More apotropaic marks

A commenter on my one of previous posts about apotropaic marks left a link to his photos of daisy wheels and other inscribed circles on Flickr. There are lots of them from many different places. There are also several Flickr groups devoted to similar marks.

1970s excavation published

It's good to see old excavations being published. The PfA blog has deplored the existence of grey literature previously, so it's great to see that someone is doing something about it.

Internet Archaeology is pleased to announce the publication of "Iron Age Settlement at Blackstone, Worcestershire: Excavations 1972, 1973, and 1977" by Derek Hurst, Alan Hunt and Peter Davenport et al.

Excavations in the 1970s at Blackstone found a rectangular double-ditched Iron Age enclosure dated from the 2nd century into the 1st century BC. The initial structural analysis has been largely retained in this updated report and accompanied by a separate modern commentary, allied with the updated finds and environmental reporting, and overall discussion.

Internet Archaeology thanks and acknowledges English Heritage for the publication grant that has enabled us to make this article Open Access.

The Archaeology Data Service also has an archive of grey literature.

A lot of grey literature is generated by commercial archaeology on sites that are being excavated before construction takes place. The reports are only stored at county archaeology units, so researchers have to travel to get hold of them, according to an article by Matt Ford in Nature.