The short section of hurdle trackway had eroded out of the marine clay on the Swansea foreshore
Posted on 05/25/2009 12:24:34 PM PDT by SunkenCiv
Archaeologists have discovered a road below Swansea's shifting foreshore that is said to be from the early Bronze Age.
Brian Price, a member of the Swansea Metal Detecting Club, reported the discovery opposite the Brynmill area to the Glamorgan-Gwent Archaeological Trust.
The track was woven from narrow branches of oak and alder.
It was covered in a thin layer of brushwood to provide a level walking-surface.
It was found in March when it was uncovered by storms but has since disappeared back under the marine clay.
Scientists sent a sample to the Beta Analytic Radiocarbon Laboratory in Florida, which dated it to around 4,000 years ago.
"During the early Bronze Age the climate was drier and warmer than today and the sea level was significantly lower," the BBC quoted Andrew Sherman, assistant project officer, as saying.
"The trackway was therefore probably built through a wet, marshy environment.
"Because it has been eroded by the tide it is impossible to tell whether the entire trackway was composed of hurdles, or whether occasional hurdles were laid to cross particularly wet patches of ground," he added.
The trust said there was very little evidence of Early Bronze Age settlements in the area with lots of funeral and ritual sites such as barrows, cairns and standing stones, but no habitation structures.
"The explanation for this may simply lie in the nature of a nomadic existence, which militates against the construction of substantial dwellings," Sherman said.
(Excerpt) Read more at newspostonline.com ...
The short section of hurdle trackway had eroded out of the marine clay on the Swansea foreshore
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Now you’re tempting me with mud? Ooooooooooooh!
;o]
The climate was WARMER than today? Andrew Sherman, do you blaspheme against Al Gore and the Church of Global Warming?
Hmmmmm .... how do they know that it was not an attempt at a raft of some sort?
Or, it may be that the substantial dwellings are under the current water line?
which militates against the construction of substantial dwellings,...
Yes, it does seem odd to build roads but not houses.
Heresy!
According to the Algore Cult's Doctrine of Global Warming, if the climate is warmer, the sea levels must be higher. Greenland's glaciers melting, all that fol-de-rol.
How can it be? How CAN it be? The sea level went the wrong way.
The land was higher in that place; decline in elevation was (last I knew) continuing in the Netherlands. The climate was warmer in medieval times than it is now, leading to agriculture at higher latitudes and altitudes than is possible today — but the sealevel is known to have been higher relative to some ports in eastern England, and in some other places here and there, probably meaning that there was less ice in the ‘caps and more water in the oceans.
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