The First Funeral Wreath, c. 60,000 B.C.? September 29, 2014
Author: Beach Combing | in : Prehistoric
Archaeology is an extremely vague art and the greatest danger its practitioners face is the temptation of joining chance findings together to create imaginary narratives. Take the first flower funeral in history. In 1960 Ralph Solecki, a US archaeologist, excavated a Neanderthal grave in Iraq in the famous Shanidar Cave: one of several Neanderthal graves […]
The Problem of Pygmy Fairies March 5, 2011
Author: Beach Combing | in : Ancient, Medieval, Modern, Prehistoric
Beachcombing has been having a bit of a fairy phase recently, played out in his evening readings after he’s put little Miss B to bed. And he has particularly been interested at the different explanations that our ancestors – distant and recent – offered to explain the fact that ‘little folk’ lived in the cairn […]
