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  #1  
Old 07-07-2013, 04:00 PM
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Default Bondicar Dig, Rescued from the sea. Low Hauxley

Week 3 I believe of the Archaeological dig at the Bronze age burial ground at Bondicar

updates on the Northumberland Wildlife Trust website

less than 50% of the burial cairn remains:






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Old 07-07-2013, 04:03 PM
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There is one massive heap of sand to be replaced!

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Old 07-07-2013, 04:10 PM
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Down on the shore you can see the cairn in section. The cavity in the side is the grave that was excavated a few years ago. You can now see it must have been about in the centre of the cairn.






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Old 07-07-2013, 04:15 PM
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there's something on the website about them uncovering a stone floor that could be any age up to medieval.

I guess this is it:


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Old 07-07-2013, 04:25 PM
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The site is fenced off apart from the eroded face. Not sure if they will be letting joe public in for a closer look at some point?

The daughter with her school chums are invited to go digging there on Thursday so she'll get a closer look anyway.
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Old 12-07-2013, 11:27 AM
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Well, the daughter went on her big dig; Archaeologists had them on the beach uncovering the Mesolithic footprints, and taking plaster casts to take back to school.

Now on the subject of Mesolithic footprints, The BBC documentary with Neil Oliver "A History of Ancient Britain", episode 1 "Age of Ice" of which there is a clip here: http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b00yk27f shows some footprints in Wales, which are just not as good as ours! The Welsh ones are poor mud casts were ours are proper footprints. Interestingly ours contain Wild Boar and Deer prints as well. Three cheers for Bondicar!

The PDF report on the Bondicar footprints is online here: http://www.archaeologicalresearchser...%20Deposit.pdf



Back to he Bronze age, the daughter tells me the archaeologists estimate there could be up to 12 burials remaining in the cairn, but they had not started taken it apart yet as of yesterday morning.

I note the latest update on the Northumberland Wildlife trust website is now dating the material on the western side of the dig as Roman-British (Romano-British?)
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Old 12-07-2013, 11:51 AM
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Footprints again - the beach peat exposed in Amble Bay (AKA the Big Shore) - I'm sure there are footprints in that as well but not as many.
Now it's a shame that the peat in question is not at the Amble side of the township/civil parish boundary: it lies again in the Hauxley CP, otherwise, if I could get the impressions confirmed, I could have pushed back the human habitation of Amble by about 4,000 - 6,000 years!
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Old 12-07-2013, 07:02 PM
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Very interesting , thanks for the links Coquet.
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Old 13-07-2013, 10:23 AM
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Thanks for all this info Coquet. It sounds fascinating and we will look forward to a major tv series! I can recall taking photos of the submerged forest but never realised I was so close to all those footprints. Fantastic.
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Old 03-08-2013, 04:17 PM
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That "massive heap of sand" is now three times as big and the tarpaulin nearly blew away on Thursday morning. My wife and I (who were being shown around the site at the time) helped the researchers to get it under control and sandbagged down again!
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Old 28-02-2014, 05:42 PM
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In case you haven't spotted it, Time Team Channel 4, Sunday night....Bondicar dig.
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Old 28-02-2014, 08:54 PM
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Will watch that.

http://www.archaeology.co.uk/wp-cont.../series-1a.jpg (youngsters?)

Mick Aston must have died just a few weeks or days before the Bondicar dig started?? [edit: I see he left the show in 2011 because it had been 'dumbed down']
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Old 09-03-2014, 11:55 AM
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A walk along to the site of the dig today revealed a number of bones on the surface. This one was placed next to the cliff edge on the site, prehistoric or a more recent animal?
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Old 09-03-2014, 01:17 PM
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My sister just mentioned this morning that quite a lot of bones are being discovered on the beach.
BTW that Time Team programme last week was rubbish. Supposed to be about Hauxley but just really provided some tenuous linkage to mummified remains and shamanism in the Bronze Age. Nothing about the footprints etc.
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Old 09-03-2014, 07:40 PM
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Quote:
Originally Posted by janwhin View Post
My sister just mentioned this morning that quite a lot of bones are being discovered on the beach.
BTW that Time Team programme last week was rubbish. Supposed to be about Hauxley but just really provided some tenuous linkage to mummified remains and shamanism in the Bronze Age. Nothing about the footprints etc.

I think much more was expected from the Bondicar dig that what it actually produced. I don't want to use the word 'disappointment' but they did expect to have about 12 burials in what was left of the cairn. Unfortunately what they got was two disturbed kists with a few degraded bone fragments. What happened after it became apparent that 'good' burials were not there was that they switched their focus to the tsunami deposits. Probably to gain at least some novel data from what a very expensive project. I did get the impression from the press that the tsunami evidence was something new in itself but this is not the case as it has been researched at a number of sites to the north.

Perhaps then the TV program was pre-planned and expecting great things from Bondicar; but like the dig itself had to switch focus somewhat when the site didn't produce.

The footprints could have been mentioned but they were outside the Bronze age theme of the programme as they are Mesolithic.

Now that dig in the Orkneys with the alleged bronze age temple in the TV program was something else!
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Old 09-03-2014, 07:52 PM
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Quote:
Originally Posted by hollydog View Post
A walk along to the site of the dig today revealed a number of bones on the surface. This one was placed next to the cliff edge on the site, prehistoric or a more recent animal?

What size was that? It looks human. Doubt it's bronze age though. As Janwhin mentions It was is in the papers this week that some human bones have come out the dunes there near the dig?

http://www.northumberlandgazette.co....each-1-6480621
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Old 09-03-2014, 08:05 PM
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I was surprised they didn't find some makeshift burials of drowned sailors in the overburden, considering the numbers that have died near that spot. Perhaps that is what these bones are.
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Old 09-03-2014, 11:08 PM
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Coquet View Post
I think much more was expected from the Bondicar dig that what it actually produced. I don't want to use the word 'disappointment' but they did expect to have about 12 burials in what was left of the cairn. Unfortunately what they got was two disturbed kists with a few degraded bone fragments. What happened after it became apparent that 'good' burials were not there was that they switched their focus to the tsunami deposits. Probably to gain at least some novel data from what a very expensive project. I did get the impression from the press that the tsunami evidence was something new in itself but this is not the case as it has been researched at a number of sites to the north.

Perhaps then the TV program was pre-planned and expecting great things from Bondicar; but like the dig itself had to switch focus somewhat when the site didn't produce.

The footprints could have been mentioned but they were outside the Bronze age theme of the programme as they are Mesolithic.

Now that dig in the Orkneys with the alleged bronze age temple in the TV program was something else!
On the subject of the tsunami event, the numerous trees coming out of the peat between Amble and Hauxley are large trunks and the bases left in the ground are fairly substantial as well. Has anyone studied this? are the trunks on the same alignment (majority are lying east/west away from the sea) and seem to have been snapped over (would a wind event or old age rotten trees have behaved like this?) Are there any studies out there Coquet from the sites further north ?
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Old 10-03-2014, 05:54 PM
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I'm not sure at what horizon the evidence is in our locality but if you look at fig 4 in this paper at Sullem Voe the tsunami evidence is within the peat layer - a thick band of sand and peat lumps:

"Storegga tsunami deposits in a peat outcrop in Sullom Voe, Shetland (Bondevik et al., 2003). Large rip-up clasts of peat and pieces of wood make up
a bed within the sand, with a distinct lower boundary. We interpret this as a result of at least two waves inundating the land. The first wave eroded the peat
surface and transported rip-up clasts of peat and sand..."


That paper is 10 years old.
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Old 10-03-2014, 05:56 PM
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Here's some reporting on the Bondicar site regarding the tsunami:


http://www.thejournal.co.uk/news/nor...ngs-up-5730620


It's reported almost like the tsunami event was uncovered for the first time at Bondicar!
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