Bronze Age Islanders in the English Channel Kept Sheep

News July 19, 2013

(Courtesy Ian Cartwright, Oxford University)
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Sark
(Courtesy Ian Cartwright, Oxford University)

SARK, GUERNSEY—Excavations of an ancient settlement on the island of Sark in the English Channel uncovered spindle whorls, which show that sheep have been raised there since the second millennium B.C. “People were living in the center and doing their spinning and their weaving and other industrial things around the limits of the site,” said Barry Cunliffe, an Emeritus Professor at Oxford University. Four and one-half beads of an amber necklace were also found this year. The string of the necklace may have broken. “He or she was able, I suppose, to get some of them back but lost some—and there they were for us to find,” added Cunliffe. The amber came from Denmark.

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