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Mick Harper
Site Admin
In: London
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By the usual happy coincidence, I was digging out a piece Hatty and I did about the Greek Dark Age (put on hold for the present book) to send to a Fomenko-ist, when this turned up on medium.com
The Lesser-Known Dark Ages Which You Have Probably Never Heard Of Prateek Dasgupta
https://historyofyesterday.com/the-lesser-known-dark-ages-which-you-have-probably-never-heard-of-100e2713e493 |
It turned out to be just the one, the Greek Dark Age, but at least the bloke had very properly widened the scope
| Cities across the Mediterranean, North Africa, and the Middle East fell apart during the late Bronze Age. Sophisticated civilizations were destroyed, and they never recovered. The world plunged into an era of darkness. |
And topical too
| An important lesson for us from the Bronze Age collapse is to realize a globalized world has fragile systems which can suffer from disruptions. What happens in one part of the world can change the lives of humans elsewhere. |
So we'd best find out what happened...
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Mick Harper
Site Admin
In: London
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| Why did they collapse? Historians in the late nineteenth century attributed the reason for the downfall to Sea Peoples, relying on ancient Egyptian sources. |
I don't think you should be quite so dismissive, the entire chronology of ancient history relies on Egyptian sources. More's the pity.
| The Sea Peoples were a group of invaders who appeared unannounced on the beaches of the Bronze Age cities and razed them. They looted, murdered, and left nothing but ashes behind. And suddenly they vanished! |
I think Alexandria is still there. But one can see the problem of getting sea-people to polish off all the societies that didn't live on the coastline of the Eastern Med. Still, by your tone I can tell you're confident twentieth century academics have come up with the real reason.
| When we analyze the causes of the Bronze Age collapse, famines are one of the strongest suspects. |
A six hundred year famine! Call Greta Thunberg.
| But what happened because of droughts? The irrigation and agriculture systems got affected. |
Now there, I one hundred per cent agree with you. Drought - irrigation - agriculture, it's a straight line to hell. Great minds, eh? Got anything else, it's still a bit thin even by historians' standards..
| Some scientists blame diseases for the bronze age’s demise, but they were the product of failed sanitary systems. |
A bit harsh, some of my best friends are scientists. But fair. However, I seem to have lost faith in science when it comes to worldwide disease. Dunno why, just a feeling. If that's it on the causal side, can we move on to the more exciting effect side. Plenty of tearing of hair, please. Maybe a bared breast but I leave the details to you...
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Mick Harper
Site Admin
In: London
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Those who lived in complex urban centers abandoned them. They moved to the foothills of mountains or in rural places remote from towns.
Villages from a previous, less refined era replaced sophisticated urban planning. Humans began to live in mud houses rather than brick structures.
As inhabitants watched their cities filling up with the dead and diseases spread, they fled. The new towns in the foothills lacked the sanitary levels found in urban areas, and it would be some time before it was restored.
The intricate international trading system imploded. Though trade was carried out among the new upcoming settlements, the volume wasn’t the same. The accounting systems, which documented every tax receipt and trade agreement, vanished.
Weights and measures which were common among the civilizations of the era stopped being used, barring Egypt and Assyria.
Farmers were given instructions on when and how to harvest their crops since management during the Bronze Age was centralized and top-down. Because of the world collapsing, such commands stopped coming from the top, and the farms were gradually abandoned.
Art and crafts also suffered during this period. Lacking royal patronage, the pottery post Bronze era was significantly poorer than the beauty seen before. Because humans had to undertake several activities for daily survival, devoted potters may have died out, and the craft suffered. Steady on, old chap, we have women and children among our readers. But we here are more concerned with history. There's an awful lot to write about and I bet there was no shortage of Jeremiahs queuing up to tell us about it. "Gripe, grips, gripe; winge, winge winge" signed 'Disgusted of Tigris Wells'.
| The disappearance of writing was the greatest tragedy of the Bronze Age collapse. Training scribes, who were professional writers and record keepers during the Bronze Age, was a costly procedure. They had to be schooled from a young age and devote their entire lives to their craft. With the economy in free fall, there was no money for the central authority to pay the scribes, so they gave up their profession. Writing systems perished, and it would take 400 years for writing and record-keeping to be restored at the start of the Classical Era. |
Now that, if you don't mind my saying so, is a real nuisance. It's a miracle you were able to tell us so much about it yourself.
Signed 'Disgusted of the AEL'
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Mick Harper
Site Admin
In: London
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Remember what you must have in order to declare a Dark Age. Or what you mustn't have. Take pottery. Now that's something human beings have been doing since the Stone Age. And pottery lasts in the ground since the Stone Age, so there's no disguising whether human beings are doing it or not. So that definitely qualifies the Sea Peoples' Dark Age -- every single one of them forgot how for six hundred years.
By the by, they used to say this about our own Dark Age but it was so ridiculous that they have ceased saying it. I don't know the current status of 'British Pottery 400 -1000 AD' but I expect something has been cobbled together. If that isn't a mixed metaphor. Roman shoes survived but not so much Anglo-Saxon ones. They had to go barefoot, dummy.
Then there's the literacy bit. That's much more modern, c 3000 BC, but just as useful so everyone forgetting how it's done is just as puzzling. Though not perhaps as puzzling as doing it much the way they did it after they'd remembered again. We call that 'folk memory' in the trade.
I have to say though that the idea of living in the country being less healthy than living in towns is absolutely true. Have you been out there lately? There's shit all over the fields. Come on, Farmer Giles, get that reversed polythene bag, start picking it all up and then putting it in a wheelie bin. Not Dark Age Farmer Giles's obviously, they've lost the knowledge of the wheel. And now the state's collapsed, they can forget about Assyrian set aside payments.
Good point about the Decline of Art though. The Turner Prize tries for the same effect but it just doesn't do it for me.
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Mick Harper
Site Admin
In: London
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We are often inveighing against the academics' insistence on conflating what used to be the Dark Ages and what used to be the Middle Ages so they are now one seamless whole, the better to hide the join. This came from academia.edu this morning
British Poetry in Its Social and Historical Context
VOL I: The Middle Ages [Course Notes]
Christophe Den Tandt |
Two things to note: it is unusual to use the word 'British' in this context. Very few scholars are comfortable handling English, Lallans, Welsh and Gaelic poetry. But perhaps all in a day's work for someone who appears to be Dutch.
ABSTRACT
These course notes provide BA-level students with an introduction to the main features of the history of poetry in Britain. This first volume focuses notably on Anglo-Saxon poetry (Beowulf), the Alliterative Revival (Sir Gawain and the Green Knight), and Geoffrey Chaucer. |
Or perhaps not. To go from eighth century to fourteenth without drawing breath may be the truth, Christophe, but not as undergraduates are taught it. Citizenship and tenure denied. Next!
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Mick Harper
Site Admin
In: London
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| WATERMILL UNCOVERED WITH ANGLO SAXON ORIGINS ARCHAEOLOGISTS FROM COTSWOLD ARCHAEOLOGY HAVE UNCOVERED A WATERMILL AS PART OF THE HS2 ARCHAEOLOGY PROGRAM.https://www.heritagedaily.com/2023/03/watermill-uncovered-with-anglo-saxon-origins/146503 |
This is big! We'd better circle the globe with news that the Anglo-Saxons, apart from all the other manifold wonders they wrought, were using watermills. I knew HS2 would serve some useful purpose eventually.
| Excavations were conducted in conjunction with partners from CA and COPA, near the town of Buckingham in Buckinghamshire, England. |
You can't get kosherer than that.
| Historical records in the 1086 Domesday book, a manuscript record of the “Great Survey” of much of England and parts of Wales at the behest of King William I (known as William the Conqueror), show that the site was part of an earlier Anglo-Saxon estate that developed after the year 949. |
But no mention of a watermill, one of the most valuable assets of any estate. Heads rolled about that, I shouldn't wonder.
| Excavations revealed that the site was first occupied during prehistory, with the discovery of a possible ring ditch and a Mesolithic mace head found in a post-medieval quarry pit. The mace head possibly originated from a truncated deposit internal to the putative ring ditch. |
Yes, yes, get on with it, we want to hear about the Anglo-Saxon watermill.
| The first depiction of a watermill can be found in 17th century historic maps, which fell in disuse by 1825 and was repurposed until eventually being demolished in the 1940’s. |
Yes, yes, get on with it, we want to hear about the Anglo-Saxon watermill.
| Archaeological remains suggest that the watermill came into use during the 13th century, evidenced by partially exposed remains of three timber beams set in a substantial clay packing deposit, possibly forming the corner of a timber structure. Features relating to the watermill, bypass channel, mill race and outflow pond were still extant on site at the start of the archaeological works. |
Yes, yes, get on with it, we want to hear about the Anglo-Saxon watermill.
| The final phase of mill structures was constructed in the late post-medieval period, indicated by substantial structures designed to funnel water to the mill wheel. The height of the walls and the wide funnel suggest the potential for a large volume of water to be flowing; however, the surviving mill race has a very gentle gradient, possibly as a result of modern management of the ditch following the mill’s disuse. |
Yes, yes, get on with it, we want to hear about the Anglo-Saxon watermill.
| Excavations also revealed an associated building that contained two rooms constructed predominantly with stone. A series of postholes formed an internal partition within the northern room, which enclosed a stone rubble surface. A brick floor surface survived in the southern room, which (along with material recovered from the walls) are dated to the 18th century onwards. |
Yes, yes, get on with it, we want to hear about the Anglo-Saxon watermill. Oh, that's it. There'll be follow-up piece about the Anglo-Saxon watermill, will there?
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Mick Harper
Site Admin
In: London
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Fresh in!
THE ANGLO-SAXON MIGRATION: NEW INSIGHTS FROM GENETICS ALMOST THREE HUNDRED YEARS AFTER THE ROMANS LEFT, SCHOLARS LIKE BEDE WROTE ABOUT THE ANGLES AND THE SAXONS AND THEIR MIGRATIONS TO THE BRITISH ISLES.
Scholars of many disciplines, including archaeology, history, linguists and genetics, have debated what his words might have described, and what the scale, the nature and the impact of human migration were at that time.
https://www.heritagedaily.com/2022/09/the-anglo-saxon-migration-new-insights-from-genetics/144721 |
Yes, odd isn’t it? Are there any other countries that have been debating their origins based on a purported fifteen hundred year old report from a monk who never left his cloistered calm in the far north-east?
| New genetic results now show that around 75 percent of the population in Eastern and Southern England was made up of migrant families whose ancestors must have originated from continental regions bordering the North Sea |
This is from the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology so listen up!
| including the Netherlands, Germany and Denmark |
There are others?
| What is more, these families |
‘ang about. Why are we talking about families all of a sudden? I thought the Angles and the Saxons were, you know, mostly unaccompanied migrants. “Shift those halberds, I’m not having my wife and kids in steerage.”
| interbred with the existing population of Britain |
'ang about. Aren't you putting the oxwagon before the ox? The reason archaeologists, historians, linguists and (now) geneticists have been arguing for so long is that the traditional model is that the existing population was either killed or driven into Wales, Cornwall etc.
| but importantly this integration varied from region to region and community to community. |
Why so? Don’t they like a nice bit of interbreeding in the midlands, the north, the south… And let's not talk about 'communities', it's a delicate subject in this area. Well, we'd better find out. Over to you, Max.
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Mick Harper
Site Admin
In: London
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| “With 278 ancient genomes from England and hundreds more from Europe, we now gained really fascinating insights into population-scale and individual histories during post-Roman times”, says Joscha Gretzinger, a lead author of the study. “Not only do we now have an idea of the scale of migration, but also how it played out in communities and families.” |
A real josher, our Joscha. If you honestly think the current state of our knowledge about population palaeogenetics as applied to the British Isles gives us the scale of Dark Age population movements and (get this) how they 'played out in communities' and (why stop there?) 'familes', you're a joshing marvel. But now you've solved it all, is there any need to go on? Yes...
| Using published genetic data from more than 4,000 ancient and 10,000 present-day Europeans, Gretzinger and colleagues identified subtle genetic differences between the closely related groups inhabiting the ancient North Sea region. |
OK, give us your thoughts on the present population then. If you do, we'll give your Dark Age conclusions house room. But remember, nobody else has managed to do this.
| Upon arrival, the migrants intermixed with the local population. |
Yes, so you were saying. Maybe you can give us an example.
| In one case, in an Anglo-Saxon cemetery from Buckland near Dover, researchers were able to reconstruct a family tree across at least four generations and identify the point in time when migrants and locals intermarried. |
If I had to nominate the one town in Britain worst placed to provide benchmarks for genetic mingling, I'd probably nominate Dover. Though the offspring of prostitutes in the London docks would give them a run for their money.
| This family showed a large degree of interaction between the two gene pools. |
I bet she did. I bet you're now going to switch to high-status stuff not related to dockland areas.
| Overall, the researchers witnessed burials of prominent status across the studied cemeteries of both local and migrant origin. |
I'm getting out of my overalls, I've got sick all down them. But I'll be back...
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Wile E. Coyote
In: Arizona
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According to ortho, the only invaders that left a lasting genetic legacy are the Anglo-Saxons, as they were blessed with wood. The Romans might have had concrete but like the Normans were impotent. You need wood.
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Mick Harper
Site Admin
In: London
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| Rosemary Cramp, who has died aged 93, was a key player in establishing that archaeology could make significant contributions to understanding medieval times, a concept that had been scorned by both archaeologists and historians. |
I think they've been proved right. Rosemary Cramp is a name that regularly pops up in Hatty's broadsides so I though I'd quote a few snippets from the Guardian's obit. Not this one
| At Oxford she was tutored by Iris Murdoch, who dedicated her 1978 novel The Sea, The Sea to her. |
but first, this one
| From a lifetime’s career at Durham University, where she was the first female professor, she led major excavations at the Venerable Bede’s twin monastery of Wearmouth-Jarrow, as well as an ambitious project to record every piece of Anglo-Saxon stone sculpture in England – now nearly completed. |
Given that there is not a single authenticated A/S sculpture (that I know of) I'm surprised such a short list hasn't been completed yet. Though I suppose the search for unicorns is never finished.
| In 1959 she began her own excavation at Monkwearmouth (as Wearmouth is known today), followed by further excavation at Jarrow in 1963. Antiquaries had long been aware of the sites’ association with Bede, but had largely dismissed the likelihood of monastic remains surviving. |
How right they were.
| However, continuing on and off at Wearmouth into the 1970s and Jarrow the 90s, Cramp and colleagues revealed remains of large stone buildings that had once boasted lead roofing, painted and sculptured wall decoration, important sculptures and windows with coloured glass – fragments from which exceeded quantities found at any other comparable European site. All this was detailed in two substantial monographs in 2005 and 2006, bringing a close to what Cramp described as “a large part of my life”, shared on site by hundreds of students and local volunteers. |
You would have thought some of it would have revealed a Christian monastery but apparently not.
| She launched a small museum and education programme from her Jarrow excavations, which ultimately grew into Bede’s World, a museum and Anglo-Saxon farm with experimental buildings and rare-breed animals, on a reclaimed industrial landscape. |
You can see why they might have to pad things out with a farm.
| Meanwhile she was tracking down finds across England for the Corpus of Anglo-Saxon Stone Sculpture. This monumental undertaking, run from Durham with a large team of specialist consultants and volunteers scouring the country, has to date published 13 volumes, from County Durham and Northumberland (1984) to Derbyshire and Staffordshire (2018). The number of known sites has risen from around 200 to more than 1,000, and more than 3,500 individual stones can be studied in print and online. |
They found thirteen volumes of the unicorn studbook though still no unicorns.
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Hatty
Site Admin
In: Berkshire
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In view of our obsession with ivory generated by the 'Franks Casket', a post in Time Team's Facebook group grabbed my attention with a headline trumpeting
| Enigmatic Anglo-Saxon ivory rings discovered in elite burials came from African elephants 4,000 miles away |
https://www.livescience.com/archaeology/enigmatic-anglo-saxon-ivory-rings-discovered-in-elite-burials-came-from-african-elephants-4000-miles-away?fbclid=IwAR3LOgBwQe5gi4lwGjPl-7Fr71eLS_IeUjx5Y-H-Y0k6gjP00-OTlUVvdIU
Archaeologists from Sheffield say ivory used for bag rings was imported to England between the 5th and 7th centuries AD. I haven't heard of bag rings but they are quite a common grave good it seems
Ivory bag rings have been found in more than 70 cemeteries across southern, central, and eastern England dating to between the late-5th and 7th centuries AD. These rings are most frequently found in richly furnished female graves, and would have served as the framework for bags that hung at the waist.
Debate over the source of this ivory has prevailed since the 19th century, with walrus and mammoth ivory considered as possible contenders to elephantid ivory. |
I didn't think it would problematic determining the animal species to which the ivory belonged. Now thanks to 'cutting-edge scientific techniques' they can pinpoint time and place, up to a point
| "Using radiocarbon dating this study aimed to establish whether the rings were contemporary with the burials before seeking to identify the species of ivory through Zooarchaeology by mass spectrometry (ZooMS). Strontium analysis was also used to identify the place of residence of the elephantids at the time of tusk formation. Through a multi-methodological approach, we have established that the ivory used for the Scremby bag rings came from elephants living in an area of young volcanic rocks in Africa at some point during the 5th and 6th centuries AD.." |
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2352409X23001189?via%3Dihub
It isn't clear how the burials from a 'previously unknown Anglo-Saxon cemetery' were dated. Presumably they used radiocarbon dating as per the elephant ivory but, rather oddly, there's no mention of the burials being carbon dated despite the "excellent preservation of the skeletal remains". That article was written in January 2019 so they should know by now.
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Mick Harper
Site Admin
In: London
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This is all very odd. Since CITES (Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species) got going, the one study (I thought) had been well-financed and well-established is the identification and origin of ivory. But it seems not.
Let's hope our modern savants don't make the mistake nineteenth century savants made with the Franks Casket who mistook whale baleen for ivory. This was understandable because Anglo-Saxons had limited abilities when it came to harpooning whales, unlike nineteenth century casket-makers who were, ahem, swimming in the stuff.
| there's no mention of the burials being carbon dated despite the "excellent preservation of the skeletal remains." That article was written in January 2019 so they should know by now. |
When you have already used mass spectrometry, strontium analysis and 'a multi-methodological approach', one would think the more basic -- and cheaper -- carbon test on one of the ivory-wearers would have been performed at some time. Maybe it was and the result came back as "That's obviously wrong. Remind me to order up another one sometime."
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Mick Harper
Site Admin
In: London
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Here's some high comedy from Quora which says something about the present debate. It asked this mildly intriguing question:
| Why did the medieval Scots refer to the English as Sassenach (Saxons) when presumably they would’ve had more interactions with the Angles of Bernicia/Northumbria? Dimitris Almyrantis |
My own first thought would be that 'Sassenach' is a very modern term, perhaps even as late as nineteenth century, but this was not broached by Dimitris [Greek but lived in Scotland]
| Dimitris Almyrantis wrote: | | Interestingly, Northumbria was an Anglo-Saxon kingdom with a Gaelic religious establishment; the motherhouse of Northumbria’s central monastery at Lindisfarne was Iona, the holy place of St. Columba and the Scottish Gaels / Dalriada. The interaction was more than close: most of the great Northumbrian kings had been raised as Gaelic-speaking fosterlings at Iona. The Northumbrian king Aldfrith kept composing Gaelic poetry in the classical tradition throughout his life; the project of a Northumbrian empire ‘of all the Britains’ was promoted by the monastic tradition of Iona. |
This is all new to me (the political bit) and even if thoroughly bogus ought not to be. Still it does not address the central Anglian/Sassenach question.
| At the same time, keep in mind the Gaelic Scots did not occupy most of modern Scotland at the time. Before the Vikings, British-Welsh kingdoms (albeit possibly Gaelicizing in culture) were interposed between the Anglo-Saxons and Scots. (“Pictland” is misleading; there were two Pictish kingdoms, in Fife and Moray). |
I don't know when this could have been since Northumbria is supposed to be coeval with the other A/S kingdoms but anyway still no reference to the Anglian/Sassenach question.
| Second, contact went far beyond direct proximity on a modern map. Kings in 6th century Britain were part of a pan-insular playground: the chief ruler (Bretanwealda, in Anglo-Saxon terms) asserted an overall supremacy. The Gaelic king of Scotland from the 9th century on was Ardri Alban, “high king of Britain”; the word for Scotland (Alba) is the Gaelic word for Britain, and continued being used that way in Gaelic tradition. Medieval Britain did not have an implicit Celt-Saxon distinction; it was obvious to anyone that the true king was the king of both. Also: the same period is full of things like Canute of Denmark ruling England and Norway at once, the daughter of the king of Wessex marrying the Grand Prince of all Rus’ in Kiev, Irish scholars going to teach on the continent, Greek scholars being invited to teach in England, etc. Travelling over a large part of Britain was quite common (indeed expected) for elites. Lastly, there wasn’t much of an Anglo-Saxon distinction. That’s why the terms merged together. |
Fabulous stuff but we are none the wiser on the Anglian/Sassenach question. Careful ignoral is doing its job splendidly even though it is being carefully examined! I did though have to smile at one of the answers it evoked
| Rinaldo Frezzato, history teacher, late of Reading University, wrote: | | Excellent piece of work. Very interesting indeed. There is a common misconception that the above the present border between England and Scotland, Gaelic people lived and below it Anglo Saxons. I remember James Naughtie, the Scottish BBC newsreader was told after a DNA test being told that he was 100% Anglo Saxon he refused to believe it! |
It looks as though the Anglian/Sassenach question will have to be dealt with by those curious folk at the AEL.
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Wile E. Coyote
In: Arizona
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Looks like a bit of fun to me, like calling someone a North Saxon. You are not on the map Sassenach.
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