History Shorts: snippets of local history

The Dorset chalk figure known as the Cerne Giant was most probably created in the early Middle Ages, according to recent dating work. Contextualising the archaeological work by the National Trust, authors of a new study say the figure was cut in the ninth or early tenth century when there was much interest in the Greek hero Hercules. In their paper in the journal Speculum , Thomas Morcom and Helen Gittos explain at length when and why the figure was cut in the image of Hercules and why it was done in this West Saxon landscape. By PeteHarlow,  CC BY-SA 3.0 , Link The Cerne Giant, located outside the village of Cerne Abbas, is approximately 55 metres long and 51 metres wide. The hill on which it was carved also features an Iron Age earthwork, which the authors say, has never been investigated archaeologically but which was considered important enough to give the hill its name until recently.  Previous attempts to date the giant placed its creation either sometime in prehistory or in the

This fascinating article describes the effects of a Tunguska-sized airburst over the ancient city of Tall el-Hammam. It was originally published in The Conversation... A giant space rock demolished an ancient Middle Eastern city and everyone in it – possibly inspiring the Biblical story of Sodom Artist’s evidence-based depiction of the blast, which had the power of 1,000 Hiroshimas. Allen West and Jennifer Rice , CC BY-ND Christopher R. Moore , University of South Carolina As the inhabitants of an ancient Middle Eastern city now called Tall el-Hammam went about their daily business one day about 3,600 years ago, they had no idea an unseen icy space rock was speeding toward them at about 38,000 mph (61,000 kph). Flashing through the atmosphere, the rock exploded in a massive fireball about 2.5 miles (4 kilometers) above the ground. The blast was around 1,000 times more powerful than the Hiroshima atomic bomb. The shocked city dwellers wh

Being Anglo-Saxon was a question of language and culture, not genetics, a new study by archaeologists at the University of Sydney and Simon Fraser University in Vancouver highlights. New findings based on studying skeletal remains clearly indicates the Anglo-Saxons were a melting pot of people from both migrant and local cultural groups and not one homogenous group from Western Europe. Professor Keith Dobney at the University of Sydney said the team's results indicate that "the Anglo-Saxon kingdoms of early Medieval Britain were strikingly similar to contemporary Britain - full of people of different ancestries sharing a common language and culture". The Anglo-Saxon (or early medieval) period in England runs from the 5th-11th centuries AD. Early Anglo-Saxon dates from around 410-660 AD - with migration occurring throughout all but the final 100 years (ie 410-560AD). Studying ancient skulls Published in PLOS ONE , the collaborative study by Professor Dobney at University o

This is the first in what I hope will be a regular series highlighting new history and archaeology research from around the world, the common denominator being that I find them particularly interesting! New research provides definitive evidence that modern humans were on the Atlantic coast of modern-day Portugal at a time when, if present at all, Neanderthal populations would have been extremely sparse. The discovery has important ramifications for our understanding of the process of modern human dispersal and replacement of Neanderthal populations. The results support a very rapid, unimpeded dispersal of modern humans across western Eurasia and support the notion that climate and environmental change played a significant role in the process. According to the findings, modern humans probably arrived in the westernmost part of Europe 41,000 - 38,000 years ago, about 5,000 years earlier than previously known. An international team of researchers revealed the discovery of stone tools used