Welcome
Thanks for visiting.
This site is about archaeology, and things that catch the interest of an archaeologist who is lucky enough to work in journalism: I often get to see and hear about amazing things before the rest of the world does, and to meet the people who find them. I work for my own company (Digging Deeper Ltd), and fortunately for now I am pretty busy, so what you will find here will be selective.
If you want to see a photo full screen, click on the image. Unless otherwise stated, all photos are by me, and my copyright.
About me
I began my career as a professional archaeologist and museum curator, directing excavations at Stonehenge and elsewhere. I left that to write, photograph and travel (spending many months in Asia and the Pacific especially, but also in Africa, Madagascar, south and north America and Canada), and to help open and run a groundbreaking and very busy vegetarian restaurant (Stones, in Avebury). We closed the restaurant in 2000, since when I have worked freelance as a journalist specialising mainly in archaeology, while continuing to conduct original research (I returned to dig at Stonehenge in 2008). I have written trade books such as Fairweather Eden (Mail on Sunday non-fiction choice) and Hengeworld, features for most UK newspapers and for magazines such as Wanderlust, BBC History, New Scientist and the American Archaeology. In 2009 I was one of 2,400 people to take part in Anthony Gormley’s One & Other in Trafalgar Square, London, when for one hour I was able to create a museum of 700,000 years of British archaeology on the empty statue plinth (the “fourth plinth”). I edit British Archaeology magazine.
In the past five years, I have appeared in over 60 programmes for TV and radio, both of which I hugely enjoy. Among TV projects in which I have both appeared and for which I have been consultant are Murder at Stonehenge for Channel 4 and Stonehenge Live! for Channel 5. I bring archaeology news and debate to radio programmes such as BBC Radio 4’s Front Row and Radio 3’s Night Waves, and have presented a couple of archaeology-themed series on Radio 4.
I am a recipient of the British Archaeology Press Award, a fellow of the Society of Antiquaries of London, a member of the professional Institute for Archaeologists and a director of Antiquity Publications Ltd. I am an exhibited photographer, and passionate about arts in general.
Mike,
I am interested in finding out what happened to the Foamhenge Stonehenge model made for the Channel 5 TV programme. I know it was on ebay. Was it sold, and if so are you able to tell me who to? I am interested in trying to set up a sound installation using loudspeakers to recreate the acoustic environment of Stonehenge, but this would be really effective actually set inside the foamhenge replica somewhere. Anyway, if you can help at all I would be very interested. You can see my research into the acoustics of Stonehenge at soundsofstonehenge.wordpress.com and other work at AMBPNetwork.wordpress.com . I have been discussing my work with some of the Sheffield Stonehenge Riverside Project people, Mike PP, Ben Chan, Jim Rylatt and the like. If you have a moment and can drop me an email that would be great.
I am a senior lecturer in music technology at Huddersfield University
January 8, 2010 at 1:01 pm
I’m asked this every so often, and the best I can do is repeat what I recently said to a BBC TV drama producer. I so wish I could tell you where Foamhenge is and you could use it, but my understanding is that it was some time ago disposed of. It was carved from blocks of expanded polystyrene. It was on eBay, but despite a few claims made to the media, when it came down to it noone bought it (noone was ready to pay the transport cost). The haulage contractor who was temporarily storing it (in an outside railway cutting, I believe) eventually got rid of it. There do seem to be a few megaliths still around (I think the National Trust in Avebury may have one or two, and English Heritage had one at Stonehenge in 2008) but the bulk of it has gone. It was created by Crawley Creatures in a big shed in Bicester, for Darlow Smithson Productions. A lot of effort went into making it as true to life as we could achieve (bearing in mind we were imagining a complete monument and not a ruin, and that even now no detailed survey of the surviving stones exists), and it would have made a wonderful educational display inside some huge building. Sadly not to be.
January 8, 2010 at 8:14 pm
Hi! I want to know about the wereabouts of the “Mana”!? Is she still floating somewhwre?
I am a very interested hobbyhistorian!
Carl Blom, Sweden
February 8, 2010 at 1:40 am
That was a question I asked myself some years ago. The last Routledge owner entry in the Lloyds register of yachts was in 1919, and in 1920 the owner is listed as the Earl of Dundonald. In 1923 she goes to DC Klugman, and in the last Lloyds entry (1925) she is attributed to DC Klugman of Rua Theophalo, Ottoni, Rio de Janeiro. J van Tilburg (Among Stone Giants, page 204) says she was destroyed by fire under Klugman’s ownership on September 1 1923.
February 8, 2010 at 11:23 am
Wonderful to run across your blog this a.m., Mike. It’s been a number of years since reading Hengeworld – and your kind response when I emailed thanks c. 2003. Exciting news this morning about the boy with the amber necklace. Thanks again for your fine work. Helps keep rustics out in the provinces like ourselves informed.
parrish, florida
September 29, 2010 at 1:51 pm
I was wondering if Silbury Hill might be in a place from where, at the top of the hill, a voice or trumpet like instrument could create echoes bouncing back from the surrounding hills. Also, is the path which winds up the side contemporary with it’s building, or do you think it had another way up.
October 30, 2010 at 6:44 pm
Hello Mr.Pitts
I was watching the PBS program Nova “Stonehenge” that you were a part of, I was watching the gentleman who were trying to move the weight of a large stone with a bearing type rail, which they were have some problems, the hold time I said “its too complicated”, you even said the same thing, but I don’t think that they were not all wrong, especially the “jumping jack” shape stone balls, that’s when I remembered about a hobbyist (Wally Wallington) who’s hobby is to move large 10 ton concrete blocks and even 15 ton barn by him self.
Maybe the pointed balls where used like machinist’s jacks or points, being a Tool Maker, tradesmen use them too hold up odd or rough shape weldments/casting to be machined. Wally shows moving a stone on a flat surface, but these jumping jacks stone could have been used on a flatten notch timbers.
Anyway please take a look.
Vincent, Canada
W.Wallington has a website:
“The Forgotten Technology” http://www.theforgottentechnology.com/newpage1
You tube: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pCvx5gSnfW4&feature=related
November 17, 2010 at 4:05 am
Hello Mike. As another reader mentioned above, I too recently came across your site- with great excitement, I might add! I have read and re-read Hengeworld to the point where my copy needs to be laid to rest. In my opinion, humble though it is, of my library of Stonehenge-related books (and there are nearly 30 so far), yours is the ‘cleanest’, and most accurate (again, i.m.o) of the lot. It has become my reference for all the others.
I see Hengeworld quoted by others as well, none the least Dennis Price of the wonderful Eternal Idol site. http://www.eternalidol.com/
There is an actual point to all this! Have you perhaps heard any news concerning more detailed work at blue-henge ? In particular, have there been any casts made of the stoneholes, to compare to the dolerites standing just over 1.5k away ? There was much made that this was likely the site from whence the ‘extra’ bluestones were ‘stored’: it would be wonderful to have this confirmed.
with kind regards,
Bob Jenkins,
Charlottetown, PEI
Canada
January 26, 2011 at 2:31 pm
Glad you liked Hengeworld Bob, though it’s getting out of date almost by the day now (I like to think that just about everything in the paperback edition stills stands, but there is much to add from new work; the only bit that needs to be completely rewritten is about the sequence of megaliths at Stonehenge, which I’ve written about elsewhere on this site).
No physical casts were made of the pits at “Bluehenge”, but a 3D laser scan was taken of the topography, which could I imagine be used to make a physical model.
February 1, 2011 at 4:54 pm
Hi Mike, just watching the Stonehenge program on SBS tonight. Surely, if the natural runway linking the stonehenge monument with the river, as if froze and filled with ice, may have allowed a very large stone to be moved over it. Ice is slippery.
Makes sense, Possible. Thanks for your study,
Julia Starr, Australia
July 31, 2011 at 11:28 am
It sounds a plausible idea, Julia – at least many people seem to think so, and have written to me suggesting it (quite why now, I don’t know). In practice, however, I think ice is very unlikely to have played any significant role in stone moving, for several reasons.
The principal one is that it was never cold enough for the ground to be sufficiently frozen for this to work. There was a time when Salisbury Plain was tundra, and the ground permanently frozen. But the last permafrost in southern England melted well over 10,000 years ago, and the first time anyone moved stones to Stonehenge was only 5,000 years ago (as we now think; we used to say 4,000 or so years ago, but now most of us think the first stones arrived at the beginning of the site’s history, which is well dated – so we’re unlikely to say that stones arrived before then).
Essentially the weather when Stonehenge was built was not that different from today’s. There might have been the odd very cold winter, and standing water could have frozen to a depth of 10cm or more, but as today that would have been rare – and hardly something that could be planned into a complex organisational schedule that is likely to have run over several years, and been driven by politics and religion (when did they ever wait for weather?).
Even an exceptional ice cover would have done no more than make things worse for moving a stone. The big ones are massive, and would have smashed through the ice, pushing out the mud underneath, while people and animals trying to do the moving would have slithered on the mess. And this is when it’s very cold, the days are short and fresh food supplies are short.
You need to remember too that the stones had to be moved for much greater distances than the length of the Stonehenge Avenue, or the valley leading up from the river.
If there was a season for moving stones, it’s more likely to have been late summer or early autumn than winter. The days are still long, it’s comfortable to be outside, and wild foods are in good supply. The cereal harvests will all be in, and the labour demands of farming are at their lowest. This may also have made it easier to access the best routes, as there would no longer be crops on the ground that, other things being equal, would need to be avoided.
July 31, 2011 at 1:21 pm
Hey Mike
I’m currently writing on an essay about “what different interpretations of Star Carr can tell us about the mesolithic as a discipline” and stumbled upon one of your very first articles. I enjoyed reading it but was surprised that this was the only time that you took part in the discussion.
Now that we know that Star Carr is not just the small area that Clark excavated, do you have any new thoughts about it?
Have you ever tried to actually do some more excavations in that area to find evidence for a larger settlement or tried to encourage someone to search for it?
Cheers
Nik
December 9, 2011 at 4:22 pm
I’m horrified to see I wrote that paper (1) over 30 years ago! And you’re right, I haven’t contributed to the continuing debate, and neither have I excavated there. But I have followed it all with interest, and perhaps one day I might return to it, as I do think there are things to say. Not the least of which is to repeat the driving point behind my article, which is often missed.
Things are different now, but when I wrote about Star Carr, Grahame Clark was still active, and had recently published his own reassessment of his original dig (2). I was a student, and Star Carr and Clark were both new to me – and I thought both were wonderful! No one had apparently written about the site other than Clark himself, and I was warned that to do so was treading on hallowed ground. Yet there were fundamental flaws in his argument, so cleverly presented, that the site was a red deer hunters’ winter camp.
Most of the antler – the key seasonal indicator in Clark’s thesis – was industrial waste or hunting kit, so the deer could have been killed at any time. Stripping out such antler from calculations had a big effect on the relative amounts of meat supposedly contributed by different animals. This misrepresentation of the significance of red deer at the site was also noticed by Seamus Caulfield, and unknown to each other, we must have been writing about it at the same time (3).
The waterside location was (of course rightly) treated as the reason why so much organic material survived at Star Carr. But why the stuff should have been in the water in the first place was never questioned. This was what most puzzled me about Star Carr. It was hearing Henry Hodges (who was a lecturer at the London Institute then) talking about antler technology, and how antler is commonly soaked in water to soften it for working, that gave me a possible solution: it was an industrial site where water was needed. It made sense that hide working might also have benefited from the water, as well as antler (and who knows what else?). The hides could have been there just for cleaning, but I added the chemical treatment – perfectly plausible – because World Archaeology had a chemistry themed issue coming up, and I’d heard the editor was looking for articles.
In all the stuff since written about Star Carr, I have yet to see a sensible alternative explanation for why there should be so much industrial waste, gathered together in a relatively small area, in or close to the water.
References
1 “Hides and antlers: a new look at the gatherer-hunter site at Star Carr, North Yorkshire, England”, World Archaeology 11 (1979), 32-42
2 “Star Carr: a case study in bioarchaeology”, Addison-Wesley 1972
3 “Star Carr – an alternative view”, Irish Archaeological Research Forum 5 (1978)
December 10, 2011 at 5:38 pm
Thank you for the quick reply!
I was already wondering how you made it into World Archaeology being that young AND going against Clark… Did you get any harsh comments about your article after it was published?
December 10, 2011 at 5:54 pm
I was too shy (or wise) to ask Clark what he thought of it, so I never knew, but I can’t imagine he was impressed! I remember there being a lot of positive interest from outside the UK.
December 13, 2011 at 7:22 pm
Hi Mike,
I have been doing some research on the geometry of Stonehenge. I am trying to find the most accurate survey thet defines the the stones and holes that form the concentric circles. Along with the elements that are within the Sarsen Circle. I have found much on line. However I wanted to get the most accurate. I have come across the surveys done by English Heritage. Is it possible to get a copy of those surveys? I have just found your website and am enjoying the read. If you could help I would greatly appreciate it.
Peter
January 4, 2012 at 7:48 pm
I had to do a bit of asking around about this (my thanks to Dave Field, amongst others). As I suspected, the best (possibly the only?) modern surveys of Stonehenge are owned by English Heritage, including a survey of the stones it commissioned from MJ Rees and Co in 1989.
The Historic Plans room archives at the National Monuments Record, Swindon (NMR), should be able to supply digital or paper copies for a basic fee: contact details here. A photogrammetric survey carried out in 1993 by Paul Bryan, English Heritage, and a recent scan carried out by Greenhatch Ltd should be available before too long.
As far as published plans go, the best source (as for so much of Stonehenge archaeology) is Cleal et al 1995 (Cleal R, Walker, K & Montague, R 1995. Stonehenge in its Landscape: Twentieth Century Excavations. London: English Heritage Archaeological Report 10). This study was prepared by Wessex Archaeology, but they used existing surveys by English Heritage, and there are some very nice fold out plans.
January 9, 2012 at 9:39 pm
Thanks Mike.
I will follow up on these leads.
January 9, 2012 at 11:26 pm
Just a quick personal note to say Hi Mike! Just finished watching one of your great TV programmes here in Australia, and seeing you reminded us of your visit to Tonga all those years ago. Very best wishes, Diana, Steve and Pesi Brown from ‘Otea
July 19, 2012 at 1:01 pm
Hello Mike, I would like to express my gratitude for your wonderful book, Hengeworld. My copy has a permanent place on my headboard! Although my Stonehenge book collection is substantial, there are only two I read and re-read, Hengeworld and Stonehenge in its Landscape.
Love the site, very well thought out, simple and clean interface, yet rich in content.
Cheers from Canada
August 20, 2012 at 10:58 pm
Apologies Mike, in my haste to scribble down a few lines I did not bother to scroll back… seems I have posted in the recent past.
While I am here (again!), I would ask if you have any plans to ‘update’ Hengeworld ? WIth so many wonderful new discoveries, the work of the SRP, I imagine there is enough material to fill a new version, notwithstanding MPP’s new book.
Cheers
August 23, 2012 at 3:27 pm
G’day Mike,
It’s a long time since we went wandering around sites in the fields around Bognor together. You may recall that I was living in a house full of Australians back then. Well now I live in Australia, am retired,,and am catching up with the interests of my mis-spent youth.
After reading Francis Pryor’s books, and noting his several mentions of your work, I found a copy of Hengeworld in a secondhand bookshop a couple of days ago. I must say it’s very good and I’m glad to see your hard work back in the ’70s came good.
All the best
Mick Reed
September 2, 2012 at 6:25 am
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