*The flyer is in PDF format—you will need Adobe Acrobat Reader installed on your computer—most computers have it installed already. You can download it for free from www.adobe.com.

Conferences and Events Star Carr Archaeology Project Wetland Project | Excavation Open Day | Mesolithic Festival All events are free but booking is required. Thu 6 September | Evening Talk | 7.00pm-8.30pm Sat 8 September | Walk & Children's Activities | 9.30am-10.30am : 12.00pm-1pm | Archaeological Dig 10.30am-11.15am : 1pm-1.45pm Tim Burkinshaw of the Cayton and Flixton Carrs Wetland Project will be talking at Woodend, The Crescent, Scarborough on Thu 6 September about how farmers are bringing wetland wildlife back to the Carrs and about the hidden Stone Age landscape. Find out more |  Heritage Open Days Book tickets | 01723 374735   Sun 16 September | Excavation Open Day | Check online for info Further information will be posted on the website www.starcarr.com nearer the time.   Sun 23 September | Mesolithic Festival | Check online for info Lectures, handling of finds, storytelling by Ben Haggerty, fun activities for kids and re-enactors making Mesolithic artefacts.  Further information will be posted on the website www.starcarr.com nearer the time.   I will do my best to send newsflash messages when more details are available. If you really love the Mesolithic, visit Mesolithic Miscellany, a free Internet journal, news and discussion forum. -Ed.   Heritage Open Days Free events will be taking place across England's regions for this year's Heritage Open Days, 6th to 9th September All events are free but booking is required. There's a good selection of places to visit within reach of Teesside, subject to places being available. Listings and Directory | County Durham | North Yorkshire   Northallerton Local History Conference The North Riding of Yorkshire in an Age of Transition 1750-1820 | The social and economic development of a rural county Sat 29 September | Day Conference | 9.00pm-5.00pm The British Association for Local History in conjunction with Northallerton and District Local History Society are running a conference on Saturday 29 September in Northallerton, followed on Sunday 30 Sep by a country house visit. The conference theme has been carefully chosen to cover the period before the birth of the railways and the development of heavy industry to reflect the transition from a rural economy to large scale industrialization in a county renowned in the modern age for its scenic beauty. The eminent Economic Historian Arnold Toynbee (1852-1883) described the second half of the 18th Century as the "age of transition to the modern industrial system and to improved methods of agriculture".  The conference will address some of the issues involved in this transition in what essentially remains a rural county to this day. Booking is required | £12.50 which includes refreshment breaks with a lunchtime finger buffet available at £5.50 | See booking form for options, instructions and venue details. More Info | http://www.northyorkshistory.co.uk/ Tyne-Forth Prehistory Forum Archaeology Across the Border | prehistoric communities in the Tyne-Forth region and beyond Sat 29 September | Free Day Conference | 10.00am-5.00pm | Royal Society of Edinburgh In the last two years the Tyne-Forth Prehistory Forum has sought to stimulate new discussion and research into the prehistoric archaeology of Northeast England and Southeast Scotland.   A great barrow-load of expert speakers too! -Ed. At this final AHRC-funded event we will discuss papers that (re)consider the narratives that archaeologists tell about prehistoric communities living between the Forth and the Tyne. What can we say about their landscapes, dwellings, monuments, burial practices, and the things of their everyday lives? How were they interconnected with one another, and with communities elsewhere? What were the major events, changes, and trends in the prehistory of the region? Booking required | Email r.j.crellin@ncl.ac.uk | Download Flyer | Website   See the Bookshelf section below for an excellent newly published volume on the Archaeology & Environment in the Twill-Tweed area of Northumberland by Passmore & Waddington. -Ed.

To the north of Ripon are some remarkable prehistoric monuments. No less than six giant henges, along with many other Neolithic and Bronze Age sites, can be found here, suggesting this was a special landscape between 4000-1500 BC. The most famous of these monuments is the alignment of three henges at Thornborough.

It is a truly spectacular icon of Neolithic Britain—and its story offers an enthralling insight into prehistoric life. Despite generations of aggregate extraction and risk to these incredible monuments, above and below ground, this landscape and heritage remains compelling and of international importance.

The Thornborough Heritage Trust was formed in January 2012 and is committed to ensuring these monuments, and the prehistoric and historic landscapes of which they are part, have a bright future. The Trust is geared around promoting their conservation, preservation and protection—and in encouraging everyone to appreciate and enjoy these remarkable sites through membership, donation and regular community activities—like the one enjoyed by TAS Members this summer that included a lecture by prehistoric expert and Trustee Dr. Jan Harding (Newcastle University), guided walks and finds handling.

 

A vulnerable landscape

The Trust and community are greatly concerned about the condition of Thornborough's central henge. Animal disturbance to its earthwork has been a problem in recent years, and the visitors this summer saw it for themselves. The Trust, its members and the Friends of Thornborough act as advocates for remedial action with organisations such as English Heritage, and to build greater awareness in the region and nationally. As a charitable venture the Trust can only be effective with donations—big or small—to fund its educational events, and to help conserve and promote Thornborough's precious archaeology.

How you can help

• Contact the Trust if you want to register as a Member. Please note that while they maintain membership details on a computer they will never provide these details to anyone else. It is free to join, but as a charitable trust they are dependent on donations
• Make a donation securely via PayPal

Archaeology on the Internet

And the DigVentures "dog cam" too!

The vast selection of information, news and people-networking available on the Internet can seem daunting and it isn't always easy to know what's best, what other people rely on, who does what where. The heritage and archaeological world is no exception—the wonder of the Web is both miracle in terms of what we all have access to, and yet frustrating by its sheer vastness. In this 5 Minute overview are some of the Editor's favourite places, and ones that let you discover other useful locations, tools, and people.

Then there are the strange names, some of which give a hint as to what they're for, some rather bizarre—do you know your Ning from your Wiki, Bebo from MySpace, Facebook from Linkedin, Blogger from Youtube from Flickr? Many of this strange things, largely brand type names, have different types of users, age groups and social profiles. Not to worry, many of the strange names make sense when their origin is revealed.

To make a long story very short, these are most of the Internet resource that serve archaeology:

Websites

• Websites | virtually every organization in the world now has a website. They're essentially "static" places that provide information to read, download as files, and about how to do things and who to contact. Websites are a "shop window" but they're not "interactive". You'll rarely see "dialogue" or exchanges between people. Some individuals have their own websites and there are increasingly easy-to-use (and generally free) ways to create and manage your own website. Generally, the only chargeable elements are if you want your own "domain" name like "tesco.com" and if you want a Web design company to host and manage your website. A URL (Universal Resource Locator) just means a web link that will begin http:// or https:// (secure). When a website or link is broken, you see "404 Not Found" in your web browser. Somebody probably messed up, their computers failed or the page was taken offline (or your Internet connection isn't working).
• Wikis | wiki actually means "super fast" in the Hawaiian language! These are websites you can create using your web browser. What makes them unique is that they are websites that anyone can contribute to or change. So, for instance, Wikipedia is a vast online encyclopaedia with content created by everyone and anyone, but they are generally well "policed", very informative and reliable.
• Blogs | and blogging start to make information more interactive still. "Blog" is short for "Web log" and you can think of it as cross between a website, a diary or journal, your own newspaper or noticeboard. The difference is that you make "posts"—like entries in a diary or postcards from a holiday—that can be read in chronological order with pictures, even video, and links to information. What's more, people can leave comments, subscribe to your blog to get posts by email or share a post in social media (see below). They're also very easy to create and the "how to" videos and instructions are very good. The most popular and free blog tool is Wordpress (look out for Francis Pryor's below—the new chief archaeologist on Time Team).
• Twitter | and isn't it in the news an aweful lot these days! Think of Twitter as a "mini" blog or "microblog". The key thing about Twitter and Tweeting is that the content is limited to 140 characters—probably why so many famous people get into trouble. Again, it's free, immediate and interactive. Most users tweet from their mobile phones and portable computers. People that do it in a court of law get into big trouble. Not everybody tweets, including the Editor!

• Facebook | connects mostly young professionals and students as well as an increasing cross section of the community. It lets people share instant messages either privately or with bigger groups—and their friends too. For example, Team GB had an Olympics Facebook page that was shared far and wide with their pictures and messages. You can "like" group sites or something somebody shared, like a joke, a news story or just what somebody's been up to. It's easy to upload photographs and share photo albums—which people can "like" and share with their friends. Some people use Flickr to share their photographs—same kind of thing.
• Linkedin | is a social networking site developed specifically for business professionals who want to build relationships, meet new contacts and market themselves. It's free, you register for an account and set up a personal profile—a bit like a CV online although you can control how much people see. If you do a Google search on the editor's name "Spencer Carter" you should see a Linkedin profile, amongst other bits and pieces. (I'm not the boat builders by the way -Ed.)
• MySpace | is a social networking site popular with people who like sharing music, pictures and videos. Bebo tends to cater for teenagers. Ning is an online tool that lets people create a social networking site. Google+ is Google's competition with Facebook, but essentially the same principle. YouTube is probably the most popular site for sharing videos.

DigVentures | Your chance to work with some of the best field archaeologists in the land on some of the best archaeological sites in the world. Join them and take part in a groundbreaking, game-changing archaeological experiment as a key member of the team. Whether you’re digging on site with them or checking in from the other side of the world, with DigVentures you can share the excitement of discovery as it happens, knowing that without your support, it wouldn’t have happened. | And here's the "dog cam" video on YouTube!

Eventful, influential and absorbing, the early history of Northumberland is a fascinating story that has rarely been brought together under one cover. In this authoritative historical account, the authors bring to bear a huge quantity of old and new data and craft it into an in-depth synthesis. The authors deliver this history in chronological order from a perspective that places human activity and environment at its core. The narrative extends from the Palaeolithic through to, and including, the Anglo-Saxon period. This enormous sweep of history is supported by a robust radiocarbon chronology, with all available dates for the region brought together and calibrated against the most recent calibration curves for the first time. The geographic focus of the volume is North Northumberland but the narrative frequently extends to cover the whole county and occasionally further afield into neighbouring areas so as to deal with key topics at an appropriate geographic scale and to take account of important information from nearby areas. This second volume in the Till-Tweed monograph series follows on from the first volume, Managing Archaeological Landscapes in Northumberland, which provided a considerable quantity of new field data, in addition to presenting a landscape management methodology based around the "landform element" approach.

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