Awesome Archeology

[DanaC]

Archeology is awesome. To be able to dig into the past and bring it back to us in the here and now. The wild and wonderful treasures, and the even more compelling ordinariness of the broken and discarded detritus of lives lived. Buried cities, and forgotten hoards, lost necklaces and the once revered dead.

And always playing against time, against erosion or destruction, against the farmers plough or motorway construction. As techniques improve more is learned but for all that is learned how much drops out of our reach as they dig?

This is a thread for those little news stories that offer a quick glimpse of a distant and unreachable past. The ones that maybe don't need a thread of their own. Not worldshaking, just fascinating.

Here's what prompted me to post:

Eight 4,000-year-old boats found in a quarry in Cambridgeshire are being preserved with the same techniques used on the Mary Rose Tudor warship.

The vessels were discovered by archaeologists as they excavated a section of a quarry at Must Farm near Peterborough in 2011.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england...shire-22764318

The boats are being kept in cold storage at Flag Fen, where they will be sprayed with a special wax.

The two-year project will stop the ancient timbers from degrading.

The technique prevents the boats from drying out too quickly and enables them to be kept in one piece.

Previously log boats have been cut into pieces for conservation.

It is hoped the process will reveal more about the Must Farm log boats, one of which is almost 30ft (9m) long.