Fieldwork at Valle Crucis

At the end of July, myself and a group of students from University of Chester (Phil C., Brandi M., Joe M and Rachel G) spend a number of days carrying out fieldwork of the site of the old fulling mill of the Cistercian abbey at Valle Crucis, near Llangollen. This is the first stage of a joint project with Llangollen Museum to explore the site. There are no standing structural remains, but a series of earthworks related to the mill can be seen in the garden at Pandy.

We carried out an earthwork survey, which involved creating a hachure plan and levelling in a series of profiles across the site. Exploring the surrounding area I think I have also identified the course of aqueduct that took water to the nearby abbey. This will require further fieldwork though.

The next stage of the project will be small-scale fieldwork on the mill site and, ideally, further geophysical survey in the surrounding area. This will hopefully link up with geophysical survey already carried out by Sarah Semple (University of Durham)and Dai Morgan Evans ((University of Chester)in the environs of the Pillar of Eliseg.

Rotherwas Ribbon

Apologies for the long delay in updating the blog. The joys of fatherhood (ie sleepless nights, projectile vomiting and constant nappy changing)and the need to complete writing my new book have meant that the blog has slipped down by 'to do' list.

Thanks to Bill Sheppard for passing the following on to me:

NEWS: Green Party in England & Wales

GREENS DEFEND ROTHERWAS RIBBON

A recently discovered 4000 year old monument in rural Herefordshire
is at risk of being covered by a new road development. Archaeologists
have said the 197ft (60m) long ribbon of stones, found by road
builders, could be as important as Stonehenge and is apparently
unique in Europe.

It is made up of a series of deliberately fire-cracked stones and
appears to have been deliberately sculptured to undulate through the
whole of its length that has so far been uncovered.

Hereford Green Party has been leading the campaign to defend the
Rotherwas Ribbon, also known as the Dinedor Serpent.

Local Green Cllr Gerald Dawe, said: "What we're going to have is a
road which no-one wants, going over a part of our history which has a
lot of public support.

Green Party Principal Speaker Dr. Derek Wall said:

"The Rotherwas Ribbon is of great historical importance. It is vital
that discoveries like these are protected from more road building.

"English Heritage inspectors have said that the best thing is for the
remains to be preserved in-situ. They are currently considering
whether the site meets the criteria for 'scheduling' - this status is
given to monuments whose preservation is given priority over other
land uses. (1)

"Though this wouldn't preclude the relief road being built, it would
send a message to Hereford council of the importance of these ancient
remains.

"A petition calling for a full public inquiry to decide the future of
the Rotherwas Ribbon can be signed on the Downing St website. I urge
people who care about out archeological heritage to add their names.(2)

"There are many organisations fighting effective and vital campaigns
against road building around the UK - including Road Block and the
Group Against Motorway Expansion." (3)


ENDS

Notes for Editors

(1) More information on the Scheduling of Monuments can be found at
http://www.english-heritage.org.uk/server/show/conWebDoc.2436

(2) http://petitions.pm.gov.uk/rotherwas/#detail

(3) More info on Road Block can be found at www.roadblock.org.uk

More info on Group Against Motorway Expansion - http://
nom6e.blogspot.com/

Green Party Press Office
020 7561 0282
http://www.greenparty.org.uk

Published and promoted by Jim Killock for the Green Party, both at
1a Waterlow Road, London N19 5NJ.

The destruction of Saami forests in Finnish Lapland started again

Forwarded from Taiga-Info

Here is some new information on the situation in Finnish Lapland, where the
Finnish Forest and Park Service recently resumed logging in one of the
important reindeer winter grazing areas.

Hannu Hyvönen at independent Finnish media cooperative Signs of life has
compiled this information. You can reach Hannu directly at
hannu@elonmerkki.net

The destruction of Saami forests in Finnish Lapland started again

The long lasting forestry conflict in Finnish Lappland is again in a very
urgent state. The Finnish state owned company, Metsähallitus,
has started large scale logging operations in the home area of indigenous
Saami people on the 14th of May, 2007.

These logging have been critisized for the following reasons:

-there is no solution yet for the land ownership conflict between
indigenous Saami
people and the Finnish state.
-the Finnish state has not proven to be the actual owner of the forests
that it is logging right now.
-the clear-cutting style of logging ancient forests in the extreme north
of Europe cannot be accepted from an ecological and micro-climatical point
of view.
-the loggings destroy the very basis of the culturally important Saami
free grazing reindeer herding tradition
-the loggings waste the ancient forests and its wood and leave less
possibilities for future truly sustainable continuous cover forestry
without destructive clear cutting.


Among others Union of Ecoforestry urged Finnish
parliament to stop the logging immediately and distributed for
parliament groups the documentary movie Last yoik in Saami forests
(http://elonmerkki.net). Until now there has not been any public reaction
by the Finnish government. The silence in Finnish media also continues.

The director of the movie, Hannu Hyvönen, expressed his feelings about the
on-going loggings recently: "It is quite easy for us to update this sad
turn-up in the documentary movie, but we cannot update these forests which
are now again cutted down."

The documentary movie can also be loaded here:
http://video.elonmerkki.net/last_yoik.mp4

More info and links:
http://elonmerkki.net


The short history of this conflict with video clips from the movie
==================================================================

1. Centre of Saamiland

In northern Lapland, over one thousand kilometres north of Finland’s
capital, Helsinki, lies the largest remaining wilderness in Western
Europe. These fells and forests are the homeland of Northern Europe’s only
indigenous people, the Saami. The land rights issue in the Saami homeland
is unsolved.

Look the introduction of the scenerys videoclip
http://video.elonmerkki.net/videoreportage/alkumaisema.mp4


2. Pulping the Saami forests?

Traditional reindeer herding is the one essential basis of
Saami culture.

During the cold Arctic winter months, old-growth forests provide a
lifeline for grazing reindeer. On the old trees grows the arboreal hanging
lichen that is an essential wintertime food for the reindeer.

However, the Finnish state-owned forestry company, Metsähallitus is
destroying important winter grazing forests that are vital to the
reindeer. These old-growth forests are harvested for production in the
Finnish pulp and paper industry.

Look the forestry yoik of the movie Last yoik in Saamiforests:
http://video.elonmerkki.net/videoreportage/metsatalousjoiku.mp4

3. Who owns the land?

One big and still unsolved issue is the ownership of these forests.
Finnnish state cannot prove its ownership and still continues
logging activities. Look the comment of Heikki Hyvärinen, the lawyer of
Saami parliament
http://video.elonmerkki.net/videoreportage/varas.mp4


4. Greenpeace arrive
The long-lasting conflict between Saami reindeer herding interests and
government-owned industrial forestry flared up in the spring of 2005.
Local Saami reindeer herders joined environmental organizations and
started an international campaign to save the reindeer grazing forests
from logging.

Look the interview in the camp:
http://video.elonmerkki.net/videoreportage/gp%20tulee.mp4



5. Cutting break and Antiterror infocenter

Greenpeace contacted the paper buyers. Forest industry giant Stora Enso
decided soon to stop buying wood from the disputed forests.
Metsähallitus had to stop the logging.

The conflict escalated towards violence when forestry workers, supported
by the Finnish government forestry company, set up their “anti-terror”
camp next to the Greenpeace Forest Rescue Station in the disputed forests.

They started attacks in the Greenpeace camp in nights
and days.

http://video.elonmerkki.net/videoreportage/logging%20break%20and%20alqaida.m
p4
http://video.elonmerkki.net/videoreportage/loggersjoik.mp4



In May 2005 cutting moratorium continued and Greenpeace moved avay their
camp to cool down the atmosphere.

6. Stora Enso and Metsähallitus started loggins again in June 2005

But in July Stora Enso announced to their customers to start the
wood buying again and Metsähallitus started their cuttings in the area of
Nellim reindeer herders.

Look the clip of the scenerys from Inari lake:
http://video.elonmerkki.net/videoreportage/inaria.mp4


7. United Nations intervention

In November 2005 reindeer herder Kalevi Paadar with his brothers made a
complaint for UN Human Rights Committee and claimed that cuttings in their
village destroy their possibilities continue the traditional free crazing
with reindeers and so violate their Saami rights for manage own culture.

UN Human Rights Committee asked Finland to stop cuttings for further
researches.

Look the video:
http://video.elonmerkki.net/videoreportage/kalevi-YK.mp4


8. Illegalism in Lapland

The cuttings were stopped but the dialogue did not continue. The prime
minister did not want to join in discussion and the chair of Finnish
Secret Policy accused Greenpeace to be a violent terrorist organization:

http://video.elonmerkki.net/videoreportage/supo%20ja%20terroristit.mp4

>From the Saami side the conflict was not seen caused by Greenpeace but
Finnish companies wasting the forests and wasting the wood of them. Look
the comment by Pekka Aikio, the president of Saami Parliament in Finland:

http://video.elonmerkki.net/videoreportage/aikio.mp4


9. Cuttings continue in June 2007
The present situation is now hot againg. Metsähallitus started logging in
Saami forests in Kessi in May 2007.
Read more and look the photos on the areas:
http://weblog.greenpeace.org/forestrescue/

============================================================================
===================================

LAST YOIK IN SAAMI FORESTS - A DOCUMENTARY FOR UN

The above clips are part of the documentary movie
Last yoik in Saami forests , 54 min

You can look the version updated April 2007 on the address:
http://video.elonmerkki.net/last_yoik.mp4
The documentary movie is also available on DVD.

For commercial presentations, library use and for tv broadcastings, please
contact the director Hannu Hyvönen directly at hannu@elonmerkki.net

Contacts:

http://elonmerkki.net

info@elonmerkki.net
tel +358 40 831 7733

New arrival

Isobel Kathleen Petts finally made her long-awaited appearance on Sunday May 20th at 5.36pm (just in time for Antique's Roadshow). Yay!

Pathfinder

A bit of a quick winge. In 1987 the Norwegian director Nils Gaup made a rather good film called Ofelas (also known as Pathfinder). It was the first film made Saami, the native language of the native groups of northern Sweden/Finland/Norway and Russia, who are often called Lapplanders. It was a powerful retelling of a native myth. It was a simple, stark film relying heavily on the stark nature of the tundra landscape of northern Scandinavia, with relatively little dialogue. Its one of my favourite films.


However, 20 years later, Hollywood leaps in with both feet and remakes it as Pathfinder. Pointlessly resetting it in America, with a Viking boy adopted by Native Americans fighting against maruading Vikings. PLus adding loads of pointless special effects, atrocious art direction and Vikings in BLOODY HORNED HELMETS.

I've got nothing against pointless historical action films- when done well they can be great. But I don't understand the need to remake fantastic films, suck anything good and original out of them and turn them into cack hack and slay features. Maybe I'm just turning into an miserable old sod. Pah!

Archaeology News

Thanks to Liz Dean for flaggin up some archaeology in the news.

First, there have been developments on the contraversial M3 motorway development in Ireland. This new motorway running through County Meath cuts extremely close to the internationally important archaeological landscape of Tara. This has caused massive controversy in Ireland, as many people have argued that the course of the road will destroy much archaeology and have a wider impact on the setting of this important site. Last monday the Irish Transport Minister cut the first sod to commence the motorway construction. The very next day the construction has to be stopped as a major new prehistoric ritual site was discovered.

Some of you may have seen the excellent Time Team recently which excavated a fantastic early Christian site on the Isle of Man. Amongst the discoveries were a fragment of an ogham inscription. The finds from the site have now been handed over to Manx National Heritage.

Many of you that one of my recent grumbles has been the diversion of money from the National Lottery Fund to fund the Olympic Games. However, there has been some positive news in the relationship between the Games and archaeology, as excavation has begun on the site of the games themselves in East London.

Finally, a medieval settlement is being excavated in Kinross (Scotland).

Ideas of Landscape

I’ve just been reading Matthew Johnson’s excellent new book Ideas of Landscape. In this exploration of the origin of the English approach to landscape archaeology Johnson’s places particular focus on the work of W.G. Hoskins, whose book The Making of the English Landscape played such a central part in the development of landscape history in England. A key element of Hoskin’s approach was a strong criticism of industrialisation and the modern world. This comes through most profoundly in a key passage from Making, which is worth quoting in extensively:

“What else has happened in the immemorial landscape of the English countryside? Airfields have flayed it bare…Poor devastated Lincolnshire and Suffolk! And those long gentle lines of the dip-slope of the Cotswolds, those misty uplands of the sheep-grey oolite, how they have lent themselves to the villainous requirements of the new age! Over them drones, day after day, the obscene shape of the atom-bomber, laying a trail like a filthy slug upon Constable’s and Gainsborough’s sky. England of the Nissen-hut, the “pre-fab” and the electric fence, of the high barbed wire around some unmentionable devilment; England of the arterial by-pass, treeless and stinking of diesel oil, murderous with lorries; England of the bombing-range wherever there was once silence…Barbaric England of the scientists, the military men and the politician; let us turn away and contemplate the past before all is lost to the vandals” (Hoskins 1955, 231-2)

This elegiac and undeniably slightly reactionary passage strikes a chord with me. One of the first digs I worked on was the Anglo-Saxon site at West Heslerton. It was the summer of 1989 and as we revealed the remains of an rural settlement dating to the 6th century American A10 Tankbusters flew low overhead warming up for the first Gulf War. In the evenings we’d sometimes walk up to the top of the scarp slope of the Yorkshire Wolds and drink and smoke whilst looking at the landscape laid out in front of us. To our left lay Ryedale with its many early medieval monasteries, directly opposite were the southern slopes of the North York Moors, whilst in the distance to our right was the Mesolithic site of Star Carr. Occasionally, this idyll would be disturbed as warplane streaked across the sky practising night flights.

Many of my subsequent digging experiences have been juxtaposed with signs of warfare and conflict. Jet fighters screamed above us when sieving on the site of the castle of Dolforwyn in Montgomeryshire in 1992; military police stopped to investigate what we were up to when fieldwalking next to the army camp at Catterick in 1994. In 1996 I dug on the Roman fort at Pevensey in the shadow of a pillbox of 1941 vintage. In four years working in the North East I regularly sped passed convoys of army vehicles heading north to Catterick after peacekeeping duties in the Balkans or moving up to Otterburn for exercises.

Hoskin’s approach to the study of landscape was Romantic and his work is paralleled artistically in the Neo-Romantic movement. This movement has its origins in the late 19th century and early 20th century in the work of William Morris, Samuel Palmer and such under-appreciated writers as Richard Jefferies. However, it flowered particularly in the 1930s-50s in the art of John Minton and Eric Ravilious, the films of Powell and Pressburger and Humphrey Jennings and the music of Arnold Bax and Benjamin Britten. This late blooming was undoubtedly stimulated by the impending threat of industrialised warfare and the massive change in rural life that were taking place following WWI; George Orwell wrote about both these threats in his novel Coming Up for Air (1939). Whilst not normally seen as a Neo-Romantic in this little gem Orwell clearly engaged with the concerns of many other artists in the tense years of the late 1930s after Guernica and before Dunkirk.

It was the work of later artists in the Neo-Romantic tradition, including authors such as Alan Garner, Keith Roberts, and artists including Andy Goldsworthy , Clifford Harper and the Brotherhood of Ruralists, whose work I first encountered as teenager (in the case of the work of the Brotherhood of Ruralists on the cover of the Arden Edition Shakespeare’s I used at O level and A level) that stimulated and has continued to fire my own academic and creative engagement with the past and the English landscape, as much as childhood visits to castles and churches.