A change of pace, a shift in style...

 
Guys, guys, guys. It's been a while. Not so long, perhaps, in relation to the temporal interludes between previous posts, but time enough for many things to have changed. For starters, I am no longer skipping back and forward across Europe. I'm in Northern BC, Canada.

Walking in Neanderthal footsteps in Gib.

What a hectic few months January through April were! My intern opportunity in the US fell through, leaving me homeless, unemployed and basically without a branch to perch on. I went to Gibraltar to cheer myself up-- boy did that work (expect a post about this trip sometime in the future)!

Neanderthal handiwork at Creswell.

Then I went to Scotland to stay with my brother, then back to Norway for a few weeks, then back to Scotland again. While there, I managed to cop a weekend in Sheffield visiting the amazing Creswell Crags where Neanderthals once roamed (again, expect a post sometime), and then it was Norway again for the final two weeks before embarking upon my current adventure! Busy, busy, busy. 

Homework...

So why, exactly am I in Tumbler Ridge, British Columbia, Canada? Let me put it as simply as I can; Dinosaurs. Tracie Bennitt, my wonderful friend from Colorado (who has been my professional rock these past nine months) put me in touch with Rich McCrea and Lisa Buckley of the Peace Region Palaeontology Research Centre back in March-- and what do you know? They were more than happy to offer me everything I was missing out on thanks to the US internship's demise-- and more! So from this moment onwards, this blog shall be mostly an ode to the awesome things I have been and will be part of up here. Real, hands-on experiences rather than recaps of my archaeo-tourism. Sound good? It does to me.

Prepping a caudal vertebrae.

I've been here since May 1st learning, doing, and living the palaeontological dream. So far I've collected a 55lb mammoth tusk from a gravel pit, traversed Grizzly country to smear latex over a 100 million year old crocodilian trackway, learned the patience involved in fossil preparation, worked in a room alongside a Tyrannosaur trackway,

Ankylosaur skin impressions.

produced plaster casts of theropod footprints, seen an Ankylosaur skin impression by a riverside, been wow'ed by Elatides fossils, learned elementary cataloguing in   

       

Dermestes lardarius on a bear skull.

Collections, and stared weekly at a colony of Dermestes lardarius scavenger beetles as they feast upon the decaying flesh of unfortunately dispatched wildlife specimens.

That tusk, though...

Could it get any better? Yes.. yes, it could. We're set to spend the summer in the field recording a site of epic proportions and great import, not only to BC's fossil record, but also on an international level.

And you guys? You guys can follow it all right here in my blog (as well as on Twitter and Instagram).

I'm so ready for this... Are you?

A Ramble over Roughting Linn...

Roughting Linn is the largest inscribed rock in Northumberland, measuring 20x12 metres and standing around 3 metres taller than the surrounding terrain. It's clear that this natural sandstone rock outcrop would have been quite the landmark in the area even before ancient artists began to decorate it. Situated only metres away from the ramparts of an Iron Age fort and at most a mile from the Goatscrag Rock Shelter by Roughting Linn Farm, it's clear this area has been of some importance for thousands of years. Even today, in its current state (which we'll talk a bit more about later) there is a special atmosphere here. The site and farm take their name from a picturesque waterfall where the Broomridgedean Burn falls over a ledge into a pool surrounded by cliffs; Linn meaning 'pool', and Roughting meaning 'bellowing noise'.

Tucked away in a little wood near Ford, Northumbria, beside an unassuming single lane road, these petroglyphs are over 4000 years old, hailing from the Neolithic/Early Bronze Age. The outcrop sports an array of cupmarks, ringmarks (some with well-defined grooves), linked grooves, radiating lines, inverted curves, maze-like carvings and keyhole-type motifs across its entire visible surface. It's possible in some areas to see that some markings have become partially covered by grass and moss. The western part of the outcrop has been lost to quarrying pre-1950, as has a section large section across the width of the site. Distribution-wise, the simpler motifs seem to be confined to the upper surface of the outcrop, while more prominent and complex designs are located on the steeper flanks. These seem to form a frieze around the edges of the rock, which would have resembled a cairn with a decorated kerb. Kerbs circling burial mounds are known at barrow sites all over Europe.

The defensive ramparts of an Iron Age promontory fort are clearly visible only metres west of the rock art panel. Several concentric deep ditches surround the site of the fort which is now intersected by the road running up to Roughting Linn Farm. On the other side of this enclosure,  access to Roughting Linn waterfall is down a rather steep escarpment, but well worth the climb.








Many attempts have been made to interpret meaning behind cup- and ringmarked stones such as those at Roughting Linn. Fertility, first fruits, disease curing, animism, weather control, associations to 'little people' (elves/fairies), ringing sounds and astronomy have all been forwarded as explanations are various sites across the UK, Europe, and indeed the entire planet.

In North Yorkshire a marked stone is named the 'Fertility Stone' but the origins of the name are long lost, while the 'Tree of Life' Stone in the same area has been the site of may Day services even in recent times. Indeed many sites, especially in more remote areas, seem to be important to folklore. Offerings of milk to 'the little folk' on the islands of western Scotland are not long passed, and women in Sweden, desperate to conceive have been known to leave gifts at cupmarked stones.At the now destroyed 'Witch's Stone' at Ratho, near Edinburgh, a set of cupmarks were hewn into a boulder whose sides were smoothed by people sliding down the surface (a practice known from other sites in the area). It is believed that this was part of a superstitious fertility ritual where women wishing to bear children slid down the rockface.

Through my study of the Native American storytelling tradition way back in my Am. Lit. days, I learned that oral tradition could conserve stories over centuries and even millennia. At Roughting Linn we see the use of this same area through several ages, from the Neolithic/Bronze Age carvings, the Iron Age fort, even to the farm today right by the Goatscrag overhang. It's easy to imagine the folklore of this site being passed down through generations of people who fluctuated in and out of the area. When trying to understand why the folklore of sites around the UK may not be as well-preserved, a tragic realisation is that the persecution of 'Wise women' as witches would have left the stories and legends either dead with their storytellers or locked away in the minds of women too terrified to admit their knowledge. So, perhaps we will never know the exact meaning of cup- and ringmarked sites, but by examining the remnants of local folklore and anthropological analogies from other sites around the world, we can still make an educated guess.

What is clear is that, even to this day and despite the lack of conclusive interpretations,sites such as Roughting Linn carry a significant meaning. The atmosphere of the site was that of a sacred place, given the placement in the landscape, the cryptic art and the sounds of the waterfall cascading into the pool below. Indeed, one visitor recorded on their website having arrived to 'find the site occupied by two delightful ladies of a most spiritual nature quietly enjoying this sense of place'.

As I mentioned earlier, the site's current state demands commentary. We only found it because we saw a rock outcrop through the trees just past the road leading to Roughting Linn Farm and stopped 'just in case'. The rotting, decrepit sign I've seen on older pictures was no longer standing. The path to the site is overgrown with rhododendrons-- In fact, the entire area is overgrown and the fences (also visible on old photos of the site) are now reduced to stubs, clearly having been sawed down. Moss, grass and lichen are reclaiming the outcrop itself, and the rock art is constantly exposed to hundreds of feet trampling over it every year.

 

The saddest thing about this state of disrepair, is that there were lots of people visiting while we were there. Two large family groups and a few couples all passed through the area at the same time as my parents and I. All of them were speculating on the nature of the site; How old it was; What the symbols meant; What the ditches were. Of course, I could have babbled to them for a good few minutes and told them what I know, but wouldn't it be much better if the site were given a long overdue overhaul?

The wealth of this site is surely worth an investment. It wouldn't take too much. Put up a signpost. Clear some trees. Remove some moss and lichen. Add a few info boards explaining the site to visitors. Put up a new fence so kids don't jump around on the petrogylphs, scuffing at the porous sandstone with their trainers (because that's what they do). Point out what those ditches nearby actually are. Set up a little 'walk' around the area and include the waterfall. Make it an attraction, both for the locals and visitors to the area. It'd work a treat. The interest is there already; now it's time someone put in the effort.

Don't disturb the water..

Aerial view, thanks to Google maps.

On the way up past Cauldshiels Loch, you pass remnants of my family history; the spot where my brother slipped on a root and fell, and the tree where he carved his name way back in the 1980's. It's a nostalgic area, if anything. I still remember the shiver of terror that sped down my spine as I, at the age of maybe 8, paddled through the shallows-- and my brothers told me there were huge pike in the loch that would eat my toes.

The Iron Ghost!

Today, the culprit likely to rise from the loch and get me  was the Iron Ghost. My brother John has a thing about ghosts-- the Grey Man and the White Lady are also figments he's implanted in my imagination through the years. I suppose the funniest part of all this was that when I got home and began researching the nearby hill fort (aka what this post is REALLY about), the first thing that popped up was a local legend. Apparently the Loch is the lair of a mythical creature! Different sources name it as either a Kelpie or a Water Bull. Here, a visitor of Sir Walter Scott, our areas most famous of inhabitants, recounts the stories he heard of Cauldshiels Loch;



"The most interesting circumstance connected with it, however, according to Scott, was that it was haunted by a bogle in the shape of a water bull, which lived in the deep parts, and now and then came forth upon dry land and made a tremendous roaring, that shook the very hills. This story had ben current in the vicinity from time immemorial:- there was a man living who declared he had seen the bull, - and he was believed by many of his simple neighbours."

(Washington Irving, 'Abbotford and Newstead Abbey', 1835)

For those of you who don't know what a Kelpie is and who can't be bothered to read that whole wiki-article I linked to up there, here's my version of what a Kelpie is (that's the fun thing about folklore; everywhere you go, you hear slightly different tales abotu what a creature is/looks like/can do).  A Kelpie, unlike a Water Bull, can do more than roar really loudly - A Kelpie is something to beware of-- They're shapeshifters. They live in deep water or by pools along streams and can be seen as smallish men, sitting guard over their hoard of pearls. That's right, pearls. But take my advice; don't try for those pearls unless you want to find yourself in peril!

Looking up to the Fort from the Loch.

That scrawny little man, you see, can transform to a majestic, black stallion in the blink of an eye and surge out of the pool/loch to drag you under water to a horrible, wet death.....Cue evil laughter.

But yes, I digress-- we're getting very far off topic.





Cauldshiels Hillfort lies atop Cauldshiels Hill, just south of the loch. Rising 1076 feet above sea level, the fort is surrounded by a set of ramparts, plainly visible to the untrained eye. What's rather interesting about these ramparts is that they're not 'only' earthworks, aka piles of dirt moved around to make a ditch-- they're actually hewn into the bedrock! This might not be unusual for forts of this period, in fact the roundhouse foundations on the nearby Eildon Hill Fort are also mined into the bedrock, but it's still food for thought.

Panorama of the South side ramparts.

Ramparts curving around the knoll.

Living on hilltops is an excellent notion, defensively speaking. 

The defences are comprised of a continuous inner rampart circling the natural crest of the summit knoll, with the addition of a second and third rampart on the southern half of the perimeter. The two additional ramparts are each fronted by a ditch and may also have been continuous features, but there is now no trace of them along the steep northern slope.

Archaeology dog Rory, inspecting the ramparts.

Two surviving segments of the inner rampart point towards this being a drystone wall while the outer ramparts (some 5 ft high externally) were most probably constructed of heaped upcast from their respective ditches. Surface quarrying has made secure interpretation of the various rampart segments difficult. It could be that the defences are not all of one period; thus the stone rampart could represent the primary fort, while the earthen ramparts could have been added at a later date. Excavation on the defences has revealed a ditch dramatically cut into the rock and a complex sequence of entrance structures. The entrance was on the eastern side, though the gap in the inner rampart has been largely destroyed by quarrying, and the corresponding gap in one of the outer ramparts has been blocked by a later linear earthwork.

Ramparts bring out a toothy grin.

The enclosure within the inner rampart measures 220ft from east to west 120ft transversely. Geophysical survey in advance of the 1991 excavations confirmed the suspicion that there was little soil build-up above the natural bedrock. During excavation, the structural remains presented as features cut into the bedrock, and at least one circular hut was identified. Finds from this occupation consisted only of stone artefacts; whetstones and fragments of saddle quern, suggesting a date in the Iron Age.

Oh my Gosh! The Iron Ghost followed me!!

Looking around from the summit, at least 4 other hill forts are visible; Eildon Hill, the Black Hill, the Rink, and that one near Lindean Loch I can't remember the name of...

I was on a school day trip to Woden Law Hill Fort way back when I was at primary school and I remember being told that the people of these forts, spatially distributed within sight of each other, would use pieces of glass and the sun to communicate with each other. Standing atop Cauldshiels Hill Fort, it's easy to see how practical that would be:

View towards the Eildons.

'What's that you say, Woden Law? English raiders tearing up the valley towards me? Thanks mate. We'll kick their backsides back across the Border. Tell Black Hill we've got it covered.'




Not that there was a border back then. Or England. Or Scotland. You get the point.

View towards Lindean.

Now, as I did my research to write this post, I came across some info that really got my geek-bone tingling. I found a reference to a newspaper article in the Scotsman in 1991 describing a bronze burial beaker found on Cauldshiels Hill during excavations. I don't know about you, but if there's something I like more than a good Neanderthal artefact or a piece of bone fresh from a tar pit, it's a burial-- from any era. The rites performed around death have always fascinated my morbid mind.

Circle of grasstufts-- possible postholes?

Unfortunately, I have been unable to locate more information relating to this enticing burial. I've been to the local library, the Trimontium Exhibit in Melrose, written to the author, written to the newspaper and in a last ditch effort, I've even written to the Trimontium Trust in hopes that they'll be able to locate a copy-- and if they can, I'll expand upon the burial.

Clearly, the Scottish Borders needs to put a lot of work into public accessibility... No one's going to care about the past if the information isn't readily available-- there's more to the Borders than Sir Walter Scott.

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WANTED
HAVE YOU SEEN THIS ARTICLE?

Jones, R {F J} {et al.} (1991b) 'The Newstead project', Univ Bradford Archaeol Sci Annu Rep 5th annual report
Page(s): 15

IF FOUND PLEASE MAIL TO ARCHAEOAMOS@GMAIL.COM

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Living La Brea Loca - LA's Lost World.

When you mention LA, the first thing to come to mind is usually one of the following things; sun, beach, Hollywood, movie starts ,famous people, Griffith Park, Jared Leto... My mind, though guilty of one or two of the above, rushes elsewhere.

My mind conjures the sweetish, somewhat toxic stench of newly laid asphalt, orange roadwork cones (pylons) and sticky black ooze gathering in pools around my feet.
I'm not talking about roadworks. I'm talking about the La Brea Tar Pits in Hancock Park by the Page Museum. My favourite place in the world.

Meeting new friends.

The Page Museum is not the type of place you expect to find in the middle of a metropolis like Los Angeles, but on this site 40 000 years ago (careful people, we're moving into my ultimate Age of Geek) things were quite different.

This pit was flooded and now exists as a bubbling pond!

Picture a mastodon drowning slowly in thick, acrid, goopy tar while it's babydaddy and offspring stand on the bank in grief. Having trouble?

Now picture a flurry of carnivores lurking in the background, waiting for the male and spawn to disperse so they can begin feasting on the trapped female. Direwolves (so not just a product of Westeros), Teratorns, Bears, Giant Jaguars and Sabertooths alike were attracted to the pits where easy pickings could be made of unlucky herbivores. Unfortunately, in their eagerness to feed, the carnivores also often found their own demise.

Carnivores account for almost 90% of the fossil mammals and birds of prey 70% of the fossil birds in the Page Museum collections. An ongoing excavation at Pit 91 aims to determine whether this great abundance is natural or the result of collecting bias on the part of earlier excavators who tended to only collect the most spectacular and largest specimens. This is an issue in older sites all around the world and an important study when it comes to the validity of statistics  and our image of life in past times.

Did you see how I mentioned a Giant Jaguar up there without spending a good few lines geeking out? Yeah, that's not happening anymore. Naegele's Giant Jaguar was a behemoth among cats. Closely related to the African Lion and extinct European cave lion, it was once found from south western Canada to Mexico. More than 80 individuals have so far presented in the La Brea sections, giving us a unique opportunity to examine this majestic feline. Compared to African Lions, Naegele's Giant Jaguar did not live in prides, but in pairs or a lone, given the male/female ratio in the pits. This could, of course, be the result of more lone males falling into the pits. In African lions, females hunt mostly in pride-size groups. When encountering a natural trap like a tar pit, once a female is lost, the rest of the pride would avoid that area, males though... not so smart.

Lets move on to another pretty kitty. A pretty kitty with a pretty name; Smilodon fatalis. Doesn't it sound sweet? Let it roll off your tongue. Can anyone guess what this name means? Smiling Cat of Fate? Not so much.. more like Smiling Murder Cat. Smilodon fatalis is one of two sabertoothed cats found in the La Brea deposits. The other, Homotherium serum, the Scimtar Cat, has smaller teeth. Smilodon could roar like a lion and retract his claws (no painful snuggles here!), an active predator with a hunting method more on the 'I'll Stalk You To a Violent End' side as murder goes. Those teeth are not just swag, either. It seems, though, that Smilodon was also rather lazy and that rather than exert the energy such brutal thug-life requires, he preferred to stroll the tar pits on Sunday afternoons, nibbling on what Nature's coldcuts had to offer. 166,000 Smilodon bones have been recovered so far from the deposits. All the brawn... not so much with the brains.

 Not a cat person? Ever seen a Direwolf? Ghost, Nymeria, Lady, Grey Wind, Shaggy dog and Summer of Game of Thrones fame are not Direwolves as you should know them. Out of the five members of the Canis family that present at La Brea, the DireWolf is the big Daddy. Direwolves, with a collection of over 200,000 specimens are the most abundant species in the RLB biota. Given the high numbers of both Smilidon and Direwolf remains presenting in the tar pits, it's safe to conclude that they occupied different niches in the ecosystem. Where Smilidon was the lonesome thug, out to flex his muscles, Direwolves displayed a mob mentality, much like present day hyenas. Direwolves were social animals and ran in packs, like grey wolves today. Fossil evidence even shows that several specimens had healed pre-mortem injuries, the result of social healing where other pack members tended to the injured individual and nursed him or her back to health.

 And what could possibly be dying in the tar pits to tempt such carnivores as we've just run through? I don't know about you, but our forefathers did a lot worse than risk their life in a pool of tar to get hold of a mammoth steak. Mammoths and mastodons are both  present in the La Brea biota, but I have a thing for mammoths, so we're going to talk about them. More specifcally, we'll talk about Zed. I guarantee anyone who's ever seen Pulp Fiction is muttering 'Zed's dead, baby. Zed's dead.' under their breath right about now. Zed is the most complete Columbian Mammoth to be recovered from La Brea. His remains can be seen in several places around the museum, most notably his skull and left tusk were clearly visible in the open lab (FANTASTIC open lab) and his spine is displayed in it's own case. It's quite possible you might have mistaken Zed's spine for a crocodile. I know that's the first thing I thought when I looked at it. You see, in addition to being the most complete specimen of his kind, Zed was also unique in that he suffered from a form of chronic arthritis called ankylosing spondylosis.

Other herbivores to lose their lives and consequently lure carnivores to their own sticky ends worth mentioning are Harlan's Giant Sloth, the American Buffalo, and the Western Horse.

The treasures of La Brea encompass far more than the megafaunal remains poking up through the sticky soil. Insects -large like dragon flies, and tiny beetles painstakingly sorted in the open lab- and pollen extracted from the deposits help form a detailed reconstruction of the biotope that was Hancock Park (and indeed downtown Los Angeles as a whole!) in the Ice Age.

All of this so far has been about the indoor exhibits. Outside in Hancock Park is, if possible, even more fun.
Not just because there are hummingbirds buzzing around the flora surrounding the waterlogged tar pits, nor the very snuggly statue of a Giant Sloth I spent a few moments petting.

Spread across the park, you find orange cones, each marking tar leaking up to the surface. Some larger pits are fenced in, others have already been completely excavated. Everywhere there are tarred sticks, evidence that mammalian curiosity hasn't exactly waned in the past 40 000 years. Interesting, yes; but that's not it either.

The outdoor area around the Page Museum is fun/awesome/amazing because you can stand and stare at the lucky excavators as they slowly-but-surely extract material from the ground. In fact, it looks like so much fun that a bone-loving, highly enthused Ice Age lover like myself had to have a serious talk with herself while observing Pit 91.. A little less willpower and I'd have been right in there with my trowel. There's also the opportunity to peer through the fencing and follow progress on the Project 23 - the excavation of 23 large deposits found in 2006 during the construction of an underground parking garage for the Los Angeles County Museum of Art next door.

I could go on forever about La Brea. Really I could. There's so much more there than a simple blog post could ever explain, no matter how hard I tried. You really jsut have to go there. See the tar, smell the tar, poke the tar with a stick.. Gaze in awe at the strange prehistoric animals that once wandered along Santa Monica Boulevard. You won't regret it.

Take the pictures at the entrance. Just do it.

Did this tickle your fancy? Read more about La Brea and their current excavations here!

An Oriental Adventure in Indianapolis - China's Terracotta Army.

Have you ever been to Indianapolis? If so have you ever been to the Indianapolis Children's Museum? No? You've missed out.

Especially if you've been in Indianapolis recently and didn't go to see the amazing Terracotta Warrior's exhibit "The Emperor''s Painted Army" they've had running. If you're headed to Indianapolis before November 2nd, there's still time. So go. Right now. Seriously.

'Come see us in Indianapolis, or I'll set my horse on you! '

The ICM has a wide variety of awesome exhibits to boast about, ranging from old school trainsets to a dinosaur skull with a fossilized brain tumour. They also have interactive rooms where children large and small (and adults!) can expend a little energy after browsing the exhibits. I'll get back to these things in another post, another day. Today all I care about is the Warriors.

Note the detail in the hair and moustache.

That legendary 8000-strong afterlife entourage of Qin Shi Huang, China's first Emperor. Before entering the exhibit itself, we were privy to a short film with some historical background concerning the warriors, then the lights went dark and the doors opened and I spent the next few hours staring at everything my eyes could focus on.

The Army was buried with the Emperor in 209/210 BCE and trusted to guard him in his afterlife. They were uncovered by farmers in 1974. Can you imagine? One day you're out digging your fields and the next thing you know, you've punched through to n underground cavern filled to the brim with terracotta sculptures staring back at you...
 

My favourite Warrior. I love the hair and the shoe sole.

That's one of the most fascinating things about this army to me; what with all the effort and detail put into it's creation, no living soul was ever meant to see them again after the tomb was sealed. 

Other terracotta figures were also recovered, portraying officials, strongmen, acrobats and mucisians. Obviously the Emperor was in need of such great comforts in death as in life.

The sculptures had been placed in three large pits, located around a mile from the Qin Emperor's burial mound at Lishan, east of Xi'an in Shaanxi province. The mound itself has not yet been investigated but it has been forwarded that it may contain a full-size replication of the Emperor's palace. Given that he took an entire army with him to his grave, alongside numerous horses and chariots, I don't think that's too much of a stretch..

The Warriors were commissioned by the Emperor at the tender age of 13 and over the next 30 years, 700,000 workers toiled to complete the order. The statues were sculpted, fired and assembled meticulously by artists and craftsmen before being painted in bright colours, mostly extracted from minerals.

One interesting note was that the violet, a result of chemistry rather than mineral extraction, was closely related to Egyptian blue, used in the funerary art of Ancient Egypt. Could this be proof of a connection between these cultures? Or at least a trade network spanning the continents?

One of the Generals.

This guy carried a knife on his hip.

Of all the 8000 faces found so far, no two have been the same. Every soldier is unique, like a real army. Theories have been forwarded that the artists in charge of creating the individuals may have put their own faces on their creations.

Before their interment, the statues were placed in military fashion, according to rank. The higher ranking the soldier, the taller they were made, making the Generals the tallest of all of them.

The hair and the buckles and the armour, oh my!

Make-your-own-Warrior!

The exhibit itself consisted of a number of statues, ranging from one of the Generals to archers, footsoldiers and even a cavalryman and his horse. My favourite thing has to be the level of detail and individuality in each sculpture.

The hairstyles and armour.. I could have stared at them non-stop for hours. Actually, i could still be there now and not yet have grown bored.

Checking out the model of the emperor's bronze chariot.

The interactive displays were also great both for kids and adults. There were touchscreens and activity posts spread evenly throughout. My favourite had to be the little molds where you could make your own Warrior to set up in ranks alongside others to better visualise the huge number of Warriors discovered so far.




So! If you have an afternoon free and you're anywhere near Indianapolis, IN before November 2nd, give yourself a treat and stop by the Children's Museum. Even if you don't have kids.