If an ancient monument is at immediate risk of damage or destruction, the Welsh Ministers will be able to authorise archaeological excavations without the owner’s consent. This new power, which will help to rescue valuable information about Welsh history, will only be used in exceptional cases. Using ground-penetrating radar, some 100 stones were found at the Durrington Walls "superhenge", a later bank built close to Stonehenge.

National Park volunteers and staff have been helping to fill 2,000 sandbags with organic topsoil to restore the profile of the badly-eroded sections of rampart. The stones are important because the energy gets drawn into them. You can feel this type of energy, you feel a bit wobbly on your feet." A few days ago someone who is writing a book on Lansdown race course asked me about the Bronze Age 'sun disc' that was found in one of the barrows. It was in fact gold over bronze (most of the gold having disappeared) and was in such a terrible state and in so many fragments that its reconstruction is a matter of drawing the complex pattern on paper, which both Rhiannon and Mike Aston have done. a few miles from the Lansdown, here we are in Wessex kingdom land of course, where gold is occasionally found in the B/A barrows. So was the 6 inch Lansdown a bigger version of a sun disc, and are the smaller ones more like ornamentation for horses or people, And not to forget the Trundholm Sun-Chariot a gold/bronze depiction of a mare pulling the sun, the disc has a certain similarity to the Lansdown one...Rodney Castleden (1990) ''The Knossos Labyrinth: A New View of the 'Palace of Minos' at Knosos'', Routledge ISBN 0415033152 She says that when she surveyed it in 1998 that they found over 30 stones, some standing, some recumbent, the stone following the long axis e/w. Potter, p45.I'll take the Druidical festival with a pinch of salt, but the Beacon must have seen its fair share of revels. I totally understand the farmer not being able to look round for "inequalities of the surface" (i.e. trying not to fall over) - that often affects me. And I like his italicisation of charmed... it hints at a fairyish spot.

It was found during excavations by Guy Underwood in 1947 along with a pottery beaker, flint arrowheads and fragments of the skeleton of an aWe have the best Bronze Age collections in Britain and we are delighted to be able to display this incredibly rare sun-disk through the generosity of the donors,” said David Dawson, Museum Director. The once monumental final resting place of a probable prehistoric chieftain and, potentially, his shaman has been discovered in southwest England. NEOLITHIC. Knossos is the only city-sized Neolithic settlement on Crete, with three well defined layers of material bedded to a final depth of seven meters below the Bronze Age city; the Neolithic settlement on Kephala Hill actually extends well beyond the boundaries of the later Bronze Age city. The oldest Neolithic level reveals coarse hand-made brown clay bowls and other unornamented open containers. Pottery artifacts are burnished and many contain handles. (Castleden, 1990) The middle Neolithic manifests more refined pottery, with intricate incised geometric designs and some bird and animal motifs. Hatched triangles, dotted fields and chevrons are incised on ladles, partitioned trays and vases; some use of tubular handles is evident. Preserved by Dr Denis Whitehead since its discovery, the sun-disc was seen by the museum's archaeologists the first time was when he brought it to the opening of the Prehistory Galleries in 2013.Be that as it may, I expect there was'nt much treasure in the great tombs of the Boyne valley either. Similar discoveries have been made in the area, but it is unusual to find so many markings on the one stone. Through ‘The Big Dig Blog’ at caldies.big.org.uk up to the minute information about the dig can be found as it happens.

Late Minoan II ends about 1425 BC with a catastrophic collapse of the Minoan culture. Mycenaean invasion commenced soon thereafter. While the Minoans never exhibited warfare, it is curious that the invasion came so close to the societal collapse. The syndrome seems mysteriously similar to the sudden demise of the Mayan civilization, where some postulate that carrying capacity was no longer able to serve an expanded population. Well as people find it difficult to get to, some information from Jody Lewis's 'The Neolithic of Northern Somerset' Our ancient Irish ancestors carved images of an ancient eclipse into giant stones over 5,000 years ago, on November 30, 3340 BC to be exact. This is the oldest known recorded solar eclipse in history. This embraced the central part, made up of slightly larger stones pressed firmly into the soil beneath.New archaeological and metallurgical research suggests that substantial amounts were exported to Ireland, with smaller quantities probably also going to France. It also suggests that the elites of Stonehenge almost certainly likewise obtained their gold from the south-west peninsula, as may the rulers of north-west Wales, who took to wearing capes made of solid gold. They believe the stones could have been dismantled and rebuilt 150 miles (240 km) away on Salisbury Plain, Wiltshire.