The Essay: EarthWorks

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The Essay: EarthWorks: Quarry

EarthWorks

Quarry

BBC Radio 3 - The Essay, EarthWorks, Quarry

Archaeologist Rose Ferraby descends underground to visit Devon’s Beer Quarry Caves.

Archaeologist Rose Ferraby goes underground to visit Devon’s Beer Quarry Caves. The echoing chambers provided stone for cathedrals, but these spaces reveal their own life-stories.

"What I love about quarries is that they’re a kind of accidental place. A place that has been formed during the making of something else - an inverse echo of our built world."  Archaeologist Rose Ferraby takes us to Beer on England's Jurassic coast where she considers the quarry as a space where the ingrained relationships between people and stone are revealed. Worked since Roman times, the stone was used to build fine villas, cathedrals and local houses, while the caves were a hideaway for smuggled brandy, entangling human and natural worlds. The empty voids still stand, containers for ongoing stories of stone.

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Archaeologist Rose Ferraby explores traces of human history around the British Isles.

Archaeologist and artist Rose Ferraby explores traces of human history in different landscapes around the British Isles to help us see ourselves in previous patterns of change.

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