Per Storemyr Geoarchaeology & Conservation

Geologi og kulturminner – bevaring av gamle steinbrudd

Posted on February 10, 2015 by Per Storemyr

Stakaldeneset diabasbrudd – steinalderens øksebrudd ved Florø. Foto: Per Storemyr

“Verdifull naturarv” – det var temaet på NGU-dagen 5-6 februar 2015. Det dreide seg om forvaltning, bruk og vern av Norges geologiske mangfold. Kulturminner og kulturlandskap er en selvfølgelig del av dette temaet og dermed også gamle steinbrudd. De viser på en sjeldent instruktiv måte menneskenes omgang med det geologiske mangfoldet. Men for å kunne formidles, må bruddene bevares! Dette var temaet for mitt foredrag på seminaret. Her kan du lese en lett redigert versjon av innlegget, med tilhørende powerpoint-bilder. Continue reading →

Posted in Archaeology, New publications, Norway, Old quarries | Tagged conservation, quarry | Leave a comment

Winter walk in the Hyllestad millstone quarries

Posted on February 1, 2015 by Per Storemyr

Abandoned, snow-covered millstones in the Stone Cross Quarry. The quarry has got its name from co-production of early-medieval stone crosses. Photo by Per Storemyr

Abandoned, snow-covered millstones in the Stone Cross Quarry. The quarry has its name from co-production of Early Medieval stone crosses. Photo by Per Storemyr

The Hyllestad Millstone Quarries are accessible for everybody throughout the year. You can walk wherever you like, admiring this largest quarry landscape from the Viking Age and the Middle Ages in Norway. You can even book a guide if you want. But there are, of course, not many people wandering about now in winter. People prefer the summer, when our Millstone Park is also open to the public for museum experiences and guided tours. Yet, a walk in the snow may reveal more of this unique quarry landscape than in summer, when all things green effectively prevent grasping the monumentality of some of the quarries. Continue reading →

Posted in Archaeology, Norway, Old quarries | Tagged Hyllestad, Kvernsteinsparken, millstone, Norway | Leave a comment

Happy New Year from Hyllestad! With a mountain and a fjord from summer to winter

Posted on December 31, 2014 by Per Storemyr

Åfjorden, Lihesten (left) and Alden (in the background). This is my Hyllestad from our balcony. Photo by Per Storemyr

With a cavalcade of 22 photos I wish you all a Happy New Year! And thanks a lot for following my blog in 2014! All the pictures have been taken from the balcony of our new home at Hyllestad in Western Norway. From August through the fall and into December. I cannot get enough of the stunning views of Åfjorden, the striking mountain Lihesten and the prominent hill Alden far out towards the sea. And of how the weather rapidly changes where fjords and mountains meet the Atlantic. A place to contemplate about stone and quarries and monuments and to hopefully write many more blog posts in 2015… Continue to the gallery!

Posted in Norway | Tagged Hyllestad, Norway, photography | 5 Comments

Marmoren i Gildeskål gamle kirke i Nordland – grubling om en middelalderkirke langs nordvegen

Posted on November 20, 2014 by Per Storemyr

Det lille kirkestedet Gildeskål, med gammelkirka, nykirka og prestegården. Foto: Per Storemyr

Sommeren 2013 møttes en tverrfaglig gjeng forskere til “Grubleseminar” om Gildeskål gamle kirke i Nordland. Her var det samlet arkeologer, kunsthistorikere, bygningshistorikere og ellers alle med et ønske om å finne ut mer om den lille marmorkirken langt mot nord. Og en geoarkeolog som grublet på hva steinene i kirken kunne fortelle om historien. Nå er boken fra seminaret publisert! “Gildeskål gamle kirke: marmorkirka ved nordvegen” er redigert av Morten Stige og Øystein Ekroll, gitt ut på Fagbokforlaget og har bidrag som spenner fra landskapsanalyse til kirkeinteriør. Den blir lansert i Gildeskål om et par dager, søndag 23. november. Her er mer om boken og mitt eget bidrag om steinene i kirken. Continue reading →

Posted in New publications, Norway, Old quarries | Tagged Gildeskål, marble, Middle Ages, Norway | 1 Comment

The ancient stone quarries in Egypt as a new, serial World Heritage Site?

Posted on October 28, 2014 by Per Storemyr

Deserves a place on the World Heritage List: The Gebel el-Silsila ancient sandstone quarries. Photo: Tom Heldal

Stone quarries were extremely important in ancient cultures, yet they are hardly represented on the World Heritage List. This might be due to misconceptions of the nature of such sites, as producers of raw materials “only”. But in reality many quarry sites were places of outstanding craftsmanship, engineering and organisation, not least in Ancient Egypt. In a paper written by James Harrell and myself some four years ago (and only now available), we propose establishing a serial World Heritage Site comprising selected Ancient Egyptian quarries. Few cultures relied on their quarries as much as Ancient Egypt; thus it would be natural that a comprehensive World Heritage Site addressing quarries should be set up just here along the Nile. Continue reading →

Posted in Ancient Egypt, Archaeology, Heritage destruction, New publications, Old quarries | Tagged Ancient Egypt, ancient egyptian quarries, conservation, Cultural heritage, UNESCO World Heritage, World Heritage List | 8 Comments

A Palaeolithic, life-size Nubian ibex carved on rock: Adel Kelany with new discoveries in Wadi Abu Subeira, Upper Egypt

Posted on October 27, 2014 by Per Storemyr

It is terribly difficult to photograph the Late Palaeolithic ibex! So rather see the tracing by Adel Kelany and his team, in the recent paper uploaded to academa.edu. Photo: Per Storemyr

It is terribly difficult to photograph the almost two metres long Late Palaeolithic ibex, with an auroch in its belly! So rather see the tracing by Adel Kelany and his team, in the recent paper uploaded to academia.edu. Photo: Per Storemyr

Archaeologist Adel Kelany of MSA Aswan recently published a key paper on the Late Palaeolithic rock art in Wadi Abu Subeira, Upper Egypt. The paper reports findings from the site CAS-13, which features a true rock art masterpiece: a life-size, almost two metres long Nubian ibex, accompanied by large-scale images of aurochs. The findings tie in with previously reported Late Palaeolithic rock art in Subeira, a wadi north of Aswan. It is also similar to the now famous Late Palaeolithic rock art analysed by Dirk Huyge and team at Qurta near Gebel el-Silsila and at el-Hosh further downstream of the Nile river. This is rock art dating 15-20.000 years back in time and similar to the grand European Late Palaeolithic rock art traditions. Read on for link to Adel’s paper and more information.
Continue reading →

Posted in Ancient Egypt, Archaeology, Heritage destruction, Rock art | Tagged Ancient Egypt, Aswan, conservation, Qurta, rock art, Wadi Abu Subeira | 4 Comments

Fire on the rocks! New paper on firesetting in ancient Egyptian stone quarrying

Posted on September 30, 2014 by Per Storemyr

Fire was a key method in extracting stone in the old days – more important than we usually think of. Photo by Per Storemyr

It started with Egyptologist and engineer Reginald Engelbach almost a hundred years ago. By the early 1920s he found evidence that fire would have been used in extraction of the famous Unfinished Obelisk at the Aswan granite quarries. But he was probably wrong when he implied that fire was used to remove poor quality bedrock only. New evidence suggests that fire was used in several steps of extracting obelisks and other stone objects in Ancient Egypt. And written documentation of firesetting may, in fact, go as far back as to the Middle Kingdom, some 4000 years ago. With geologist Tom Heldal as the driving force behind the work, we recently published a brief account of firesetting, based on our findings in Egyptian quarries over the last decade. Read on for abstract of our paper, get a PDF-link and view a gallery of images. Continue reading →

Posted in Ancient Egypt, Archaeology, New publications, Old quarries | Tagged Ancient Egypt, ancient egyptian quarries, ancient stone quarrying, Aswan, firesetting, granite, obelisk | 9 Comments

The first reported prehistoric grinding stone quarry in the Egyptian Sahara (new paper)

Posted on September 29, 2014 by Per Storemyr

On the way to discovery of the first reported prehistoric grinding stone quarry in the Egyptian Sahara. Dirk Huyge walks the stony desert. Photo: Per Storemyr.

Some time ago I wrote about the discovery of a prehistoric grinding stone quarry in the Egyptian Sahara. Now the discovery is duly published! It was presented at the conference “Seen through a Millstone” in Bergen, Norway, in 2011. Recently, editor Lotte Selsing of the Archaeological Museum in Stavanger finalised the conference volume; an array of very interesting papers dealing with grinders and millstones across the world, from prehistory to the medieval period. Read on for abstract of my paper, get PDF and view a gallery of images. Continue reading →

Posted in Ancient Egypt, Archaeology, New publications, Old quarries | Tagged Ancient Egypt, ancient egyptian quarries, grinding stone, Kharga | 3 Comments

Jakten på steinbruddene til middelalderens kirke og kloster på Hovedøya ved Oslo

Posted on September 1, 2014 by Per Storemyr

Ruinene av Edmundsirken og en del av det middelalderske klosterkomplekset på Hovedøya. Foto: Per Storemyr

I et aldeles praktfullt sensommervær var jeg siste uke Riksantikvarens utskremte på jakt etter de gamle steinbruddene som ble brukt til å bygge Edmundskirken og cistercienserklosteret på Hovedøya i Oslofjorden. Flere har gjort det samme før meg, men nå var det meningen å virkelig få kartfestet de gamle bruddene, og å prøve å tolke hvordan steinarbeidet kan ha vært organisert i gamle dager. Continue reading →

Posted in Archaeology, New projects, Norway, Old quarries, Ruins | Tagged Cultural heritage, Hovedøya, Norway, quarry, sandstone | 2 Comments

Moving to work with the Norwegian Millstone Centre at Hyllestad in West Norway

Posted on June 16, 2014 by Per Storemyr

Torbjørn Løland showing one of the millstone quarries in Hyllestad, at Otringsneset just by the fjord. Photo by Per Storemyr

From the Firda newspaper: Interview with my wife, and picture with our two children Lotta and Tarald

Suddenly it reached the local press, and so the news became very official: Our family will move from Switzerland to Hyllestad in West Norway by the end of July this year. This is not a move to just any kind of place, but to the little community far west in Norway that holds one of Europe’s largest and most long-lived millstone quarry landscapes, and the outdoor heritage museum Norwegian Millstone Centre (Norsk Kvernsteinsenter). Continue reading →