{"id":19582,"date":"2018-07-17T16:02:35","date_gmt":"2018-07-17T15:02:35","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/ihbconline.co.uk\/newsachive\/?p=19582"},"modified":"2018-07-17T16:02:35","modified_gmt":"2018-07-17T15:02:35","slug":"heatwave-vital-in-discovery-of-a-possible-henge-or-circular-enclosure-at-the-bru-na-boinne-site","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/newsblogs.ihbc.org.uk\/?p=19582","title":{"rendered":"Heatwave vital in discovery of a possible henge, or circular enclosure, at the Br\u00fa na B\u00f3inne site"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"website\"<\/a>The discovery of a possible archaeological feature near\u00a0the UNESCO World Heritage Site close to Newgrange in Co Meath has been described as \u2018a very significant find\u2019 by the Department of Culture, Heritage and the Gaeltacht.<\/h3>\n

<\/p>\n

Ireland\u2019s state broadcaster RTE writes:<\/p>\n

The recent heatwave has been described as vital in the\u00a0discovery of a possible henge, or circular enclosure, which may be of archaeological interest at the Br\u00fa na B\u00f3inne site.The henge, which could measure up to 200 metres in diameter, is believed to have been built some 500 years after Newgrange, which dates from 3,000 BC. The National Monuments Service at the department was made aware of the discovery yesterday evening.<\/p>\n

It said drone images show the outline of the site in the form of a crop mark. Such crop marks are differential growth of crops that\u00a0indicate the presence of buried archaeological features. The NMS said the use of aerial images to identify archaeological sites through crop marks has been a methodology employed by archaeologists for decades. However, it said the exceptional dry weather conditions of recent weeks and the increasing deployment of drones for aerial photographic use was producing some remarkable discoveries such as this one.<\/p>\n

The drone that captured the image belongs to historian and author Anthony Murphy, who has been recording and writing about the Boyne Valley for many years. He said: \u2018The weather is absolutely critical to the discovery of this monument.\u00a0I have flown a drone over the Boyne Valley regularly and have never seen this.\u00a0 He said the bit of moisture left in the soil \u2018lodges in the archaeological features a little bit more than it does in the surrounding soil and the crop that is growing out of the soil is greener in the archaeological features and drier outside of them. So when that crop is harvested all surface traces of this monument will vanish and we may not see this monument again for two or three decades depending on when we get another prolonged dry spell like this.\u2019\u2026<\/p>\n

Read more….<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The discovery of a possible archaeological feature near\u00a0the UNESCO World Heritage Site close to Newgrange in Co Meath has been described as \u2018a very significant find\u2019 by the Department of Culture, Heritage and the Gaeltacht.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-19582","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-sector-newsblog"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/newsblogs.ihbc.org.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19582","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/newsblogs.ihbc.org.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/newsblogs.ihbc.org.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/newsblogs.ihbc.org.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/newsblogs.ihbc.org.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=19582"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/newsblogs.ihbc.org.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19582\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":19584,"href":"https:\/\/newsblogs.ihbc.org.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19582\/revisions\/19584"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/newsblogs.ihbc.org.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=19582"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/newsblogs.ihbc.org.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=19582"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/newsblogs.ihbc.org.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=19582"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}