Corridors of power

June 29, 2010

Histories invaders and imperial expansions, such as those of the Han dynasty in China, give strong clues to where prehistoric trade routes are. Around 1050BC the Shang dynasty of China fell, brought down by a western clan, the Zhou, from beyond the empire. In the years around 100 BC the Han dynasty invaded west, expanding […]

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Çatal Höyük, Kültepe-Kanesh and ancient parasites

June 18, 2010

Why is Neolithic Çatal Höyük not a city? Why is the Bronze Age trade centre of Kanesh a city? Is the difference just that large palace on the hill? Çatal Höyük Çatal Höyük, in southern Anatolia, Turkey, ranks as one of the earliest villages anywhere in the world. Dating back to the eighth millennium BC […]

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What Happened In the Natufian?

June 11, 2010

The Natufian culture holds a special place in the hearts of archaeologists. It appeared in the Levant (modern Palestine, Israel, Syria and Jordan) about 12,500 BC and lasted until 9500 BC* (the end of the Epipalaeolithic, sometimes rather confusingly called the Mesolithic). With this culture the world changed forever. Before the Natufian roaming hunter gatherers, […]

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Centres of domestication at narrowing bottlenecks?

May 27, 2010

An attempt to use a world map to predict where the origins of agriculture should be. The environmental map shown here is of the early Holocene world (between about 10000 and 5000BC). The coastlines approximate those of the time. Green represents areas of thick tropical forest. Yellow represents arid or desert areas. I considered these […]

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Hairy nutters of the ancient world

May 24, 2010

Why did ancient people suffer from such bad hair – was it their conditioner? We’re all familiar with the feeling. He’s coming along the street toward us and there’s something not right about him. Certainly the muttering doesn’t help, but he could have a hands-free mobile. The movement of the eyes perhaps. But one big […]

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Stonehenge, Avebury, Ross Island and the perils of the Cornish coast

May 8, 2010

Is the great age of the Stonehenge and Avebury stone circles in southern England related to arsenic copper mining in Ross Island, Ireland? (I’ve just found Andrew Sherratt’s paper which said bits of this in 1996). Britain is an island mostly surrounded by cliffs. These result from the sea’s relentless erosion of the island’s landscape. […]

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Madagascar, Polynesia and colonisation against the flow

April 26, 2010

What the colonisation of Polynesia says about open ocean colonisations and particularly what it suggests about the Madagascar colonisation by South-east Asians. The Polynesian sailors who colonised the islands of the Pacific from 1000BC onward didn’t just have huge distances to tackle as they journeyed east. They were also sailing against both the ocean currents […]

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Round houses and a bad case of ritual wind

April 15, 2010

Why did the round house builders of Bronze age and Iron age Britain point their houses toward the rising sun. Was it cosmological or to keep the house dry?   Question – you are to build a round shelter for yourself. It can have walls and a roof but no windows. You can have a […]

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Adventure, copper and the spread of Neolithic agriculture into Europe

April 7, 2010

Was the search for copper a motivating force in the spread of agriculture into Neolithic Europe? It might have given second sons a more exciting life than setting up a farm next to your dad’s.   The map here shows the distribution of the earliest Neolithic farming in Europe as well as the location of […]

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Bluestones and bell curves

March 25, 2010

How didn’t the Preseli bluestones get to Stonehenge? Ask your maths teacher. I run the risk of posting on an often repeated topic, but here’s my opinion for what it’s worth. The late Neolithic temple (or whatever) of Stonehenge, on Salisbury Plain, England, is constructed from two types of stones. These are the large ‘sarsens’ […]

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