Earlier last month the World Neolithic Congress was held at Harran University in Şanliurfa, Turkey. If I’d heard about the event sooner, I would have submitted a paper, but I attended. The congress was originally set for China but was cancelled due to Covid. Last year it was being arranged for Turkey but was cancelled […]
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Stonehenge: The Scottish Connection
It has been an eventful year for Stonehenge. Back in May various effects of the Major Lunar Standstill on the site began to be measured which will continue till mid-next year. Back in August Nature published a paper, the implications of which English Heritage had hinted at before, that the mineralogical source of Stonehenge’s so-called […]
Malta
Last year I visited the megalithic sites of Malta (a fun little island!) largely drawn to the Mnajdra Temples which will feature in a forthcoming book. Mnajdra is believed to interact with solar positions as well as helical observations of the Pleiades c. 3000 BCE. A tally system of carved dots found on pillars from […]
Skyscape Seminar Series 2023-24
The Journal of Skyscape Archaeology, together with the Sophia Centre at the University of Wales Trinity St David and Bournemouth University’s Department of Archaeology, have planned a series of online seminars which I’m glad to contribute to. The series runs from late 2023 to 24 and the full range of absorbing topics can be seen […]
Tower of Jericho
The partially excavated Tower of Jericho is, for its age, a peculiar structure. It was discovered by Kathleen Kenyon over her 1950s digs at the Jericho site. Following her own devising of pre-ceramic or pre-pottery phases, she dated the structure to around 8000 BCE. The cylindrical tower stands over 8 metres high and has been […]
The Gilgamesh Image
Gilgamesh was supposedly a king of Uruk (located in present-day Iraq) who lived c.2100 BCE. As the central character in the Gilgamesh Epic he became a big noise in the ancient world. Given the detail of his extraordinary feats and fantastic content of his epic journey, however, some have been left wondering how Gilgamesh could […]
Journal of Skyscape Archaeology paper
I’m delighted that my paper, ‘Chips off the Block: Twin Symbolism in the Emergence of Neolithic Monuments and Cosmology’ will be published (quite soon) in the Journal of Skyscape Archaeology (JSA). It was peer reviewed for a while and accepted last year. JSA, which looks at the relevance of the sky in the interpretation of […]
Karahan Tepe and Taş Tepeler
The Taş Tepeler ‘stone hills’ archaeological project which is an effort to understand Neolithic beginnings has progressed rapidly since its 2019 start and has already uncovered regional variations on common themes that link Gobekli Tepe with other sites. I was in Sanliurfa when the project started. After my visit to Gobekli Tepe my driver asked ‘you want […]
Amazon rock art discovery
An important rock art discovery was made last year in the Colombian Amazon which has been dubbed ‘the Sistine Chapel of the Ancients’. Its recent announcement mentions thousands of paintings, stretched over eight-miles of cliff, of fish, lizards, turtles, birds and abstract symbols and forms. Also included are depictions of now extinct megafauna, such as […]
Plato Prehistorian
RIP Mary Settegast (1934-2020). Mary Settegast passed on a little under two months ago. I was communicating with Mary for the past few years and encouraged her to release an updated version of Plato Prehistorian (originally published 1986). She asked if I’d provide a new foreword and appendix focusing on recent discoveries that complement her […]