Periglacial Stripes in the old Stonehenge Carpark?

I noticed today that as part of the demolition leading to the renaturing of the old Stonehenge carpark that a trench had been dug that I could see into.

Obviously surrounded by safety barriers but the section seems to show ridges of chalk interspersed with clay filled dips in the subsoil. Looks like classic chalkland periglacial stripes at this casual glance.

According to Cleal et al Wessex Archaeology found periglacial stripes near to this spot in 1988-89 but the report on the dig remains unpublished.

Click any to enlarge.

Busy Building

My construction of a working Long Barrow at All Cannings is going full tilt, which is involving a lot of press interviews as well as other work.

Pop over to the website www.thelongbarrow.com or the facebook page for more info .

The Marlborough Mound

The Marlborough Mound, Wiltshire.

A Further Neolithic Monumental Mound by the River Kennet

By JIM LEARY, MATTHEW CANTI, DAVID FIELD, PETER FOWLER, PETER MARSHALL and GILL CAMPBELL

Download paper here

Damaged Priddy Circle Geophys Report

Priddy Circle 1, Somerset: Report on Geophysical Surveys, March 2013

A Ground Penetrating Radar (GPR) survey was conducted over a circular earthwork enclosure, known as Priddy Circle 1, one of a group of four similar scheduled monuments on the upland Mendip plateau close to the village of Priddy, Somerset. Following extensive levelling of the earth works and the subsequent prosecution of the landowner through the Ancient Monuments Act, a programme of mitigation work was agreed, including geophysical survey in advance of evaluation excavations to recover information and offset the impact of the damage. The site was surveyed using a vehicle towed, multielement air-launched GPR array to provide high sample density coverage of the monument to complement fluxgate gradiometer coverage commissioned separately. Due to concerns over the signal penetration achieved in the field by the air launched array a comparative area over the damaged earth work was also conducted with a ground coupled impulse GPR system, using a 450MHz centre frequency antenna.

Download Report - 5mb

Monumental Roots in Science

Science 3 January 2014:
Vol. 343 no. 6166 pp. 18-23
DOI: 10.1126/science.343.6166.18

Monumental Roots

Michael Balter

Archaeologists are gaining a new perspective on why ancient Britons erected great henge and circle monuments like Stonehenge. Recent studies emphasize how the work of building monuments brought geographically dispersed communities together. Surprisingly, the stone circles were part of a package of innovation that began in Scotland's far northern Orkney Islands and later spread south to transform the British landscape.

Flight over Stonehenge Showing Parchmarks.

This from our parch mark investigations this summer.

Darvill and Wainright in Current Archaeology

Bluestones and Stonehenge - Major feature in this month's Current Archaeology. Link will be added when available.