Writing preoccupations - Vikings, History awards, Native Title, Roman villas and New England architecture

Today's Sunday snippets are a round-up of my own and other people's writing. I hope that you find something of interest.

An article in RT reports confirmation based on DNA analysis that the body found in a famous Viking burial site was female. Analysis of the skeletal remains had suggested this, but doubts were raised because of the perceived structure of Viking society. It is the first formal confirmation of the existence of a female Viking warrior. The RT article includes links to the scientific paper reporting the results. This is worth a read.

 This month's history carnival, the 168th,was hosted by Helen's ART and ARCHITECTURE mainly. Do have a look. My favourite among the posts mentioned, and I'm not alone here, is Laundry Methods During the American Revolution: The Really, Really Quick Version  

On 1 September I reported on Winners of the 2017 NSW Premier’s History Awards. The post includes the judges' comments on each award winner along with a link to the publisher. I heard an interview with Mark McKenna telling part of the story from From the Edge and I'm looking forward to reading the book. 

 My main post on the New England Australia blog during the week was The Western Bundjalung Native Title Decision

At Tabulam on 29 August 2017,around 400 people including traditional owners gathered in a crowded marquee erected on the local racecourse as a temporary courthouse to hear the consent determination delivered in the long-running Western Bundjalung Native Title case. 

After a Welcome to Country and traditional smoking ceremony, Federal Court Judge Jayne Jagot delivered her consent judgement. This granted the native title claim, legally recognising the rights and interest of the Western Bundjalung people as traditional owners of the land, including the right to camp, hunt, fish, gather resources and conduct their cultural practices on their country, as well as the right to be consulted on matters including mining applications on their land that affect the management of their land.

The post provides details and background on the decision. While it's mainly drawn from the media reports listed at the end of the post and is in that sense derivative, it took me a long time to write because I was trying to gather it all together to tell a story. I also wanted to add some links to things like the full decision.  

The photo from ABC Mid North Coast shows some of the elders at the hearing. If you look at the left hand side you can get a feel for the emotion of the day.

I was a bit nervous about this post as I am so often now on writing about Aboriginal history or issues. However, Michael Bennett,  the historian at NTSCORP Ltd who played an important role in collecting the evidence required to substantiate the case, said in a tweet: "Thanks Jim for your thorough and authoritative review". Needless to say, I was pleased. Outside his work for NTSCORP Ltd., Michael has been painstakingly putting together a history of Aboriginal trackers in NSW. You will find the results of this work at Pathfinders. The History of NSW Aboriginal Trackers.It's an interesting site and well worth a browse.    

I have another story to do on the latest Yaegl Native Title decision, the first to award title over ocean in NSW. Native title does not grant absolute rights, but it means that people can exercise traditional rights without restriction from State legislation. This has become a major problem in Southern NSW where the Yuin people have been restricted from fishing for private purposes on what was their land because of general restrictions and charges designed to protect fisheries and raise Government money. 

Meantime, the new discoveries keep rolling out. The fossil footprints of Trachilos date to c5.7 million years ago reports on one such discovery. As my regular history commenter Johnb says, it's exciting. The discoveries have turned our understanding of the deep human past and the evolutionary process itself on its head. Linear evolution has been replaced by possible multi-linear evolution from several sources. We have many more hominid species who may have or indeed did interbreed.  

One effect of this is that the entire conceptual structure underpinning, common ideas about race and evolution, that underpinned so much of nineteenth and twentieth century thinking has been swept aside. It survives today and remains important, but it can't survive in the longer term in the face of the growing evidence. 

Not all the discoveries relate to the distant past.We are finding new stuff all the time.This Guardian story,  Barn conversion leads to amazing find of palatial Roman villa, is an example. 

These discoveries don't necessarily invalidate previous historiography. Many now ignored histories that are seen as fuddy duddy, well past their use by dates, not reflective of "modern" thinking, actually contain great insights. Just because a person has worked from less evidence and from world views that many now reject does not mean that they are wrong on every point. Sometimes, having less evidence can be a real advantage. However, at the very least the new discoveries add texture and depth to familiar stories as well as writing new stories. It's an exciting time to be an historian. It's also a challenging one because so much more has to be fitted in. 

My core writing focus remains on New England Travels: journeys through space and time.  I am trying to use this as an integrating device across a range of my historical writing, ultimately leading to my full history of New England. 

I thought of titling this photo "You call that a verandah. This is a verandah!" This is the Croft, just outside Armidale. 

The linkage is that my latest historical research foray is architecture, including a new series on the New England built landscape and architecture in my Armidale Express column. These forays take time and put off actually finalising anything, but they do add to the texture and depth of the product. 

Mind you, I blame the ABC (Australian Broadcasting Corporation) for this latest foray because of programs like Grand Designs!

In my first column in the series (Architectural keys to past), I said in introduction. "The past lies all around us in the form of the built landscape. We see it, but then we don’t because it is so familiar to us." I think that's right. No matter where you live, the built landscape is both where you live now and an historical artifact.

In the series I am going from the Aboriginal built landscape right though to the most modern.  

This is a recent construction outside Armidale from architect Luigi Rosselli. The description reads: 

This hill top house is a concrete expression of Armidale ’s unique meeting of rural life and culture, “agri-culture”, a town with a university and many other cultural institutions. 

The clients seamlessly combine their flourishing agribusiness with their white collar occupations.  Gentlemen farming.   Their modern “Homestead” is located at the peak of the property overseeing the health of the cattle in the valley below. 

The 1000 metres of altitude are felt outside with cold winter fog covering the valley, whilst inside the house is a refuge enhanced by strongly integrated passive solar design principles.   The sheds and barns are located remotely. 

Keeping nature intact, the grassy slopes of the hill continue all the way up under the concrete platform.   The slab and the corrugated steel skirt under, are a protection against grass fires and conceal large water tanks.   The concrete and the tanks provide ample thermal mass to balance the temperature extremes that high country encounters.   The Interiors are an urbane and cultured refuge to a collection of art and indigenous artefacts collected in Africa and Asia.   There is no place for whips, saddles and country style clichés.

Now I happen to be rather fond of country style cliches and older styles such as this one, Woodleigh, also just outside Armidale. But the point about architecture and the built landscape is that it constantly reinvents itself, replacing what went before.

That replacement process can go too far to the point that it destroys the past beyond repair,  That has happened in Sydney to a significant degree to that city's permanent loss. But to the historian its all evidential grist to the mill.

I have sidetracked, something that I am prone to do. However, and just to finish this post, I have had a wonderful time searching the house sale notices looking for examples to illustrate various architectural styles and to trace changing patterns over time. I wrote about this in Using Domain or realestate.com.au as historical research tools.

Discovery of submerged Neapolis with a dash of garum

Art Daily reports that vast underwater Roman ruins have been discovered off the coast near Nabeul in northeast Tunisia, apparently confirming a theory that the city of Roman city of Neapolis was partly submerged by a large tsunami in the 365. BCE. Other remains of Neapolis dot the ground in Nabeul.

"It's a major discovery," Mounir Fantar, the head of a Tunisian-Italian archaeological mission which made the find off the coast of Nabeul, told AFP.

He said an underwater expedition had found streets, monuments and around 100 tanks used to produce garum, a fermented fish-based condiment that was a favourite of ancient Rome.

My knowledge of Roman foods is fairly limited. I hadn't realised that garum was so popular or such a major trade item. The Wikipedia article on garum provides some fascinating material on its preparation and use.

Mulvaney, Warratyi and the lengthening Aboriginal occupation of Sahul, prehistoric Australia

My main post today is on the New England History blog, Reflections on the life of John Mulvaney. It's a long post, a bit over 3,600 words. Its also a bit of a pastiche from other sources. I have given the sources at the end, so you will be able to see this. One of the most interesting sources is the 2000 Cambridge interview.

John overlapped two very different if linked periods of my life. The first was my undergraduate studies when I wanted to become an Australian archaeologist and prehistorian. That was an exciting time.

Events took me in different directions. I returned much later when I started on that endurance journey, writing a full history of New England over 50,000 years.

This map shows the Pleistocene coasts of Sahul with the sea 60 meters below current levels. The Pleistocene was a period of repeated glacial ages during which sea levels fell and then rose again; 60 meters below current levels was the average across the whole period.

The map comes from an ABC news story Oldest known evidence of Aboriginal settlement in arid Australia found in Flinders Ranges rock shelter. The story reports on an archaeological dig in the Flinders ranges published in Nature.

Known now as as Warratyi, the site, shows Aboriginal Australians settled the arid interior of the country around 49,000 years ago — some 10,000 years earlier than previously thought. It also shows mega-faunal remains suggesting clearly that the Aborigines did indeed both coexist with and eat Australia's mega-fauna. A previous site suggesting this, the New England site of Cuddie Springs, was much disputed. The site also shows the use of sophisticated technology much earlier than previously realised.

Warratyi then was much better watered than now. The desertification that was to come with the Late Glacial Maximum lay thousands of years ahead.

I'm not sure how far we can push back the absolute date of Aboriginal occupation of the continent,  there is an absolute limit set by the out of Africa event, but I don't think that matters. The point is that we have established a long period of existence on Sahul, the present Australian continent, that can hopefully be deepened with further discoveries.  .

Rope and Roma

Just snippets this Sunday, Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday.

Interesting piece in Past Horizons: 40,000 year old mammoth ivory rope-making tool from Hohle Fels Cave.

I was interested for several reasons.

The first was simply the survival of the artefact from such a long time ago. The second was the mammoth connection, an animal long past.

The dates were interesting too, for 40,000 years takes you back into the early settlement of Australia. When I first studied prehistory, it was still in its early stages as a discipline. Australia was quite advanced in global terms. Indeed, the early dates here made us seem unique.

As I think I commented at the time, I was surprised when I visited the Danish National Museum last year at just how far knowledge of the European prehistoric past had advanced. Spending the morning in the relatively small prehistory section - I ended up ignoring everything else - I was left depressed at the way our knowledge of the Australian prehistoric past had fallen behind in relative terms. Here they could tell the story of a relatively small area in a coherent way when I was struggling to do the same thing for New England!

This second shot shows an experiment testing the use of the artefact to make rope using plant material found then and now. One of the difficulties in interpreting ancient artefacts is to know how they were actually used. You actually have to experiment. This may not confirm how they were used, but does indicate how they might have been used.

Staying loosely linked with history and culture, there was an interesting story on marriage customs among Bulgaria’s Kalaidzhi Roma community subtitled Inside Bulgaria's traditional ‘bridal market’ where teen girls are ‘sold’ for hundreds of dollars.

I leave it to you to read the story and watch the embedded video, Personally, I have always been fascinated by the Roma or Gypsies as I still think of them Theirs is a quite a complex tale, dating  back to  origins in what is now Northern India.

I think that my personal fascination with them came from what I perceived as a romantic life style. When I was at primary school, my mother had a romance novel set in a travelling Gypsy band in Ireland. It must have been quite an old book even then, certainly pre-partition. It featured horse breeding, horse stealing, strange customs and feuds in which love finally triumphed!

This fascination is still there from time to time, although now that I am a little older I can more readily see the virtues of hot baths or showers. Still, the desire to become a Gypsy lingers!

There were two subtexts in the story that I found interesting. The first was the desire to maintain one's culture and traditions. This may be impossible or even unwise, but it's not irrational. It is, in fact, a perfectly normal human reaction. The second was the response of the reporter and the two documentary reporters faced with customs that they disapproved of that were yet played out in ways that seemed familiar and could be understood. They were left somewhat adrift.

The rules governing courtship and marriage vary enormously over time and between societies and are some of the most complex cultural structures you will find. In many societies including Australia's Aborigines, breaches of those rules could be punishable by death.

Recently, I have been privy to conversations among women - all Australian - from different ethnic groups swopping views on marriage, marriage customs and men. The trigger was a number of very different weddings. I was struck by the variations, but also the way in which certain common themes worked themselves out within different cultural frameworks,

I am not making any especially profound point. I just found the discussions interesting.                              
 

Neanderthals, Denisovans and homo sapiens sapiens - and now the Monday Forum post as well

 The mystery of the Neanderthals has long fascinated people. What were they? Why did they vanish? Were they wiped out by homo sapiens? Now we know that human beings carry a proportion of Neanderthal genes that varies but appears to be an average of perhaps 2%. The Neanderthal survives within us.

Given such apparent inter-breeding, the question of when the two groups first had sex exercises a sort of fascination. We can see this in this Guardian headline:
Skull discovery suggests location where humans first had sex with Neanderthals.

The story is by no means as exciting as the headline would suggest. It refers to the discovery of a modern human skull in a cave in Northern Israel dating to perhaps 55,000 year ago, a time when the "region when it was already well populated with Neanderthals. Skeletons of Neanderthals from the same time have been recovered from Amud cave 24 miles (40km) to the east of Manot cave, and from Kebara cave 30 miles to the south."

The Neanderthal are far more ancient than that Johnny come lately homo sapiens sapiens  with a sophisticated tool using culture. Nor, as we now know through the miracles of DNA analysis, were they the only older human species co-existing with and interbreeding with homo sapiens sapiens. 

In March 2010, scientists announced the discovery of a finger bone fragment of a juvenile female who lived about 41,000 years ago, found in the remote Denisova Cave in the Altai Mountains in Siberia, a cave that has also been inhabited by Neanderthals and modern humans.

Analysis of the mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA) of the finger bone showed it to be genetically distinct from the mtDNAs of Neanderthals and modern humans. Subsequent study of the nuclear genome from this specimen suggests that Denisovans shared a common origin with Neanderthals, that they ranged from Siberia to South-East Asia, and that they lived among and interbred with the ancestors of some modern humans, with about 3% to 5% of the DNA of Melanesians and Aboriginal Australians deriving from Denisovans.

DNA discovered in Spain suggests that Denisovans at some point resided in Western Europe, where Neanderthals were previously thought to be the only inhabitants. A comparison with the genome of a Neanderthal from the same cave revealed significant local interbreeding with local Neanderthal DNA representing 17% of the Denisovan genome, while evidence was also detected of interbreeding with an as yet unidentified ancient human lineage. 

In addition to the linked Wikipedia articles, you can find more on the Denisovans (and the Neanderthals too) on John Hawks blog.

Postscript

I had planned to bring up a post last night on the Finnish school system for the Monday Forum but events intervened. Now it seems that the Neanderthal theme has generated its own comments not connected with the post, so go for it in whatever direction you like! 

That Australian life - NSW storms with a dash of sea level history

The big storm that battered the NSW coastal strip from the Mid North Coast to the Illawarra appears to be coming to an end. The worst effects were concentrated in the Hunter Valley where five people died.

This photo by Dallas Kilponen from the Sydney Morning Herald shows the waves hitting Wylies Baths (the baths themselves are under water) at the Sydney beach side suburb of Coogee.
The waves were quite something. On Tuesday, a monster wave with a maximum height of 14.9 metres was recorded at 3pm, eclipsing the previous high of 14.1 metres set during the 2007 east coast low that washed the Pasha Bulker commodity carrier ashore near Newcastle. I wrote a post on that east coast low (New England's Wild Weather), in part because it came after drought, in part because of its scale. If you click on the link, you will see a photo of the Pasha Bulker that gives you an idea of then wave scale.

In an earlier post (New England prehistory: creating synthesis in the face of destruction), I mentioned that my present historical research was focused on prehistoric New England. My best guess is that the Aborigines came to Northern NSW between 30,000 and 40,000 years ago, although the earliest radio carbon dates are c20,000 years ago. As part of the process, I have been trying to map dates against changing sea levels and climatic variations.

Let me give you a number here just to attract your attention. Over the last 100,000 years, sea levels have fluctuated from perhaps 120 metres below current levels to a metre above.I was thinking of this as I listened to the storm reports. This variation was most pronounced over the last twenty thousand years.

I don't want to get into the now almost theological debate on human induced climate change. However, I am interested in sea level trends. During the Holocene Warm Maximum period that began c9,000 years ago, average temperatures were around half a degree hotter than they are now, the sea was a metre higher than now. That warm maximum period was replaced by a colder phase that saw sea levels fall.

We may or may not have entered a warmer phase now. Its interesting, however, to realise the scale of natural changes regardless of cause.   

Postscript

kvd, I mentioned John Mulvaney in a comment. This video may be of interest. Professor Mulvaney was mentor to Isabel McBryde who I think of as my personal mentor or role model in some of these areas:

Sunday Essay – maps, myopia and the Aboriginal story

I have always been fascinated by maps. As a child, I had maps pinned all over my bedroom walls. Maps of country towns, road maps, a map of the world with the Empire and Commonwealth still marked in red as it was on the little globe of the world. Then there were the many atlases around the house of varying ages, some dating back to my parents’ childhood with their political boundaries of now vanished countries.

On wet Saturday afternoons, Brother David and I would sort our stamps, counting them, putting them in order. Here we used the Stanley & Gibbons catalogue as a basic resource,  Again, it was a geography and history lesson. This is the first Confederate postage stamp showing Jefferson Davis and placed in circulation in October 1861, five months after postal service between the North and South had ended.

This love of maps carried through into an interest in geography despite the sometimes boredom at primary school of having to draw maps of Australia or NSW with the rivers and boundaries carefully marked. Indeed, at one point that interest was so great that I expected to major in geography at university.

That was not to be. I was more interested in human rather than physical geography, The broad introductory nature of that first year course simply didn’t grab. In fact, I found it quite boring. I therefore put geography aside for history and economics, although my general interest in the subject continued.

Despite my interest in maps and in geography, my sense of spatial awareness was not well developed. By spatial awareness, I simply mean the geography of a place or area; size, distances, rivers, plains and mountains; I understood in a general abstract sense, but I didn’t feel it. This was a bigger weakness than I realised at  time. 

I am not a geographical determinist, but life is shaped by geography. I was researching and writing on the history of places and periods when I didn’t actually properly understand the geography.  These are the ruins of Ancient Thera on the Greek island of Santorini. It took a visit to the Greek Islands in 2010  for me to begin to properly understand the geography involved, including the importance of water; water to sail on, water to drink.

Just as I didn’t properly recognise my limited spatial awareness, I didn’t recognise the way that those maps I loved were affecting my sense of geography, creating hard lines in my mind based on boundaries and human constructions such as railway lines. Those lines helped determine what I looked at, how I interpreted things. Actually, the world wasn’t like that at all. Our obsession with hard lines, with order, actually distorts the way we see the past.

Today, we have a further very particular problem. Modern communications and transport patterns are actually destroying our sense of spatial awareness. The loss of MH70 is a case in point. There was genuine surprise at our inability to find the plane. People had simply forgotten how big the Southern Indian Ocean is. 

Our diminishing sense of spatial awareness combines with our interest in lines and maps to change the mental mudmaps we use to interpret the world. We see the world in terms of a series of dots linked by lines along which we travel. While the length of those lines is determined by travel times, instant communications effectively compresses the dots. The world outside those dots and lines progressively vanishes from our consciousness.

If you look, you can see this effect in operation in your own world.

Do you use Google maps? Ten years ago, you would have got a road map or street directory to plan your trip. You would have had to check the route in some detail, work out where to turn etc. Now many people rely on the GPS system and just do as they are told. It’s convenient, but it means that at the end of your trip your knowledge of the route is far less than it once would have been.

As an alternative, consider the expressway. Even twenty year ago, you would have wound through towns and villages, stopping as required. Today, the modern expressway bypasses all those places, with people stopping at the now ubiquitous service centres. The towns and villages that you once knew are progressively being expunged from memory unless, of course, you have a particular personal or business reason to go to them.  

These issues are on my mind at present for a number of reasons, partly professional, partly personal.

The recreation of the Aboriginal history of what is now Northern NSW before 1788 is like putting together a jigsaw made up of many fragments. It is not possible to be definitive, merely plausible. So long as you provide your evidence, your story can then be challenged by others.

I am often asked how do I know, how can I know, what is my evidence?  Part of the answer lies in the archaeological record, the material that survives from various periods of the long Aboriginal occupation of this continent. Part comes from early settler records or ethnographic studies. This material dates from the time of disruption and poses many problems, not least of which is our inability to draw any certain connections between the the position at the time of European intrusion and that holding in past aeons. This problem become progressively more intense the further back into the past we go.

A further complication lies in the way in that Aboriginal history, our views of the Aboriginal past, have acquired accretions, barnacles if you like, from evolving perceptions of that past within the Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal communities alike. People always re-interpret history to suit current needs. It can be extremely uncomfortable for both historian and reader where the evidence fails to support or even conflict with current beliefs.

Geography is central to any navigation of this mine field. In his 1832 book, the writer William Breton refers to Corborn Comleroy as the name given to the large area occupied by what we would now call, among other things, the Kamilaroi. He notes that the Corborn Comleroy travelled to Port Macquarie for ceremonies.  So far so good, but where did they come from, how did they get to Port Macquarie, what does it tell us about links?

The Kamilaroi  language group occupied a large swath of inland NSW from the Upper Hunter probably into what is now Queensland. Michael O’Rourke considers that those attending the Port Macquarie ceremonies would have travelled from the Mooki or Peel Rivers up onto the southern tip of the New England Tablelands through the Nowendoc district, across the tributaries of the Manning River to the Ellenborough River and then down to the Hastings. This makes sense, but only if you know the complex geography of the area.

It is, by the way, remarkably difficult to avoid errors in all this. The Wikipedia entry on the Manning River given above suggest that the traditional custodians of the land surrounding the Manning River and its associated valleys are the Birpai people of the Bundjalung nation. That is factually incorrect. The Bundjalung lay far to the north separated from the Birpai by two other language groups.

To try to understand all this, I am constantly map checking. Herein there is now a problem. Whatever the strength of Google maps, it does not provide me with the right map size and detail that I need. What I really need is a good old fashioned Atlas that allows me to visually see the relationships between areas and especially rivers and mountain systems. Then and only then can I get full value from Google.

I accept that all this is probably a bit eye glazing, leading the reader to ask but does it matter? Yes, to my mind it does. If we can establish the broad pattern of Aboriginal life in Northern NSW and surrounding linked areas in 1788, then we have brought part of the Australian past into the light. If we do this, we have a better chance of interpreting some of the changing archaeological data, thus adding texture and depth to Aboriginal story over thousands of years.    

The Neanderthal within us

In January I referred (Lewis on the Indo-European controversy) to my feeling of discomfort that came from reading Martin Lewis' posts on the Indo-European controversy. My discomfort came from the realisation that elements of the controversy and the underlying models had affected the things I studied and hence my thinking in ways that I hadn't quite realised. On this, I said in part:

Lewis's central focus in this chapter is on linguistics and the way that linguistic analysis has influenced and been influenced by other debates. His time period extends to the present day. This is where the discomfort came in, for I studied some of the things he talks about at school and university. I used those atlases. I looked at some of the concepts in my studies. Now I wonder a little about the possible distortions created in my own thinking.

Anatomical analysis, the differentiation between peoples based on physical appearance and especially on skeletons, has always been problematic. It continues to be used because in many cases skeletal remains are the only evidence we have, despite the advances in DNA technology.  Yet the classifications used actually derive from and in turn influenced the debate that Lewis is talking about. You see my problem?

When I wrote this three weeks ago, I hadn't properly realised how much science had moved on, in so doing turning our views of the human past on its head.

Over on Helen Dale's Facebook page a commenter, Brian Hanley, directed me to a blog that I had never seen, John Hawke's blog. John described his blog in ways that I could identify with:

I started writing this blog for two basic reasons: first, because there are some really interesting issues in paleoanthropology that are not well covered in the mainstream science press, and second, because I needed a good way to organize my notes.

It turned out that the solution to the note-taking problem also made a nifty solution for writing about interesting issues. Blogging software is one of the best methods of content management around. It became very simple to take notes on things I was reading, spice them up with a bit of information and context, and blog about them. In large part, what you see here are my own notes, the very ones that I use to write my research papers and books.

This is a very, very good blog written by a highly skilled academic who makes the results of new work in his field accessible to the lay reader. And what work that is. It is turning our understanding of the evolution of the human species on its head.  As a simple example, Neanderthal man is not dead but living within us in our genes, if in varying proportions between human groups.

Do have a browse!

Time Team & the joy of archaeology

The ABC is presently running the British Time Team show every night at 6pm.

I began watching by accident. We normally watch SBS News at 6.30 and I rarely watch TV before that. However, one night I was on my own, cooking, and so switched Time Team on for background noise.

My first reaction was negative. I thought that the program might be actually dangerous in encouraging people to go out and dig up the countryside. Then I became fascinated and finally addicted.

Time Team is reality TV applied to archaeology.

The basic concept is simple enough. Start with an archaeological/historical problem such as a story that there was once a roman house or a castle at a place. The team then has three days to resolve the problem using the latest archeological techniques.

It was the three days constraint that initially made me feel that the show might be dangerous, risking sloppy work. However, I then became fascinated in the techniques and unfolding stories, aided by the almost breathless enthusiasm of both the presenter Tony Robinson and the professional team.

Human occupation of Britain has a long history. Further, the phases in that occupation lap and overlap across the landscape. All this means that you can never be sure just what you might find. -

The program must have been very expensive to produce. The resources, people and technical, available to the team would make the normal archaeologist drool. The three day constraint is obviously artificial, but it is important in creating suspense. Will  the team solve their problem in the time?

The team also uses multimedia very well to present evolving pictures. This is what we thought the building looked like, this is what it actually looks like.

For me, one of the most interesting aspects lies in the background history whether it be the fall of Rome, warfare on the Welsh Marches or a the industrial evolution and a railway construction site.

My knowledge of British history adds to my enjoyment, but you don't need to know this to enjoy the program.

I really do recommend the program. The British web site provides a lot more information about it. 

Continuity in the face of great change - the case of Cheddar Man

Update 2 May 2018. The latest results on Cheddar Man cast serious doubt on the conclusions set out in this post and my own uncritical reporting. See Cheddar Man revisited - More hype and complexity

Readers of this blog could be forgiven for thinking that I spend my whole time thinking and writing on political issues. Perhaps its time for a change.

I have been reading and enjoying Norman Davies's The Isles: A History, the story of the territory now occupied by the United Kingdom and Ireland.

When I first studied what was then called English history, there is another interesting story in the use of this name, I was struck by the constant waves of invasion. I suppose I assumed, I know that I assumed, that this meant the replacement of one group of people by another, essentially extinguishing the earlier group. We now know that this is not true because of the rather remarkable case of Cheddar Man.

In 1903 the complete skeleton of a human male was excavated from Gough's Cave in Cheddar Gorge, Somerset, hence the name Cheddar man. We now know that the remains date to approximately 7150 BCE, at least three thousand years before the advent of agriculture in the area. It appears that he died a violent death, perhaps related to the cannibalism practiced in the area at the time.

In the late 1990s, Bryan Sykes of Oxford University sequenced the mitochondrial DNA of Cheddar Man with DNA extracted from one of Cheddar Man's molars. He then, and this is something that I suspect that I would have regarded as a gimmick, tested the DNA of a sample of twenty residents of the modern Cheddar village. He found two exact matches plus one very close match.

Leaving aside the excitement of the two school children who gave the exact match and probably have the oldest scientifically established family tree in the world, the results show that Cheddar Man's family continued to reside in the same locality for perhaps 350 generations, surviving through all the invasions and changes.

It also made me wonder about the role that DNA testing might play if we could do it in the appropriate way in extending our knowledge of Australia's Aboriginal past.

We know that Aboriginal populations were not static, but shifted over time. We do not really understand those shifts.