NHAS News & Events

NORTH HERTFORDSHIRE ARCHAEOLOGICAL SOCIETY

Newsletter: 28th November 2018

Tuesday 4th December 2018: Members Xmas evening with buffet, wine and other refreshments, £3 per head. Mark Stevenson, Archaeology Advisor (South London), National Planning Group, Historic England, will give a talk on ‘The Archaeology of a World Heritage Site: Greenwich’. All lectures to be held at Letchworth Free Church hall, 8 pm.

Tuesday 19th February 2019: ‘Excavations at Buntingford, Hertfordshire’, by Matt Jones, Project Officer, Pre-Construct Archaeology.

Tuesday 5th March 2019: ‘Excavations at North Stowe, Cambridgeshire’, by Alison Dickins, Project Manager, Archaeology Unit, University of Cambridge.

Tuesday 16th April 2019: ‘ What we can learn from excavated human remains’, Laura Dodd, KDK Archaeology.

Tuesday 21st May: Annual General Meeting. Gil Burleigh will present an illustrated report on the year’s fieldwork, including parch-mark sites revealed by drone photography during the summer 2018 drought and renewed test-pit excavations in Pirton.

Autumn 2019: ‘A multi-period excavated site at a quarry near Peterborough’, by Greg Farnworth Jones, Project Officer.

Kris Lockyear writes:

Dear All,

some of you might be interested in the one day conference on archaeological geophysics being held at the Geological Society in Piccadilly on the 4th December. See for details and a link. I am presenting a poster on our work at Verulamium. Cost is £25 concessions, £30 full with lunch and coffees.

Best wishes, Kris.

Dea Senuna: Treasure, Cult and Ritual at Ashwell, Hertfordshire book by Ralph Jackson and Gilbert Burleigh has been re-printed and is still available for sale at the BM (). It would make a nice Christmas present if you don’t have a copy yet!

The article on ‘Ashwell’s Lost Roman Goddess’, published in Hertfordshire Life magazine in July is now available online (minus one or two photographs):

Sacrilege! Leading archaeologist speaks out on centenary of Stonehenge gift Expressway legacy threat mars centenary of Stonehenge donation Friday 26th October was the centenary of the gift of Stonehenge to the nation by Sir Cecil and Lady Chubb. This weekend, English Heritage is marking the occasion with a specially commissioned tea party designed by Jeremy Deller and an installation of his work, “Sacrilege”, an almost life-sized inflatable Stonehenge. A joyous public celebration for some, but for many others it could mark impending sacrilege for the nation’s most famous World Heritage Site. A distinguished archaeologist speaks out against the Stonehenge tunnel Professor Mike Parker Pearson, leading expert in British Neolithic archaeology, speaks out about the Stonehenge tunnel in a newly released video to share his profound concerns. At barely 3km long the tunnel would be too short within a World Heritage Site that is more than 5km across, full of prehistoric monuments. Mike reminds us that the UNESCO World Heritage Site is “a designation of an entire landscape. It’s one of the few places, not just in Britain but in the World, where you can see a special, sacred landscape developed over thousands of years.” Professor Mike Parker Pearson “Stonehenge tunnel sets a bad precedent“ http://https://www.youtube.com/edit?o=U&video_id=qLGBBTt1JnI Will the UK Government finally come to its senses and re-consider the A303 road-widening scheme and the damage it would do to our World Heritage Site? It isn’t too late to call a halt and heed the advice of UNESCO and other internationally acknowledged experts. A less damaging solution would properly and rightly protect the remarkable surroundings of Stonehenge about which we now know so much more than we did a hundred years ago. Short 1 minute clip of the video can be seen here Full briefing about A303 Stonehenge scheme

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THE BRITISH MUSEUM

I object: Ian Hislop’s search for dissent

WAS.Autumn 2018 for email.docx