopts a very broad definition of ‘heritage’, so no apologies for beginning this month’s column by drawing attention to the 70th anniversary of the establishment of tiddlywinks as a competitive university-based sport.
Tacitus, in his book on the life and character of his father-in-law Julius Agricola, the Roman Governor of Britain from c.AD 77 to 84, makes the often-quoted observation that ‘Britons make no distinction of sex in their leaders’. In his Annals (XIV.35), the same author depicts Boudica (AD 30-61) rallying her supporters with the cry: ‘we British are used to women commanders in war’.
By the time you read this, February fill dyke will be over for another year and March will (perhaps) have come in like a lion. Sherds is always glad when winter is over, but in the depths of the cold, dark, and grey weeks of January and February there is one sure way to find warmth and consolation – by reaching for a book called Next to Nature, an anthology of the ‘Word from Wormingford’ diary columns that Ronald Blythe wrote for many years for the Church Times.
Dictionary publishers like to end the year by announcing the new words that that they have added to the lexicon based on the frequency with which they have appeared in print during the preceding 12 months. Not all of these words are new, and this year’s crop consists mainly of familiar words that have undergone shifts in meaning.
Even those who have never ploughed through Proust’s Remembrance of Things Past will know that the French author’s multi-volume reminiscences were sparked by the taste and smell of madeleine cake crumbs combined with lime-flower tea.
Sherds does not share the passion for cycling that seems to have gripped so many people over the last two decades. In the words of the self-styled ‘Super-Tramp’, W H Davies, ‘A poor life this if, full of care,/We have no time to stand and stare’, and it is the standing and staring that walking permits, whereas cycling (uphill at any rate, with traffic presenting an ever-present threat) seems full of care
The sounds that one associates with places of worship are those of an angelic choir or the intricate patterns of a Bach fugue. Some churches have, however, been enjoying success with the rather more unexpected pairing of doom metal bands and church organs.
Stonehenge is often portrayed as if it were a unique monument, which in some respects it is. No other surviving monument uses mortise-and-tenon joints to lock the lintels to the uprights that form the massive stone circle and the inner trilithons (though this kind of joint was probably used in similar monuments built from timber that have not survived).
In September, Sherds attended a lecture given by Richard Dance, Professor of Early English in the Cambridge University Department of Anglo-Saxon, Norse and Celtic, on the theme of ‘Vikings in your Vocabulary: Adventures in the History of English’, based on his Gersum Project (www.gersum.org) looking at the Scandinavian influence on our language.
Sherds has recently been working on a response to the Welsh Government’s consultation on its draft Culture Strategy. This has been an opportunity for the arts, heritage, and culture sector to reflect on questions that are not just relevant to Wales.
In 1418, Captain ‘One-eyed’ Zarco sailed out from Lisbon to plant the flag of Portugal on the islands first of Porto Santo and then of Madeira. In doing so, he not only claimed for Portugal a useful harbour and a staging post that would enable explorations further out into the Atlantic – first to the Azores and then to Brazil – he also secured a fertile, well-wooded, and well-watered island where sugar cane flourished, making Madeiran landowners and the Portuguese Crown extremely rich for a century by selling ‘white gold’ through the markets of Venice, London, and Antwerp.
When Venice features in the media, the story is usually about the malign consequences of flooding, cruise ships, and tourism, which crowds out more positive news, like the development of the Venice Time Machine, due to be showcased at this year’s European Association of Archaeologists conference in Rome.
Recently showing at arts cinemas around the UK is a documentary called Wilding, which tells the story of how Isabella Tree and her husband Charlie Burrell decided in 2001 to let nature take its course on their 1,400ha estate at Knepp in West Sussex, abandoning the conventional farming practices of soaking the land in herbicides, insecticides, and fertiliser in order to grow loss-making crops
Our Neanderthal cousins may now be extinct, but they are rarely out of the news. Writing in The Conversation, archaeologist Steven Mithen tackles the perennial question of why Homo sapiens flourished while Neanderthals died out by examining the differences between the brain cavities of the two species
As part of the Levelling-up and Regeneration Bill, one of the last acts of the outgoing government was to authorise Historic England to extend the blue plaques scheme to the whole of England.
A new organisation has come into being in Wales, in a bold move designed to increase the capacity of the four Welsh Archaeological Trusts (WATs) to compete for major developer-funded contracts, while building on their reputation for specialist regional expertise and service delivery.
In the complex story of human migration out of Africa, Homo sapiens are believed to have travelled steadily eastwards to Asia – eventually reaching Australia by around 50,000 years ago – but seem not to have moved into Europe for a period of 20,000 years.