Guerilla Archaeology

DIY Antler Rings – Glastonbury Green Crafts

There is no Glastonbury Festival 2020, but you can join in our socially distanced Guerilla Archaeology Ancient Antler workshop whilst enjoying virtual Glasto in your garden. We have carefully recreated all the steps you need to make a copy of a Viking Ring, found on our excavations in the Western Isles. Tools – most importantly … Continue reading →

Skin Deep: Prehistoric Beauty

Would you like to be as beautiful as someone who died thousands of years ago? I thought so! How do you define your look? Do you know where your style of tattoo originated? Would you REALLY have that haircut (if you lived in the distant past)? This year Guerilla Archaeology invites you into our prehistoric … Continue reading →

Monument Making: the Glastonbury Stone Circle

The Glastonbury stone circle is a recent monument on the British landscape, yet it is one that is visited by huge numbers of people over a very short period of time. Estimates of the numbers of people gathering at the Glastonbury stone circle are subject to speculation, however with a large proportion of the hundreds … Continue reading →

Antler Rings: Green Crafts @Glastonbury 2013

We had the most fantastic time at Glastonbury with our small and handpicked team. We were lucky enough to be adopted by GreenCrafts, run by Nic and Marie Piper, and got the chance to showcase some of the craft skills we have been learning. What started as a bit of a mad idea – that … Continue reading →

Dealing with the Dead @ Tinkinswood

What is the relevance of a visit to a 6000 year old burial monument to a festival ‘for the living about dying’? Personal reflections on the professional and emotional bond between human remains and archaeologists Tinkinswood is a long barrow with chamber, giant cap stone and earthen mound and was built around the thirty-seventh to … Continue reading →

Making Antler Head-dresses

We decided to make some antler head-dresses like those based on the ones found at the site of Star Carr, an early Mesolithic site. We explore a general background to these in an earlier post about Mesolithic shamanism. In this post, we will explore in more detail these head dresses, fashioned from the skulls and attached … Continue reading →

Ancient Antler working 1: team intro

First video of six that recreates our Glastonbury Greencrafts Village workshops for you at home. So who are we and what do our workshops do?

Hello 2020 – Stranger times

Well this was not the year we expected! No festivals=no fun. We were hoping to catch up with you all at Glastonbury, Bluedot and Green Man – at a minimum. As we cannot be with you, we have made a number of videos about ourselves and our previous activities that you can find on our … Continue reading →

Festivals and Events 2019

Following the massive success of last year’s ‘Eat the Past’ campaign, Guerilla Archaeology will continue bringing our Neolithic grocery to festivals and events around the UK, as well as antler carving at Glastonbury! How The Light Gets In May 24-27 Bryn Celli Ddu Open Day June 22 Glastonbury June 26-30 Bluedot July 18-21 Green Man … Continue reading →

Exploring a hidden ritual landscape at Bryn Celli Ddu

We’re very excited to announce that we’ll be returning to the Bryn Celli Ddu landscape on Anglesey, for the second season of our public archaeology project this June! The project will focus on the landscape surrounding one of Wales’ famous Neolithic passage tombs – Bryn Celli Ddu, exploring hidden features that have been previously overlooked. … Continue reading →

Archaeology Outreach at Wilderness 2015

As part of our festival tour in 2015 we returned to the golden Oxfordshire countryside for Wilderness festival. This year’s event did not disappoint and we were dazzled by sets from Bjork, George Clinton, Ibibio Sound Machine and Nils Frahm. One thing Wilderness strives to do each year is to provide exciting and innovative workshops, … Continue reading →

3D model of the Glastonbury stone circle

https://sketchfab.com/models/adbe4f3c0a844923a7c045bf970b10d3/embed?autospin=0.2&autostart=1 Glasto- Circle by aerial-cam on Sketchfab Take a look at our new 3D model of the Glastonbury stone circle by Aerial-cam!

The Bryn Celli Ddu Rock Art Project 2015

This community archaeology project, based on Anglesey, will centre on the Bryn Celli Ddu landscape — with a particular focus on a rock art outcrop located in a nearby field that has not been excavated scientifically. The site comprises a substantial natural outcrop, lying west of Bryn Celli Ddu tomb. The outcrop has several recently … Continue reading →

Making Monuments: Druidic Circles

Recent Stone Circles The recent construction of megalithic monuments, in particular stone circles, within Britain can be traced back to the development of the modern Druidic movement. The antiquarian John Aubrey, who suggested in 1659 that the stone circles at Avebury and Stonehenge had been built by the Celts as druidic temples. The Irish author, J. … Continue reading →

The ‘Guerilla Archaeology Glastonbury Experience’ from a student perspective

Getting a Glastonbury ticket was a stressful experience which involved three hours of meticulously coordinated group effort and webpage refreshing. Despite this, the relief of procuring one of these sought-after tickets was great. Skip forward several months and it turns out that Guerrilla Archaeology, too, were attending Glastonbury and needed people to help out. So … Continue reading →

Lunaticks, Sunworshippers and the Green Man

Going Green Between 15th – 18th August, Guerilla Archaeology returned to the Einstein’s Garden area of the Green Man Festival at Glanusk Park near Crickhowell. Our theme this year was Lunaticks and Sunworshippers, exploring the relationship between prehistoric life and astronomy. Over a warm weekend in the shadow of the Crickhowell hillfort, we showed off Bronze Age bling … Continue reading →

24th Century BC Party People

So what makes a modern British festival? People, music, food, drink, dance and socialising. Folk are drawn to the event from outside the local areas, they travel with their own temporary homes and set up cheek by jowl with strangers. Festivals are about meeting with different social groups, ‘feasting’ on unusual foods and drinks, taking … Continue reading →

The dark side of sun worship – Nazi Sun Worship

On the evening of 22 June 1935 Joseph Goebbels, the Nazi Propaganda Minister, gave a speech at a summer solstice festival held to open the Thingstätte on Heidelberg’s Holy Mountain. The Thingstätte, (a word with no English translation), was an open air amphitheatre, with banks of stone seats arranged around a central stage with flanking towers, … Continue reading →

Outreach at the Ashmolean Musuem

Always keen to learn and expand our experiences – when invited to attend LiveFriday@Ashmolean with Wilderness the Guerilla Archaeologists arrived early to put in a few hours exploring the Pitt Rivers Museum (PRM) collection of Shamanic and magical objects. These trips add to our knowledge, provide training for our newest GAs and in this case … Continue reading →

Making medicines using deer

A woman is guaranteed never to miscarry if, tied round her neck in gazelle leather, she wears white flesh from a hyena’s breast, seven hyena’s hairs, and the penis of a stag. (Pliny the Elder, Natural History 28.98; translation W.H.S. Jones) My area of research is Greek and Roman recipes. This may seem a rather … Continue reading →

The Mind in the Cave

We kicked off our spring season at the Barbican and Wellcome Wonder Street Fair at the British Festival of Neuroscience London (7th – 10th April) with ‘The Mind in the Cave’. This is a dynamic, hands on (but eyes off) activity – conceived by the artist Paul Evans – that allows participants of all ages to engage with the … Continue reading →

Shamanic @ Shambala !

Our last outing as the Shamanic Street Preachers this summer was at the fantastic Shambala Festival 2012, which turned out to be a colourful and imaginative weekend – it was such a friendly festival, everyone was smiling and the atmosphere and general ambiance was really happy… The beautiful grounds at Kelmarsh Country Estate, a huge … Continue reading →

Shamanic Street Preachers meet the Green Man

Last weekend Guerrilla Archaeology braved the rain and mud (oh the mud) to bring our tent to the Green Man Festival, set in the gorgeous Glanusk Park in the shadow of Crug Hwyel Iron Age hillfort. This was our second visit to the festival, and this time we brought the shamanic theme that had been … Continue reading →

Wild thing – you make my heart sing

Guerilla Archaeology had a grand old time at Wilderness giving formal talks and informal classroom sessions. Many people answered the call to the wild and explored their shamanic side, left hand prints and checked out the effect of geology and climate on their internal chemistry. See all the images here on Flickr. We are busy re-packing our Shamanic … Continue reading →

Ochre Mining – Deep Reds

GA went on a day trip to the only working British ochre mines – Clearwell Caves were one of the first producers of ochres, in the late Neolithic to early Bronze-age and are now one of the last. Well worth a visit, particularly to purchase their range of ochre colours – yellow, orange, brown, red and purple and … Continue reading →

Shamans out on the airwaves.

Listen to this interview with Dr Henry Droselda – our shaman recorded at Secret Garden Party. Henry describes his five years living in Papua New Guinea, discusses the role that animals play in Shamanism, and his encounter with a grouse that later ended up on his Shaman Tree. There is a later interview with Dr David Luke … Continue reading →

Ain’t no stoppin us now – we’re on the move!

Our brakes failed on our way to SGP setting the tone for a non-stop weekend of shamanism. With our lovely yurt as a base, we invited one and all to come and talk about past, present and future shamans. We conversed with around 1000 people, inviting them to channel their inner shaman via drumming and … Continue reading →

Guerrilla Archaeology does Day of Archaeology

My Day of Archaeology post will feature one project in particular: my involvement in a new creative engagement project which sees a group of like-minded Cardiff based archaeologists, artists and scientists bring the past alive at festivals! This is quite a new thing for archaeologists in Wales, and perhaps the UK, and I believe there’s … Continue reading →

Bronze Age shamanism?

This week, I’ll be moving forward into the Bronze Age, which dates to around 4000 years ago in Britain. Specifically, I’ll be exploring the possible shaman’s grave at Upton Lovell round barrow in Wiltshire. Here, there is evidence for a very elaborate burial, with several objects suggesting that it was perhaps a grave of a … Continue reading →

Neolithic Shamanism?

I’ve been studying the Neolithic period now for more than 8 years, and I really do think that we can observe shamanic attributes in their way of life, from monument building to daily life. In this post I will explore the Neolithic site of Knowth in Ireland. The aim is to show you how shamanism can … Continue reading →

Mesolithic Shamanism?

Star Carr is a seasonal Mesolithic site situated in the Vale of Pickering, North Yorkshire, England. Early Mesolithic activities dating back about 10,700 years can be found here. The site was originally excavated during the early 50s, with excavations led by Manchester and York Universities continuing to today. In this post I will explore the evidence found … Continue reading →

Paleolithic Shamanism?

Goat’s Hole cave, Paviland, on the Gower Peninsula in South Wales, is the name of the now famous burial of the ‘Red Lady’, who actually turned out to be a man! It is one of the best-known prehistoric burials in Britain – discovered back in 1823. Goat’s Hole Cave, the final resting place of the … Continue reading →

Get ahead – Shaman style

This week we took delivery of seven deer skulls we will be using to recreate the Star Carr head-dresses. The originals are twenty-one adult red deer skull with antlers altered to be worn as head-dresses. They all date to the Early Mesolithic, about 9,500 years old, and were discovered at the site in the Vale of Pickering, North … Continue reading →

A Day of Deer

The skulls of seven deer arrived today, ready for us to work into antler head dresses. They are all relatively young males, teenagers of the deer world. Their skulls and antlers are extremely beautiful – deer bones are some of the most attractive, being extremely gracile compare to most other terrestrial mammals. We … Continue reading →

Becoming Shaman

In 2011 we went to Green Man music festival with Back to the Future in 2012 we are holding a series of Shamanic themed events. Ritual formed a central part of the earliest British societies and Shamans were part of these ceremonies. Guerrilla Archaeology offers participants the chance to explore the earliest evidence for native British Shamanic … Continue reading →

Back to the Future@Green Man

Guerilla Archaeology were out and about at the Green Man music festival. Our vibrant programme included workshops, installations and performances that blended science and nature with entertainment, art, craft and design and was held in the Festival’s ‘Einstein’s Garden’ area. Back to The Future focused on three main interactive themes: Future Animals, an art-based workshop … Continue reading →

Archaeology in a Time of Covid-19: Guerilla Archaeology Lockdown Updates & Activities

Just a quick Covid-19/Guerilla related update for the community during this confusing time. Continue reading →

Future Work: St. Fagans Workshop and The Deer Initiative

The Hart of Ely project is coming to an end, and we are very grateful to the City Region Exchange for funding it, and allowing us to share knowledge and experiences with the local area. This is not necessarily the end of it all however. The project was part of a successful seedcorn funding application … Continue reading →

Festivals 2017

This summer, Guerilla Archaeologists will be out and about at a number of events, aimed at peaking the public’s interest about the past. We are returning to a number of our traditional haunts, as well as heading off to pastures new. Bryn Celli Ddu, 17th June This celebration of the summer solstice in Anglesey at … Continue reading →

Footprints in Time

Thousands of years ago, our ancestors went for a walk and left their footprints behind…… In South Wales there are many seaside sites where both footprints and plant remains have been preserved for centuries. This combination provides a snapshot of prehistoric life in the now submerged landscapes, and can help us to imagine what may … Continue reading →

Festival line-up for 2016

Another summer beckons the Guerilla Archaeologists out to the fields to dig, to dance and to debate the past in words and in actions. Our event list is shaping up with a couple of confirmed events and a number in planning. Here is a starter list: Parc Le Breos, March 19th. Lunar 3-5 June Tanworth … Continue reading →