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Evening Chronicle (Newcastle, England), Dec 3, 2009

A SKULL from a 7,000-year-old type of cow has been dug up in a North East quarry.

John Rutherfold came across the complete skull and horns of an auroch while driving his excavator at Haughton Strother quarry. The auroch was a wild species of cattle which stood around 6ft high to its shoulder and which became extinct in Britain around 4,000 years ago.

The newly-found skull has been carbon-dated to 5670- 5520 BC, when northern Britain would have been sparsely occupied by mobile groups of huntergatherer people.

The quarry, operated by Thompson’s of Prudhoe, is on land owned by Nunwick Estates at a bend in the River North Tyne near Humshaugh, Northumberland, where the river has moved progressively eastwards over many centuries, leaving behind a series of infilled river channels.

Robin Taylor-Wilson, director of Durham-based Pre-Construct Archaeology, who advise Thompson’s of Prudhoe, said: “If the excavator bucket had been 10cm either side it would have smashed the skull.

“It is very rare to find a complete auroch skull, but it came out hanging off the bucket from a wet area as if it was meant to be.

“The find is of an animal which would have been a prize capture for dinner for the hunter gatherers of the time.”

It is hoped the skull will now go on show at the Great North Museum in Newcastle.

0 Comments | Augusta Chronicle, The, Jun 25, 2009

One person mourning Friday’s fire at the Georgia Theatre in Athens is Louis C. “Hap” Harris Jr., of Augusta, who co-founded the entertainment hall.

“In 1977, I was the advertising manager for The Athens Observer, a paid weekly,” recalled the insurance agent. “I give full credit to Sam Smartt for his idea to use the Georgia Theatre for concerts.”

Mr. Smartt went to the Obser-ver to publish an advertisement for an outdoor concert. He and Mr. Harris, a longtime music lover, got to talking about the idea. It led to their joining with George Fontaine and Sheffy McArthur to create the facility.

Other investors included Hap’s younger brother Bill Harris and former Augusta concert promoter Michael Leonard.

Mr. Harris plunged into the project, quitting his Observer job to work full time at making the Georgia Theatre a success.

“We expanded the stage greatly, created two dressing rooms, replaced the floor rugs, put in a $25,000 lighting and sound system, built a cooler large enough to hold 20 kegs of draft beer and had to run tubes for the kegs through 4-foot-thick concrete,” he said. “The icing on the cake – one of my fondest nightmares – was we had to pay $600 to put back the old movie house seats into the place that had been removed. We had them all steam cleaned.

“Then two weeks before we were to open, a building inspector made us replace all the ceiling tiles. That resulted in about 80 years of accumulated dirt dropping onto our freshly steam-cleaned seats.”

The hall opened in January 1978 with sold-out shows by Sea Level and David Allan Coe.

“I got to know (Sea Level founder) Chuck Leavell over the years,” Mr. Harris said. “I talked with him at a celebrity hunt when I was on the national board of Quail Unlimited. He was playing keyboards for the Rolling Stones.

“He said, ‘You look familiar to me,’ and I told him that I had owned a place in Athens where his band had played. He said, “The Georgia Theatre! That’s the greatest acoustical place I’ve ever played in my entire life.”

Mr. Harris has great stories of the famous names that played there: John Hartford, Muddy Waters, B.B. King, Sting when he was with the Police, Tom Waits, and especially a little-known Athens band called The B-52s.

Mr. Smartt called Mr. Harris to talk about the fire
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