PRESS RELEASE: Rescue Dig of the Year award for 2016, for Drumclay Crannog Project

Nora Bermingham and Caitríona Moore accept Current Archaeology’s prestigious Rescue Dig of the Year award for 2016, for their work on the Drumclay Crannog

The award for Rescue Dig of the Year (sponsored by Export and General Insurance for the second year running) was accepted by Dr Nora Bermingham and Caitríona Moore who carried out the rare excavation of a crannog (a medieval artificial island) in Co. Fermanagh on behalf of the Department of the Environment and Department for Regional Development in Northern Ireland. The well-preserved remains of timber structures and thousands of artefacts uncovered at this important site, are set to revolutionise our understanding of crannog life.

The prize forms part of the celebrated Current Archaeology Awards given each year by Current Archaeology, the UK’s leading archaeology magazine. TV personality and archaeologist Julian Richards (of Meet the Ancestors fame) announced the winners of the 2016 awards on 26 February, during the Current Archaeology Live! event, held at the University of London’s Senate House, which saw a record number of ticket sales for the conference, and was attended by over 400 people.

Nora Bermingham said:

‘Thank you so much to everyone who voted for us. This was a tiny little rural excavation in Northern Ireland, and we’re thrilled to have won. Doing Drumclay was the experience of a lifetime, and I don’t think it will be matched – it was a real privilege to direct that excavation and see the wonders that came out of it. We had a wonderful crew, and we would also like to thank the Department of the Environment and Department for Regional Development in Northern Ireland.’

John Mitchell said:

We are delighted once again to be sponsoring this prestigious award – and we are very happy that it has been won by the Drumclay Crannog Project.  It is well deserved!

  

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Stonehenge Findings Reveal Prehistoric Gender Equality

In light of a new study of human remains found at Stonehenge in 2008, researchers suggest that prehistoric Woman was able to attain high status, and may even have been considered the equal of men.

14 of the 23 remains exhumed at Stonehenge - which is believed to have been a cemetery for Wiltshire’s antediluvian movers and shakers - belong to women. According to archaeologists such as Mike Pitts (of British Archaeology), the study should be used to revise notions of male-dominated prehistoric societies that are currently prevalent in the media and the arts.  

The project, Pitts prates, puts paid to painters’ preponderant portrayals of a prominent prehistoric patriarchy:

“In almost every depiction of Stonehenge by artists and TV re-enactors we see lots of men, a man in charge, and few or no women

“The archaeology now shows that as far as the burials go, women were as prominent there as men. This contrasts with the earlier burial mounds, where men seem to be more prominent.

Other researchers concur that the findings demonstrate a “surprising degree of gender equality” given artists’ depictions of the site as being ruled by men “with barely a woman in sight”.

Christie Willis of the University College London Institute of Archaeology was tasked with identifying the sex of the remains which, collectively, weighed some 45kg and have since been sent off to the universities of Oxford and Glasgow to be radiocarbon-dated. 

Ancestral worm protection could cause lung disease in Viking descendants

In a paper published today in Scientific Reports a group of researchers led by (Liverpool School of Tropical Medicine) LSTM have found that the key to an inherited deficiency, predisposing people to emphysema and other lung conditions, could lie in their Viking roots.

Archaeological excavations of Viking latrine pits in Denmark have revealed that these populations suffered massive worm infestations. The way that their genes developed to protect their vital organs from disease caused by worms has become the inherited trait which can now lead to lung disease in smokers.

Chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) and emphysema affect over 300 million people, or nearly 5% of the global population. The only inherited risk factor is alpha-1-antitrypsin (A1AT) deficiency, and this risk is compounded if individuals smoke tobacco.

A1AT protects the lungs and liver from enzymes called proteases that are produced by cells of the immune system, but also by parasitic worms. In the absence of A1AT these proteases can break down lung tissue leading to COPD and emphysema.

Deficiency of A1AT is genetically determined and is due to deviants of A1AT that are surprisingly common, particularly in Scandinavia, where they evolved in Viking populations more than two thousand years ago. Why these disease-causing deviants of A1AT are so common in human populations today has long been a mystery.

LSTM's Professor Richard Pleass is senior author on the paper. He said: "Vikings would have eaten contaminated food and parasites would have migrated to various organs, including lungs and liver, where the proteases they released would cause disease."

In this latest paper the authors show that these deviant forms of A1AT bind an antibody called immunoglobulin E (IgE) that evolved to protect people from worms. The binding of A1AT to IgE prevents the antibody molecule from being broken down by such proteases.

"Thus these deviant forms of A1AT would have protected Viking populations, who neither smoked tobacco nor lived long lives, from worms." Continued Professor Pleass, "it is only in the last century that modern medicine has allowed human populations to be treated for disease causing worms. Consequently these deviant forms of A1AT, that once protected people from parasites, are now at liberty to cause emphysema and COPD."

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