This month’s cover story takes us to Drumelzier in the Scottish Borders, and more specifically to a site with a wonderfully romantic name: Merlin’s Grave. A community project has been exploring the origins of this legendary link – uncovering illuminating evidence of the area’s early medieval and Iron Age past along the way. We remain in Scotland for a special ‘News Focus’ about Stonehenge. Yes, you read that right – recently published scientific research suggests that the Altar Stone was originally quarried in the Orcadian Basin, over 450 miles from Salisbury Plain. What does this mean for our understanding of social organisation in Neolithic Britain, and of Stonehenge itself?
From long journeys to long spans of time, we then travel to New Ross in Ireland, where a major bypass project has uncovered archaeological evidence reflecting 9,000 years of human history, including the first early Neolithic house to be found in Co. Wexford.
A rather more recent house forms the focus of our next article, which describes the trials and triumphs of restoration work at Northwold Manor in Norfolk.
From restoration to reconstruction, we then travel to Harborough Museum in Leicestershire, where an innovative project centred on the Hallaton Helmet has created contrasting reconstructions of this ornate Roman artefact, using traditional and cutting-edge techniques.
Finally, we visit another experimental reconstruction, albeit on a rather larger scale, in York’s Museum Gardens, where archaeologists have rebuilt ‘Britain’s oldest house’ based on Mesolithic evidence from Star Carr.