The Prehistory Guys

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PODCAST #26 | The Coneybury Anomaly at Stonehenge Mar 22, 2020

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In 1980, archaeologist Julian Richards was invited to direct the 'Stonehenge Environs Project' which had been conceived to better understand the landscape surrounding the monument and to work out ways in which it could be better managed and preserved for the future. Part of the work involved the partial excavation of a small henge on Coneybury Hill, to the south-east of Stonehenge. This proved fruitful in many ways and the Coneybury Henge now stands as a significant monument in its own right.

However, lying just outside the henge, the magnetometer survey revealed an 'anomaly' which turned out to be a large pit, 2 metres across and 1.2 metres deep containing a huge collection of Neolithic pottery, animal bones and flint tools, deposited around 3900BC, over a thousand years before the henge was built.

The sheer volume of the deposits is intriguing, but the unique mix of lithics and animal bones in the pit perhaps tell the story of one particular event that happened in this landscape one day, six thousand years ago.

The paper from which we have taken our information “A Meeting in the Forest: Hunters and Farmers at the Coneybury ‘Anomaly’, Wiltshire can be accessed at Cambridge University Press.

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PODCAST #25 | PROFESSOR TIM DARVILL | Stonehenge, Bluestones & Barrows Mar 15, 2020

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Though we say this ourselves, this interview with Professor Timothy Darvill OBE, should be required listening for all serious students of archaeology and fascinated amateurs alike. From his own early childhood beginnings in the discipline, to his thoughts on the purpose and future of archaeology, Tim delves into the detail of his work on the Cotswold Long Barrows, the Neolithic Isle of Man, the Preseli Bluestones and, of course, Stonehenge itself.

We were privileged to record this interview with Professor Darvill in his home in Bournemouth where he is Professor Of Archaeology And Director Of The Centre For Archaeology And Anthropology at Bournemouth University. We are so pleased to be able to share this intensive journey across the landscape of British prehistoric archaeology of the past decades in the company of one of its foremost influencers.

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PODCAST #24 - Solutrean Hypothesis | PROFESSOR BRUCE BRADLEY Feb 02, 2020

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We have to confess we are not as knowledgable about American prehistory as we would like to be. But how could we have done better to begin educating ourselves than to talk to celebrated American archaeologist, Professor Bruce Bradley?

Until recently Emeritus Professor of Prehistory and Director of the Experimental Archaeology Masters Programme at the University of Exeter, Bruce has a remarkable c.v., having involved himself with stone-age technologies and experimental archaeology, the archaeology of the North American Southwest and Great Plains, the Upper Palaeolithic of Russia and France and is currently focused on the early peopling of the Americas.

He is one of the foremost flint knapping experts in the world and the insights into prehistoric lithic working practises perfectly placed him to formulate the 'Solutrean Hypothesis', his controversial theory that some parts of the North Eastern coast of America could have been populated by migrating people from the region of the Pyrenees and Northern Spain during the last glacial maximum.

We talk to him about his career, his current work and outline the story of Clovis and Pre-Clovis culture in the Americas as it is currently understood. We then turn to the idea for which he is best known, the 'Solutrean Hypothesis'.

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PODCAST #23 - Neolithization of Britain | Dr. ALISON SHERIDAN Jan 14, 2020

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The Prehistory Guys are very proud to share with you this fantastic interview with Dr. Alison Sheridan, recently retired Principal Archaeological Research Curator at the National Museums of Scotland.

As you'll find out in the first minutes of this podcast, Alison's C.V. is simply spectacular. If there's such a thing as an A-List archaeologist, she is a prime example of what that looks like - not only in terms of her output and influence, but in the extraordinary breadth of her study.

Her special area however, is the crossover period between the Mesolithic and Neolithic periods in Britain and Ireland. In this interview you'll find out what makes her thesis on how the Neolithic 'package' made it across from the continent 6,000 years ago both compelling and controversial and discover her passion for the life archaeological!

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PODCAST #22 BEER in the Neolithic | Merryn & Graham Dineley Dec 30, 2019

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Ancient craft and brewing specialist Merryn Dineley, together with her brewing expert husband Graham join us to discus how the general unawareness of the way beer is brewed leads to the evidence for it in prehistory being overlooked. Once the process is understood, then the existence of large vessels, like the Grooved Ware pot from Durrington Walls above, suddenly makes sense, as do some of the details inside many excavated ancient and Neolithic buildings up and down Britain and beyond.

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PODCAST #21 | 44,000 Year Old Cave Art Dec 21, 2019

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Earlier in December, news articles began to show up reporting the discovery of very old cave art on the island of Sulawesi in Indonesia. What is significant about the find is that it pushes back the date of the earliest figurative painting a long way, such that this REPRESENTATIVE cave art in Indonesia is of a similar age to the first know ABSTRACT art in Europe.

True to form, Rupert and Michael dig a little deeper, celebrating the find, but making sure we don't get bogged down in some of the assumptions and presumptions that may skew our understanding of what this represents.

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PODCAST #20 | Interview with Dr. RICK PETTIGREW Nov 29, 2019

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We're kicking off our regular interview features with our good friend and colleague Dr. Rick Pettigrew of the Archaeological Legacy Institute in Eugene, Oregon.

The photo above is of Rick standing in front of West Kennet long barrow back in September this year when we were on the 'Backbone of Neolithic Britain' tour. The tour was instigated by Rick and we were delighted to collaborate with him organising this huge adventure and we're delighted to say that we'll be doing it again next year. The point is though that we got to know Rick rather better and found out that (as well as being a great guy!) he's quite a mover and shaker in the world of archaeology and very much aligned to our way of thinking in terms of how it gets communicated.

And communication is really something that shines out in this conversation as (via the Columbia River, obsidian dating, Iran, prehistoric migration, and Malta) we arrive at the subject of the development of language in prehistory.

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#19 | The Great Megalithic Deception Oct 31, 2019

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Does our ancient landscape lie to us? Well, there is a sense in which we are deceived ... or is it we who deceive ourselves? Michael and Rupert discuss how our natural instinct for creating meaning out of what we see might lead us a little astray.

All this and the regular magazine slots in the latest episode of what is now THE PREHISTORY GUYS podcast!

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SWS-18 | Murder in the Neolithic Sep 01, 2019

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When things don't seem so great in the present, it's easy to idealise the past.

Not so fast!

Archaeology has thrown light on some remarkable and truly brutal events in European prehistory recently. It seems that 7,000 years ago a particular phase of angst and conflict in the Neolithic 'Linearbandkeramik' (LBK) culture of central Europe was kicking off and led to some horrific examples of man's inhumanity to man being left in the archaeological record.

Rupert and Michael duck the crime scene tape and take a peek under the sheet ...

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SWS-17 | Neolithic Settlements: MINDS BLOWN! Aug 06, 2019

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If we're talking about standing stones and the Neolithic, then we have to talk about origins ... and if we talk about origins we have to talk about the Middle East and Anatolia. If we talk about the Middle East and Anatolia, the names Çatalhöyük and Göbekli Tepe seem to come up. But Tell Qaramel? Tell es-Sultan? Motza? Maybe nearer to home on the Danube; Lepinski Vir?

By merely scratching the surface of the subject of ancient settlements, Michael & Rupert have their minds quietly blown taking on the implications of the timescales involved in relation to our own, home-grown developments in the British Neolithic.

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