Following widespread media coverage of NASA's MESSENGER craft's recent encounter with Mercury, comes this report from the Applied Physics Lab at John Hopkins University, who inform us that in common with other planets in the solar system, Mercury isn't quite the place it was once thought to be. This from the linked article...
After a journey of more than 2.2 billion miles and three and a half years, NASA’s MESSENGER spacecraft made its first flyby of Mercury just after 2 PM Eastern Standard Time on January 14, 2008. All seven scientific instruments worked flawlessly, producing a stream of surprises that is amazing and delighting the science team. The 1,213 images conclusively show that the planet is a lot less like the Moon than many previously thought, with features unique to this innermost world. The puzzling magnetosphere appears to be very different from what Mariner 10 discovered and first sampled almost 34 years ago.
Sending any man-made object from Earth on a journey of 2.2 billion miles - and counting - across space, to a tiny planet, and then retrieving over 1200 images a week or so later, is something of an achievement in itself, but of more importance of course is the vast amount of new data that has been acquired in the process. Moreover, because of technological advances in the 30 years since Mariner 10 visited the innermost planet of our solar system, researchers are saying that it's almost like looking at an entirely different planet to the one imaged three decades ago, according to Professor Robert Strom, the only individual to have been involved with the Mariner and MESSENGER missions. Here's some detail of what has been observed this time round...
“MESSENGER has shown that Mercury is even more different from the Moon than we’d thought,” said Science Team Co-Investigator James Head, professor at Brown University and chair of the mission’s Geology Discipline Group. The tiny spacecraft discovered a unique feature that the scientists dubbed, “The Spider.”
This type of formation has never been seen on Mercury before, and nothing like it has been observed on the Moon. It is in the middle of the Caloris basin and consists of over a hundred narrow, flat-floored troughs (called graben) radiating from a complex central region. “The Spider” has a crater near its center, but whether that crater is related to the original formation or came later is not clear at this time.
Unlike the Moon, Mercury also has huge cliffs or scarps, structures snaking up to hundreds of miles across the planet’s face, tracing patterns of fault activity from early in Mercury’s—and the solar system’s—history. The high density and small size of Mercury combine to provide a surface gravity about 38% that of Earth and almost exactly the same as that of Mars, which is some 40% larger than Mercury in diameter (2.7 times Mercury’s volume).
Because gravity is stronger on Mercury than on the Moon, impact craters appear very different from lunar craters; material ejected during impact on Mercury falls closer to the rim and many more secondary crater chains are present.
I'd always assumed Mercury to rather dull and uninteresting, but it seems clear from the observations that this planet, in common with the majority of the other planets, moons, comets and asteroids studied in recent years, this tiny world also has its share of strange tales in its history, the oddest of which concerns its magnetic field, (flyby movie) which according to current theory, either shouldn't even exist on Mercury, or possibly should also exist on Venus and Mars...
“MESSENGER found that Mercury’s intrinsic magnetic field is almost identical to what it was 30 years ago. After correcting for the contribution from the solar wind interaction, the mean dipole has the same intensity to within a few percent and has the same slight tilt. The search is now on for structure in the internal field to identify its source,” said Brian Anderson, the Magnetometer (MAG) instrument scientist.
Magnetic fields like Earth’s, and their resultant magnetospheres, are generated by electrical dynamos operating deep in the planet in a liquid metallic outer core. Of the four terrestrial planets, only Mercury and Earth—the smallest and largest—exhibit such a structure. The magnetic field stands off the solar wind from the Sun, in effect producing a protective bubble around Earth that, with the Earth’s thick atmosphere, shields the surface of our planet from sporadic energetic particles from the Sun and the more constant and more energetic cosmic rays from farther out in the galaxy.
Earth’s magnetic field does not stay the same; it moves around and the poles periodically flip, over geologic ages, changing the exposure of the surface to these dangerous particles. Similar variations are expected for Mercury’s field, but the nature of its field-producing dynamo and the times between the corresponding changes are unknown at this time.
The next two flybys and the yearlong orbital phase will shed more light on this surprise. Mercury’s global magnetic field has been a particular puzzle to scientists. The planet’s small size should have resulted in the cooling and solidification of a liquid core long ago, quenching any dynamo activity. How this small world continues to maintain a magnetic field has been a major conundrum to planetary scientists. Solving this puzzle will help understand the history of Earth’s magnetic field and why there are no modern global magnetic fields at Venus and Mars.
And thus we see that the evolution of planets in our solar system might be just as complex as for example, the evolution of life on Earth - what seemed a few decades ago to be a relatively simple model, is now fraught with anomalies and exceptions to rules that once appeared to be immutable - and although there are people who would prefer to have a somewhat simplistic set of answers to these mysteries, there are others, myself included, who find the new questions arising from new discoveries to be far more fascinating - the more mysterious, the better.
And as pointed out in this NASA report, 'Surprises From Mercury', there are still two more flybys to come, as well as an entire orbital element to the latter stages of the mission, although whether more answers will be forthcoming, seems less likely than yet more questions emanating from the smallest of our four rocky planets.
Greg Laden is hosting the current and 33rd edition of the anthropology blog carnival, Four Stone Hearth, and here's his introduction...
Welcome to the Four Stone Hearth Blog Carnival #33, 'specializing' in the four fields of anthropology. The previous edition of 4SH can be found at Testimony of the Spade, and the next edition will be hosted by Our Cultural World. The main page for Four Stone Hearth has additional information on the carnival, and you can submit entries via Blog Carnival.
The usual rule with blog carnivals is "one post per blog." This rule is ignored because in several instances, a post was self-submitted (which is the usual way posts are submitted to carnivals) from a particular blog, and a different post was nominated for that same blog. It would be wrong to ignore either kind of submission, so I chose to ignore the one post per blog rule.
The order of listings here is in the order that they appear on my computer screen given the technology I'm using to keep track, with only one very logical exception. The decision to place each post in a particular subfield category is arbitrary and capricious.
If you submitted a post and do not see it, this is because I screwed up. I receive several hundred emails a day, so this is possible (actually, likely). Just send me an email with your link and I will put it in the carnival right away. Similarly, if you find errors or other problems, just let me know. Don't yell at me, just tell me what to fix.
If you have a post on this carnival, please link to the carnival from your site.
This is an exceptionally outstanding set of posts for this or any carnival. I'm sure you will enjoy visiting and reading each and every one of these submissions.
Frank Gehry wanted to be a scientist when he grew up. But after blowing up a part of his house, at age 14, he decided against it. He's gone on to create some mindblowing buildings, including the Guggenheim at Bilbao and LA's Walt Disney Concert Hall. This wildly entertaining conversation with Richard Saul Wurman (then host of TED) touches on many topics, including the power of failure, the importance of collaboration, and the need for architects to bring personal expression to the table.
This TED talk differs somewhat from the previous ones posted here, in that it involves a discussion rather than the normal individual address from stage to audience, and in this instance features renowned architect Frank Gehry, musing on what it means to be an architect, and the importance of imparting something beyond the client's brief when designing and constructing unusual projects.
Ten years after its completion, the Guggenheim exerts a heady influence over its immediate surroundings, as well as further afield, where other structures have sprung up in the wake of its construction, all of which to some extent are attempting to over-write a markedly different past which although very recent, is already consigned to the realms of urban archaeology, and which exists now only in contemporary images, such as the one below...
This image appeared in October 1992, and although the dockyards were still operative back then, it had become clear that their future was limited, as indeed was the case for the other industrial enterprises that existed across metropolitan Bilbao back then. The area of land that has been affected by the construction of the Guggneheim is on the right side of the image, between the diagonally oriented bridge at top, to Puente de Deusto at bottom. Today, barely a single trace of those dockyards can be discerned, with the only clues manifesting themselves in further up-river at the Maritime Museum, as well as the occasional visual reference to a decorative dock-side crane, features of the Santiago Calatrava bridge, and of course the boat-based shapes inherent in the design of the Guggenheim itself.
Pre-Guggenheim, Bilbao was often regarded by outsiders as a rain-swept town that seemed permanently dull, grimy and grey, with little of aesthetic appeal, and even less to attract other than the most inquisitive of tourists. But it was these industries and docks that had until then put Bilbao on the map, and many millions of pesetas into its coffers, as businesses grew rich in stark contrast to much of Spain under the regime of Franco.
But in common with other western economies, it became apparent by the 1970s and 1980s that the future of the world's industrial industrial output would be relocated to the Far East, where costs were greatly lower - in Britain, two of the main areas to be affected were ship-building and coal mining, and both those industries suffered a huge loss in employment for the indigenous workforce, and similar job losses were felt in other western economies, with industrial Bilbao being no exception.
Faced with the heart of the town being ripped out, the planners of Bilbao were confronted with the dilemma of how to re-use the spacious area of land that would no longer have any obvious identity, but that nevertheless have to be filled with something to replace what had previously defined the city as a whole. They could, for example, have gone down the easy route of clearing the dockyards and replacing them with run-of-the-mill office blocks and housing projects, much in the way that London's Docklands have since been rebuilt, with Canary Wharf being the most recognisable expression of that idea.
But somewhere along the way, someone came up with a different set of ideas, one that would leave behind the past, skip the difficult question of defining the present, and leap straight into the future, with a project that would not only re-vitalise the immediate area around today's Guggenheim, but make its presence felt across a wider context across Bilbao.
Here's a description of industrial Bilbao going back to the 1940s, (from here)... In her book Txoriburu ("Linnet Head") the Bilbao writer and illustrator Asun Balzola describes her city as it was in the 1940s. "These were years of iron and we lived at Bilbao, also a city of iron, always wet, gleaming and black because it was always raining. . . . The green shadows of umbrellas stained the streets and houses blackened by smoke from the factories. . . . Bilbao was a replica of Coke-town, the imaginary industrial town described by Dickens in Hard Times." Today Balzola smiles as she describes her city's new image. "The district where I spent my childhood has changed beyond belief. Then it was a noisy industrial area, today it's a very peaceful place. Bilbao was a grey city like . . . well . . . Manchester perhaps.
Now it's white, luminous." What surprises her most is that "people have adopted the Guggenheim Museum, they don't see it as the property of gentlemen in New York but as something of their own. The most encouraging thing is that young people are the chief admirers." And she adds: "When you're inside the building, the light, and the spirals of the architecture almost make you forget its contents. You would almost be willing to visit it if it was empty. The Guggenheim has made Bilbao a much more attractive city. You can see it from many parts of town. You walk along a street and suddenly there is this great titanium-clad mountain in front of you. It plays tricks on you."
However, it would appear that despite this regeneration, not everyone regards Bilbao much differently from its 1940s equivalent; here's author J. G. Ballard describing his impressions of a visit made during October 2007, in this article from The Guardian...
The Guggenheim Museum in Bilbao is the world's largest toy. Set among the drab streets of this rather depressing Spanish port, it throws up a fountain of light and good cheer that promises all the fun of a travelling circus - erecting its tent beside a disused railway yard in a run-down industrial city. In its own, self-defining way it is a masterpiece, and the fact that it is an art gallery is almost wholly irrelevant.
The one thing that someone visiting the Bilbao Guggenheim can forget about is any thought of actually entering the building. Stay outside it, at a distance of about one hundred yards, and you will absorb all its audacity, magic, good humour and genius. And its infantilising charm. This is Disneyland for the media studies PhD...
...The museum is built on sloping ground that runs down to the river Nervión, a vile-looking creek that must be the most gloomy stretch of water after the Styx. Gehry's heart will have sunk when he first saw the site beside this grim stream and the nearby railway yard. Rarely among museums, the Bilbao Guggenheim is entered by a descending flight of steps, and by the time they have circled the 19 galleries, most visitors - who, when I was there, had to queue for an hour - are too exhausted to do anything but flake out in the pleasant cafe beside the entrance. Surrounded by glass panels and comfortable limestone walls, they are missing the best view of the museum, which is from the far side of the river, a Styx with a matchless prospect and the promise of a return trip.
For some unknown reason I've never felt the slightest inclination to venture inside the Guggenheim itself - whenever there's something interesting going on there, long queues which seem to last for days are in evidence, so my impression of its interior and contents will have to wait until a later date, possibly into eternity.
It's curious that Ballard should think of the River Nervión as being Stygian, and in its defence, I've never heard a bad word about the Nervión from anyone here, whilst the Nervión itself could justifiably claim to be an estuarine entity merely going about its business of flowing through Bilbao.
There is no Charon to ferry one across the river, as it is amply supplied by 13 bridges, including several that have been constructed as part of the wider renewal scheme under way in Bilbao, and furthermore, one doesn't need to have euros on one's tongue to pay for the crossing. But traversing these bridges to or from Deusto is very much like crossing from one world to another, such is the huge difference between the two parts of the city.
It's undoubtedly a lot cleaner than its dockyard days of yore, and although it might not necessarily have a majestic feel, it has nevertheless had its moments of fame, one of which was in April 1937, when British merchant ships, the first of which was Seven Seas Spray, laden with food, ran the insurgent blockade outside Bilbao, and steamed up the 'vile creek' which was at that stage running through a besieged Republican stronghold in the ongoing Spanish Civil War.
However, the feeling of relief in Bilbao was short-lived, as a few days later, Gernika was bombed into oblivion, marking one of the most infamous days of the entire civil war, in which the town was all but razed to the ground in an air-raid, whilst those fleeing the carnage were machine-gunned by the mainly German planes that had been called up by the Fascist leadership. The captain of Seven Seas Spray and his daughter, who the week before had been fêted by the Basques, witnessed first-hand the fate of Gernika, which turned out to be but a prelude to the towns cities that would also be smashed by bombing raids carried out by the Axis and Allied powers during the coming World War II.
(For a further consideration of how bombing air-raids have been killing civilians and destroying infrastructure ever since, this essay, 'Bombs away Over Iraq - Normalizing Air War from Guernica to Arab Jabour', at TomDispatch.com makes for sobering reading - here's a brief excerpt that's pertinent to this piece, but the entire linked essay is definitely worth a read)
"...But the major bombing story of these last days -- those 100,000 pounds of explosives that U.S. planes dropped in a small area south of Baghdad -- simply dangled unexplained off the far end of the Los Angeles Times piece; while, in the New York Times, it was buried inside a single sentence.
Neither paper has (as far as I know) returned to the subject, though this is undoubtedly the most extensive use of air power in Iraq since the Bush administration's invasion of 2003 and probably represents a genuine shifting of American military strategy in that country. Despite, a few humdrum wire service pieces, no place else in the mainstream has bothered to cover the story adequately either.
For those who know something about the history of air power, which, since World War II, has been lodged at the heart of the American Way of War, that 100,000 figure might have rung a small bell.
On April 27, 1937, in the midst of the Spanish Civil War (a prelude to World War II), the planes of the German Condor Legion attacked the ancient Basque town of Guernica. They came in waves, first carpet bombing, then dropping thermite incendiaries. It was a market day and there may have been as many as 7,000-10,000 people, including refugees, in the town which was largely destroyed in the ensuing fire storm. More than 1,600 people may have died there (though some estimates are lower). The Germans reputedly dropped about 50 tons or 100,000 pounds of explosives on the town. In the seven decades between those two 100,000 figures lies a sad history of our age."
I get the impression from the Gernika air-raid that it was at least in part an act of revenge for the blockade of Bilbao having been broken a few days earlier - but in any event, if that particular air-raid hadn't taken place, it was only a matter of time before something similar was perpetrated elsewhere; more from the same essay...
"Many attacks since then, including the ones we have grown used to seeing in Iraq and the Middle East in recent years, have been on such a scale that Guernica's fate seems almost insignificant by comparison. But it's almost impossible to overestimate the outrage it caused in 1937… Accounts of the bombing were widely printed in the American press, and provoked a great deal of anger and indignation in most quarters…"
Those last two tag-on paragraphs in the Parker and Rasheed Los Angeles Times piece tell us much about the intervening 71 years, which included the German bombing of Rotterdam and the blitz of London as well as other English cities;...
...the Japanese bombings of Shanghai and other Chinese cities; the Allied fire-bombing of German and Japanese cities; the U.S. atomic destruction of Hiroshima and Nagasaki; the Cold War era of mutually assured destruction (MAD) in which two superpowers threatened to use the ultimate in airborne explosives to incinerate the planet; the massive, years-long U.S. bombing campaigns against North Korea and later North and South Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia; the American air power "victories" of Gulf War I and Afghanistan (2001);...
...and the Bush administration's shock-and-awe, air-and-cruise-missile assault on Baghdad in March 2003, which, though meant to "decapitate" the regime of Saddam Hussein, killed not a single Iraqi governmental or Baath Party figure, only Iraqi civilians. In those seven decades, the death toll and damage caused by war -- on the ground and from the air -- has increasingly been delivered to civilian populations, while the United States has come to rely on its Air Force to impose its will in war."
And although Gernika and the rest of mainland Spain have never since been subjected to the same carnage of those first aerial bombing raids, the Basque Country in particular, but not solely, has witnessed the effects of multiple bombings, carried out on behalf of ETA activists, intent on coercing the Spanish government into granting the Basques of Euskadi total autonomy from Madrid. However, the history of the current impasse is too long and complicated to detail here, and this article from 1998 explains some of the tortured history of this unhappy era - and although hostilities have to some extent eased in recent years, killings still occur, and for the time being, it's difficult to see any way in which the conflict can be resolved to the satisfaction of all involved.
The most recently notable event in the river's history was in August 1983, when the Nervión burst its banks, during a devastating flood which afflicted Bilbao, in which many people died, amongst the extensive damage that followed in its wake.
Although I wouldn't agree with the Stygian analogy, per se, the fact remains that the River Nervión has gone into long-term hibernation, a victim of economic warfare, or competition, as it's otherwise known, and these days there is almost no river traffic to bring it to life, so in that sense, it seems the living have left the river, leaving it bereft of activity, and not quite at peace with its changing surroundings..
The Gehry construction now stands amidst extensive reconstruction projects, both in the immediate vicinity and beyond, and one certainly gets the sense of a town gearing itself up for a very different, if somewhat garish, future - although curiously, as the Guggenheim arrived, many people began moving out from central Bilbao, to coastal neighbourhoods like Las Arenas, as the cost of living in town rose quite steeply - today, Bilbao is estimated to be the fourth most expensive city in Spain, although it doesn't come close to being the licensed rip-off that constitutes present-day London and many other major European cities.
About half a mile downstream from the Guggenheim is the Museo Marítimo Ría de Bilbao, which in the context of central Bilbao, is about the only place you'll see anything of the former craft that once plied their way along the river, although of course, there isn't really room for any of the larger freighters that used to moor up outside the dockyards.
At the moment, the place looks a little desolate - I took a brief wander down there on another afternoon, to find it all but deserted, save for a few hardy souls set adrift in the the coffee shop, itself echoing shades of the titanium-clad behemoth that has now come to symbolise the river's past history. The indoor element of the Museo is pretty good, if a little sparse,(** although looking round again a few days later, I realised I'd missed a part of it, and I'll add a more detailed description in due course) and again imparts that feel-Gugg effect of carefully aligned and cost-effective elegance.
But it won't be easy reinvigorating the river - all the traffic of the lost industrial age was chugging away on behalf of profitable businesses, and now that they're gone, there is ostensibly no valid replacement for that river traffic, save perhaps for tourist-laden leisure craft in search of something other than the Guggenheim with which to wow the punters.
The river could definitely do with looking a lot more visually appealing, and given the choice, I'd probably build some artificial islands in the river, in the hope that some interesting wild-life would be pleased set up home thereupon - or failing that, hide the concrete river banks behind a screen of aquatic plants with names I'm currently unfamiliar with; and I'm not sure whether those artificial islands should be themed into more or less abstract shapes of ships, boats and barges, but it might be an idea, I suppose.
So, although it might be deemed desirable to spruce up the river a little, softening its banked edges with flora and associated fauna, it might be just as well to leave it as it is. Unlike a disused railway which can become a walkway, a river isn't something easily transformed into something else, and in this case the desolate feel reflects the fact at least one stage of its life is now over, and that it can maybe revert to being the river it once was before people began to settle the area in numbers, over 700 years ago.
Meandering back to the Guggenheim, more of J. G. Ballard's impression of the museum, and whether it even qualifies as architecture...
The Bilbao Guggenheim is a treaty port negotiated with the burghers of this rather down-at-heel city, part bullion vault and part glimmering mirage to cow and dazzle the natives.......Gazing across the river at this metallisation of a dream, one has to take one's hat off to Gehry and the civic leaders of Bilbao. I'm impressed by Tate Modern and its vast Turbine Hall, with its echoes of Albert Speer and the Zeppelin field rallies, and its immense popularity proves that it satisfies a need that should have been met by the disastrous Millennium Dome, a wish for an uplifting social space more enduring than the local Tesco or Ikea.
At the same time, it would have been a powerful tonic for post-2000 London if something as original and disorienting as the Bilbao Guggenheim occupied the site of the old power station. But would we have had the nerve to gamble on Gehry's visionary dream? Could we justify to our rather conventional and timid selves a work of architecture so original and so cut off from our beloved past of pitched roofs and Tudor beams? Are we ever really happy with an architecture that unsettles and provokes?
More to the point, I wonder if the Bilbao Guggenheim is a work of architecture at all? Perhaps it belongs to the category of exhibition and fairground displays, of giant inflatables and bouncy castles. The Guggenheim may be the first permanent temporary structure. Its interior is a huge disappointment, and confirms the suspicion that the museum is a glorified sales aid for the Guggenheim brand. There is a giant atrium, always a sign that some corporation's hand is sliding towards your wallet, but the galleries are conventionally proportioned, and one can't help feeling that they are irrelevant anyway.
The museum is its own work of art, and the only one really on display. One can't imagine the Mona Lisa, the Venus de Milo or Picasso's Guernica ever being shown here. There would be war in heaven. Apart from anything else, these works have a dimension of seriousness that the Guggenheim lacks. Koons' Puppy, faithfully guarding the entrance to the enchanted castle, gives the game away. Architecture today is a visitor attraction, deliberately playing on our love of the brightest lights and the gaudiest neon.
The Bilbao Guggenheim's spiritual Acropolis is Las Vegas, with its infantilising pirate ships and Egyptian sphinxes. Gehry's museum would be completely at home there, for a year at least, and then look a little dusty and jaded, soon to be torn down and replaced by another engaging marvel with which our imaginations can play.
We might wonder whether the Guggenheim will always be used as a museum? It's said that architects can't always imagine the unexpected uses their creations will be put to, years, decades or even centuries down the line, after the build has been completed, and the construction released into the community, there to live out its years in times that change as often and as greatly as the weather. But the Guggenheim probably isn't utilitarian enough to be used in markedly different ways than its present function as a cultural landmark, watching over water-marked concrete river-banks.
It looks as though it's been built to last, and one can only imagine the different worlds that will unfold over the next two or three hundred years, should it last that long, and in its present location - it's my guess that people in the future will find its charms as beguiling as we do today, though whether the same will apply to Jeff Koon's floral canine that sits out front, I wouldn't care to predict.
N.B. Having completed this essay, I came across the following Times article, which informs us of the sad news that J. G. Ballard is seriously ill, and to that effect, this blog sends him the very best of wishes for the future, here or elsewhere...
Something I missed from a couple of weeks back, news of the release of the 2007 edition of Open Lab, an anthology of some of the best science blogging of last year, as described here by Coturnix...
Well, The Day has arrived! After reading all of the 486 entries at least once (and many 2-3 times) and after calculating all of the judges' ratings of all the posts, Reed Cartwright and I are happy to announce which blog posts will be published in the second science blogging anthology, the "Open Laboratory 2007".
First, I want to thank the judges (at least those who do not wish to remain anonymous - let me know if I missed one of you) for spending their holiday break reading, commenting on and grading all the submitted posts and making our job that much easier.
Like last year, the book will be published by Lulu.com, the on-demand online book publisher based here in the Triangle area of North Carolina.
I will post occasional updates on the process of turning all these posts into a book, which should be published and up for sale just in time for the 2nd Science Blogging Conference. And now, here are the winners...drumroll please...
In common with many other ancient sites dotted across the various Scottish isles, the site at Cruister, or Cruester, on Bressay is endangered by encroaching tides from rising sea levels, and in this instance, it is what has been described as a 'mystery mound' that is due to be moved from its present location in an effort to prevent it from disappearing beneath the waves, thanks to an initiative by Historic Scotland. Plans are afoot to dismantle the mound, and relocate it to the island's heritage centre
For an explanatory note regarding the so-called burnt mound, we turn to the linked article at Shetland News...
Shetland has hundreds of burnt mounds like the one at Cruister, which attract great interest because their associated structures are the most complex so far discovered in the UK and Ireland.
The Bressay site has a fireplace and a main stone water tank connected by a sloping chute and surrounded by a series of stone-built cells. Around these lie a large mound of fire-cracked stones, believed to have been built up when the site was still in use.
The stones were heated in the fire and then plunged into the tank to heat the water.
Archaeologists believe the stones were rolled from the fireplace into the tank down the chute, which is a unique feature of this site.
“It is a very good example of a burnt mound in Shetland with one of the best, if not the best, example of the interior section and how it operated,” Mrs Anderson said.
Archaeological theories abound as to what these constructions where used for. The most popular is for cooking food, while others envision a 4,000 year old sauna.
“Nobody, including the top archaeologists, knows exactly what the purpose of a burnt mound was. They know what happened in it, but they don’t know why, so it is still a mystery at the moment,” Mrs Anderson said.
This would appear to have something in common with Dinedor Serpent/Rotherwas Ribbon, discovered last year under somewhat controversial circumstances in Herefordshire, UK, where it is thought by some that the stones were also heated, possibly for cooking food, or indeed, for other unknown reasons.
Here's another brief discussion, this time from archnetwork...
The Bronze Age burnt mound at Cruester is situated on the island of Bressay. The site was partially excavated in 2000, when the mound of stones was found to contain several structures, including a paved passageway leading to a sunken tank lined with large slabs of stone. After the excavation, the site was backfilled and continues to erode. The local heritage group has a desire to rescue at least part of the monument.
They want to take the original stones from the site and reconstruct some or all of the structures at their local heritage centre. This approach differs from that employed at Sandwick, (where the local group wanted the site reconstructed at the original location, but not necessarily with the stones placed in the same positions). The SCAPE Trust has been asked to organise the excavation of Cruester burnt mound and Adopt-a-Monument to manage the reconstruction work.
The project will be co-ordinated by the Bressay History Group with input from the Adopt-a-Monument scheme run by the Council for Scottish Archaeology (CSA), and the SCAPE (Scottish Coastal Archaeology and the Problem of Erosion) Trust.
Helen Bradley, from the CSA, who has been working with the history group from the start, said: “This project takes a novel approach to the problems facing archaeological sites as a result of climate change and will create tremendous benefits for Bressay and its community. The finished product will be an exciting interactive tourist attraction.
“The finished reconstruction will be fully functioning and will be used as a centre for experimental work, education and living history events.”
Funding is being sought from the Heritage Lottery Fund, Shetland Islands Council, HIE Shetland and Shetland Amenity Trust and planning permission has just been applied for. If everything falls into place the project should take place between May and August.
Islanders hope that once it is finished the reconstruction will significantly boost tourism, as well as attracting locals people, schools and budding archaeologists.
According to this page at Shetland Museums Service, the Shetland Islands have been occupied since at least the late Neolithic, around 5,200 years ago, when the islands are thought to have been home to farmer-fishermen. Little in the way of archaeological remains from that period or earlier can be found today, because contemporary coastal margins have themselves been inundated by rising sea-levels, and the landscape of the surviving dry land has changed considerably in the intervening millennia.
Also dating from this time are the enigmatic artifacts known as the 'Shetland Knives', and they are ostensibly quite unlike anything else from that period in the British Isles or elsewhere. They are constructed from felsite, a volcanic rock that probably has similar properties to the much more common obsidian, whose use was widespread across large areas fo the world throughout prehistory. However, unlike the black and glass-like obsidian, felsite is strikingly patterned, and just as sharp, so it's not hard to imagine this being a highly prized material by early Shetlanders. Here's a description from the linked page...
This rock is almost glasslike in quality, forms a sharp edge and can be polished to a high sheen. These objects are discovered all over Shetland but archaeologists are unsure of their function.
They are extremely sharp, but show no signs of wear, but what they all show is that the rock has been chosen because of its intrinsic qualities. Like many things that archaeologists are unsure about, they think their purpose would have been ceremonial or as a symbol of power.
Around 1980, a hoard of nineteen knives was found at Stourbrough Hill, Walls, by Noel Fojut of Glasgow University. Although knives are usually found singly, this find was a hoard which had remained intact and undisturbed.
The knives were stacked on their edges between stones, with some lying flat on top. This assembly was contained in a hole scooped in the peat. The knives themselves are much thinner and finer than usual, and the stone more decorative.
Moving on into the Bronze Age, we learn that mysterious structures such as Staneydale Temple, shaped in what might be described as a horse-shoe configuration, although it should be borne in mind that horse-shoes didn't exist at the time, so any connection between the two cannot be made. Also dating from this time are the impressive sites of Jarlshof and Clickimin, as well of course the numerous burnt mounds that provide the topic for this post.
There is also a nice page on the Iron Age in the Shetlands, followed by others which document archaeology up to and including the modern era, as well as a very informative gazetteer.
Here's a story from Science Daily, which discusses a recent paper by Daniel Richter in Soil Science, in which he claims that humankind has changed the soil on the planet so greatly, that we should be calling our present era the 'Man-made Age', or Anthropocene. This from the linked article...
"With more than half of all soils on Earth now being cultivated for food crops, grazed, or periodically logged for wood, how to sustain Earth's soils is becoming a major scientific and policy issue," Richter said. His paper appears in the December issue of the research journal Soil Science.
"Society's most important scientific questions include the future of Earth's soil," Richter added. "Can soils double food production in the next few decades? Is soil exacerbating the global carbon cycle and climatic warming? How can land management improve soil's processing of carbon, nutrients, wastes, toxics and water, all to minimize adverse effects on the environment?"
Having noted that we need to do more to ensure that soils retain their fertility, he then provides us with examples of how we have caused these changes in the soil to happen...
As an example of the challenges, Richter said leading scientists are concerned that agriculture in Africa has so degraded regional soil fertility that the economic development of whole nations will be diminished without drastic improvements of soil management.
"This is an old story writ large of widespread cropping without nutrient recycling, with the result being soil infertility," he said. "And agriculture is only part of the reason why soils are so rapidly changing. Expanding cities, industries, mining and transportation systems all impact soil in ways that are far more permanent than cultivation."
"If humanity is to succeed in the coming decades, we must interact much more positively with the great diversity of Earth's soils," his Soil Science report said. The research was funded by the National Science Foundation, the United States Department of Agriculture, the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation and Duke's Center on Global Change.
We aim to expand observations and synthesis of global soil change by promoting long-term soil-ecosystem studies (LTSEs) and space-for-time substitution studies (SFTSs). This global inventory is real-time and growing! We seek individual scientists, managers, & students, but also institutions & the general public to help build this inventory and network.
Back to Science Daily for some concluding comments...
The network has two objectives, he said. "The first is to bring more attention to how fundamental soil is to environmental quality, the global carbon cycle, and climate change, all in addition to soil being the basis for food and fiber production."
The second objective, emphasized in the Soil Science report, "is to strengthen and renew the world's long-term soils research sites, because those provide our best direct observations of how soils are changing on time scales of decades," he said.
"One problem is that such studies have not worked together in the past. Study sites have never been comprehensively inventoried, and many operate without stable institutional support. Several highly productive long-term experiments have even been abandoned in recent years, including important studies in Africa and South America."
Despite those problems, "long-term soil studies are clearly demonstrating the susceptibility of soils to change in response to land management," Richter said. "They also provide important data to model climate warming and the global carbon cycle."
Combined with the uncertainties of global climate, and a planetary population that is still rapidly increasing, the need to preserve our soils is obviously of paramount importance if we are to be able to continue to feed ourselves.
Duke University (2008, January 28). Earth's Soils Bear Unmistakable Footprints Of Humans.
Although 2009 is slated to be International Year of Astronomy, British astronomers look set to be forced into taking one giant leap backwards, as funding for their subscription to the Gemini North and South telescopes is set to be cut at the behest of the Science and Technology Facilities Council (STFC), in an attempt to balance out an £80 million budgetary hole over the next three years, as we see from the linked article... The STFC's problems have emerged out of the government's latest spending round which has left the council short of £80m in the three-year budget plan to 2011.
To manage its way out of this crisis, the STFC has announced its intention to close certain programmes and cut research grants. Science societies and union officials have warned the damage to UK physics and astronomy will be incalculable and will lead to hundreds of job losses.
That's bad enough, but it looks as though they even had the gall to try and scrounge some extra time without paying the subscription...
A request was made last year to the Gemini partners to allow the UK to come out of the organisation but still maintain some access to the Frederick C Gillett (Gemini North) facility through to the end of the current contract in 2012.
This request, however, has been rebuffed by the partners; and the STFC announced on Friday that it now had no option but to seek a formal cancellation of its subscription.
Observations booked on the Gemini telescopes from 1 February will now be terminated.
It seems scarcely credible that during what has been described elsewhere as a golden age for cosmology, Britain should be downgrading its participation - if anything, we should expect to see an increase of £80 million, or preferably, much more, to signal Britain's commitment to an ongoing collaboration to projects like the Gemini Observatory. Here's some more from the article...
"While we sincerely regret the need to withdraw from Gemini, the current circumstances leave us no choice," the STFC said in a statement.
"This is particularly relevant in the context of preserving the highest priority programmes and providing headroom to pursue the next generation of scientific opportunities, for example the Extremely Large Telescope."
The ELT is a super-scope that will have a mirrored surface tens of metres across. It is still in the design phase and will not be built for a number of years.
Britain will incur a penalty of about £8m for cancelling its Gemini membership early; but this would still save more than £15m in "subs" that no longer needed to be paid between now and 2012, according to the STFC's statement.
"We've effectively wasted £70m," countered Professor Crowther. "These facilities had reached their prime, but somebody else is now going to get to use them."
He said the STFC, if it had wanted to save money, should have ma
