Speechification

Here’s another lovely series of Radio 3’s The Essay. In this one we learn from four archaeologists that the discipline extends further than you may have expected. To the surface of the moon (or at least the parts of it affected by human visitors), for instance. Also to Long Kesh/Maze prison in Northern Ireland where Republican hunger strikers died, a wood by a B-road near Sheffield where 19th and 20th Century graffiti artists carved their names on the trees and the fields in Essex where some radio masts once stood. Really fascinating, surprising stuff. Here’s episode one (MP3), which is the one about the moon. You can hear the other three here for the next few days (the fourth episode’s Real stream jumps and skips a bit, beware).

Britain (long before it was called Britain, obviously. I think it was called ‘Ugghh’) used to be joined to continental Europe (’Hagghh’). The land between the two long ago sank below the waves but down there, on the bottom of the ocean, is a pristine archaeological site. Not a narrow ’causeway’ as people used to think but thousands of square kilometres of settlements, paths, riverbeds and burial grounds. From speechification’s collection of ’scientists who can’t contain their excitement’ here’s a 2005 show about the exploration of this mysterious and inaccessible domain, only recently uncovered with the help of oil industry seismic data. Fascinating (MP3).