Old stuff: Bracklesham, Biber, Boxgrove
Saturday, September 8th, 2007 09:36 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
tamaranth1. This afternoon I went to Bracklesham Bay, which is not only a glorious (and largely sand-free) beach for swimming, but has more fossils than you can shake a stick at. I picked up quite a few 'twixt salt water and shingle, mostly Turritella inbricateria (little spiral things), with a few Venericor Planicosta (cockles, more or less). Eocene, so ~50 million years old. 
2. Found my new Biber CD, Vespro Della Beata Virgine (1674) which I (vaguely) recalled unwrapping but could not locate anywhere. Naturally, it waswhere I left it in the logical place for new CDs, the car. It's gorgeous, especially the opening Dixit Dominus which is rather ... forceful, with a violin part that reminds me of Vivaldi's Winter and glorious bass/soprano harmonies.
3. Post-beach, was in need of carbs and caffeine, so I bought myself a picnic and headed for Boxgrove, setting for a non-fiction book that I found gripping -- Fairweather Eden, an account of the excavation and archaeology of one of the oldest prehistoric sites in Britain. (Includes a tutorial on flint-knapping.) People were working flints and butchering food here half a million years ago, during one of the warmer interglacials. Not long in terms of Turritella inbricateria but not to be sneezed at.
Sadly, I have no idea where the dig actually was, and as it was rescue archaeology the land has probably reverted to aggregate extraction. Instead, I went to have a look at some modern stuff: Boxgrove Priory, where one can wander around the ruins of the 13th-century guesthouse whilst the soberly-clad choir hurry past to some event in the main church.
2. Found my new Biber CD, Vespro Della Beata Virgine (1674) which I (vaguely) recalled unwrapping but could not locate anywhere. Naturally, it was
3. Post-beach, was in need of carbs and caffeine, so I bought myself a picnic and headed for Boxgrove, setting for a non-fiction book that I found gripping -- Fairweather Eden, an account of the excavation and archaeology of one of the oldest prehistoric sites in Britain. (Includes a tutorial on flint-knapping.) People were working flints and butchering food here half a million years ago, during one of the warmer interglacials. Not long in terms of Turritella inbricateria but not to be sneezed at.
Sadly, I have no idea where the dig actually was, and as it was rescue archaeology the land has probably reverted to aggregate extraction. Instead, I went to have a look at some modern stuff: Boxgrove Priory, where one can wander around the ruins of the 13th-century guesthouse whilst the soberly-clad choir hurry past to some event in the main church.
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Date: Sunday, September 9th, 2007 12:06 pm (UTC)Congratulations.
I miss beach-combing.
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Date: Thursday, September 13th, 2007 10:14 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: Friday, September 14th, 2007 04:56 pm (UTC)I read that Boxgrove book too, also his book on Flag Fen (in a bid to get myself excited about the Cambridgeshire landscape). Wish I could flint knap. I think there are weekend camps to learn that kind of thing. Will try to take Patrick one year - he'd make a great hunter-gatherer. He slew a cardboard reindeer at the Parc de la Prehistoire in the Arriege, even though all the grownups failed miserably and we had to lie about his age to get them to let him use a spear-thrower.
Have bookmarked that fossil site for future outings. Don't expect to do as well as THAT though. Wow!