Megalithic Terraforming (British History)

[Mick Harper]

Those of you watching Country File last night would have seen the difficulty protecting even so valuable a site as St Andrews golf course. If only we had the Megalithics' knowledge in this area.

[Hatty]

It demonstrated the importance of reeds as stabilisers for dunes and banks, which keep cropping up all over the place cf. Moses baskets, sacred islands like Ely, etc. Trouble is they make ideal hiding-places for critters so you then need things like weasels and owls, or hawks as St. Andrews have found.

[Mick Harper]

Megalithic Terraforming (cont)

When it comes to the Megalithic countryside academics' understanding is so limited that they are just as prone to make the opposite error, assuming something is deliberately engineered when in fact it is the result of inadvertent intervention. Take the famous phenomenon of the British 'Iron Age Hillforts'. These anomalous but often spectacular features of the countryside have been mapped in detail:

Map of hillfort distribution in southern England and Wales

There are about two thousand known examples in the British Isles and Ireland, some of which have signs of habitation, others none. No overall pattern has ever been discerned but as they were all on hills and all had at least a rudimentary enclosure of some kind round their summit, they are collectively and universally referred to as 'hillforts'. They are of course nothing of the kind.

[Mick Harper]

Megalithic Terraforming (cont)

Only a small proportion of 'iron age hillforts' have actually been investigated in any detail and while they were certainly present in the Iron Age, when they actually came into existence is not so easily decided. This is not the only puzzle:

1. Hillforts exist in staggering profusion. It is a curious society that demands a fort every few miles, and certainly not one that corresponds with what we know about the British Iron Age which was divided up into fair-sized and effective political units.

2. Very few hillforts seem suited to actually keeping an enemy out for more than a few minutes. Either they are enormous, like Maiden Castle in Dorset, and would have required tens of thousands to man the ramparts, or they are so small as to be scarcely worth the bother. But even the middle-size ones seem curiously impractical. For the most part, the hills are not unduly steep and the walls not very formidable.

3. Hilltops are actually very poor places on which to site permanent fortifications. The walls are easily undermined by besiegers and access to water is always very limited. (Neither of these considerations applies to rocky outrops which make excellent fortifications but hillforts are not built on rocky outcrops. Except see below.)

4. On the other hand hillforts do seem to last quite well. Most archaeological sites require a certain degree of work before their date and function become clear, but the Iron Age hillforts have, as it were, presented themselves for our inspection, in complete contrast to the dearth of British Iron Age archaeology in general.

[Mick Harper]

Megalithic Terraforming (cont)

It is this last point that betrays their true origin. These 'hillforts' are simply artefacts created by megalithic land use practices. The one thing that all ancient societies are obliged to do is to create 'kraals', places where animals can be penned at night. This is a requirement in any pre-modern society because the existence of large predatory animals (not excluding human beings) makes concentration and protection of domesticated animals at night an inescapable duty.

Since domestic animals were introduced into the British countryside c 5000 BC the question then arises: what does five thousand years of kraals -- that is, up to the end of the Iron Age c 0 BC -- do to a rapidly eroding landscape? Since the entire British landscape had only been eroding for a little more than twice that length of time the effect of kraals, if they do effect erosion, will certainly be very great. So what is that effect?

The term 'wattle-and-daub' is familiar enough, the mixing and then compressing of soil and animal waste to make durable house walls, but where does the idea come from? It comes from what happens when animals are penned together in purpose-built enclosures. They stir up, manure and then compress the surface eventually forming a hard crust which, it is observed, seems to last forever despite everything the elements throw at it and hence is ideal for building house walls.

Or to put it back the other way, when placed in a permanent enclosure, animals produce natural wattle-and-daub. It is perhaps difficult to apply the lesson horizontally but penned-up animals will be creating artificial islands of especially durable, element-proof ground. So, when general erosion of the entire area takes place, everywhere except that part protected by the animal 'wattle-and-daub' will erode and will continue to do so ad infinitum, by anything from a few feet to hundreds of metres depending on local conditions. This phenomenon is entirely familiar in the form of geological 'plugs' standing proud in the landscape because they are made of material that is relatively less prone to erosion than the surrounding area.

Since animal enclosures are necessary every few miles and since animal enclosures are comparatively immune to erosion, it follows that ultimately patches of uneroded level ground will remain standing proud from the surrounding area of ordinary farmland. By definition, every one of these patches of higher ground will have archaeological evidence of a continuous animal-proof barrier all around the summit because that is how they were built originally, to keep the animals in and other things out. That barrier is also by definition the limit of the natural wattle-and-daub so will always surround the present summit. The kraal of course was built on level ground originally.

[Mick Harper]

Megalithic Terraforming (cont)

One doesn't like to be charitable to archaeologists but it is true that subsequent events can make correct identification tricky. What we mistake for hillforts are obviously potential sites for the later building of actual hillforts, and some may indeed have been used for this purpose. Others, being physically places of local eminence, got used for, in that famous phrase, high status dwellings. One or two (and the evidence suggests it was only one or two, which is curious if they truly were built as hillforts) have been used in battles as defensive redoubts. After all, there is nothing intrinsically unlikely about armies seeking out local heights for a defensive battle.

The rainfall map of Britain is reasonably definitive in proving that hillforts are essentially uneroded landscape features. The greatest erosive agent of topsoil is rainfall, so it ought to follow that the more rain the more likely it is that kraals will produce these distinctive topological features. Here is the rainfall map of southern Britain which shows clearly that hillforts correlate more or less exactly with rainfall, except for the three areas of greatest rainfall--the Cambrian mountains, Exmoor and Dartmoor--which are all areas where local conditions are sufficiently extreme as to make the kraaling of livestock impossible in the first place. In these areas specially hardy breeds have always been left to their own devices and rounded up once or twice a year.

[Mick Harper]

Megalithic Terraforming (cont)

Natural wattle-and-daub is also the explanation for 'ridgeways'. It has always been something of a puzzle why ancient long distance paths are so often sited along ridges, rather than in the valleys. The usual explanation for this is that it is important to keep animals-in-transit separated from the local farmstock; that ridgeways are often drier and more negotiable than valley bottoms; and that it is easier to exact tolls from a specialised route.

All this may well be true but it is equally true that ridgeways are frequently cold, windswept and altogether rather unpleasant. The explanation for this apparent contradiction is that what are now 'ridgeways' were originally specialised drovers' routes 'at ground level' and that constant use by animals created the wattle-and-daub effect quite naturally and thus within a relatively short period erosion of the entire land surface will leave these artificially protected strips standing clear of the surrounding countryside, to create continuous elevated ridgelines. *

* Just to complete the picture, 'green lanes' are formed in valley bottoms where the 'ridgeway' process cannot operate because material is being constantly deposited rather than being eroded.

[Mick Harper]

Megalithic Terraforming (cont)

So now there is a complete explanation not only for hillforts and ridgeways but why hillforts are so often to be found along ridgeways. The whole system is the end-product of millions of beasts tramping for thousands of years along the same restricted routes. It is the counterpart of the patchwork of organic paths that get made in and around the villages because once the wattle-and-daub effect gets going it introduces the same self-reinforcing effect of each user finding the way ahead has been semi-forced on him by all those who have gone before.

[End Megalithic Terraforming]

[Mick Harper]

A hilarious example of wood-for-the-trees on Time Team. They were digging up Castle Hill at the southern limits of the Somerset Levels. It was obvious to the dimmest half-wit that the hill was entirely artificial (it looked exactly like nearby Glastonbury Tor, Silbury Hill etc etc) but of course our archaeologists couldn't even summon up this possibility. Everybody knows the Ancient Brits ran out puff after constructing Silbury.

No, they spent three days looking for a castle on the summit. 'Phil' kept digging deeper and deeper and 'couldn't find the floor'. Which is not surprising since it was several hundred feet below him. Nobody, even once, wondered why the spoil from every single trench they dug, anywhere on the hill, was a uniform yellowy/sandy/ pebbly soil. Some geology that!

You can watch the whole programme here
http://www.channel4.com/programmes/time-team/4od

[Hatty]

The most plausible reason given for building a castle on Castle Hill is that it overlooks an important trading route, the Fosse Way. Another good reason for a Norman presence could be that the manor of Crewkerne belonged, according to wiki, to Edith Swan-Neck, Harold's concubine.

The status of Fosse Way as a Roman road seems even more dubious now I realise its link between the prehistoric Icknield Way (aka the Michael Line), which it intersects somewhere between Wells and Bath, to Ermine Street.

Crewkerne seems to have a crow connection since they talk about Castle Hill being confused with Crow Castle. Fosse Way is presumed to be Roman because of its unambiguous straightness.

[Mick Harper]

Spot the mistake re the Gwent Levels (from Wiki)

[Boreades]

[Mick Harper]

Yes, very good. However it is not entirely seemple because, as we are slowly learning elsewhere, the pre-Romans might not have wanted to drain the area, preferring water coming in and out for hydraulic reasons. The Romans, like ourselves, liked things to be cut-and-dried.

[Wile E. Coyote]

Elsewhere, over on ME Spiral is suggesting that the megalithic building block is the humble terrace....and this might have played a part in the domestication of plants, animals, water and fire.

Could it be the case that the ancients having worked out things years before Darwin, invented the causewayed island, along with the need to purify/clean decontaminate your feet through salty water, as a way of helping nature travel in the right direction?

[Mick Harper]

Rather ingenious, Coyote, except that the causewayed island is not a very effective bio-nome (or whatever you call it). The main problem is that twice a day everybody and everything has more or less free access to the place. A true offshore island ... now that might be a different matter. And of course the causeway is there to prevent feet coming into contact with saltwater.

While I have your attention, Hatty and I are attending the following on Friday and will report back. Anybody else coming might make themselves known to us. The speaker is a fan of The Megalithic Empire as well as a luminary-of-the-movement.