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Scotching the Scotch : from the east or from the west? (British History)
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Ishmael


In: Toronto
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Seems to me the site plan is practically identical, judging from Ray's description. Moreover, at both locals, the entrance to each "house" (and I'm not convinced they were houses at all) was through the roof.

I don't know much about Skara Brae but I seem to remember that all of the "houses" are interconnected, round-shaped (if I remember correctly) and that the people who lived there threw there refuse over the walls such that each "home" is surrounded by a mound of garbage (which then provided insulation). I also thought I recalled that each house was entered via the roof.
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Mick Harper
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It's a tough one to decide. The top-down entrances are quite clear at Catal Hyuk but they are only notional at Skara Brae, in the sense that the dwellings don't seem to have ordinary discrete entrances and exits. But then again traditonal university colleges and monasteries don't have "ordinary discrete entrances and exits". Just one big one.
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Ishmael


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It's a tough one to decide. The top-down entrances are quite clear at Catal Hyuk but they are only notional at Skara Brae, in the sense that the dwellings don't seem to have ordinary discrete entrances and exits. But then again traditonal university colleges and monasteries don't have "ordinary discrete entrances and exits". Just one big one.

Has it ever occurred to anyone that the reason there are no entries or exits is that the persons inside were not meant to leave? That is, after all, the meaning of being cloistered. That would also explain why the garbage is piled up round -- no one could go outside to put it in the bins!
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DPCrisp


In: Bedfordshire
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I don't know much about Skara Brae but I seem to remember that all of the "houses" are interconnected, round shaped (if I remember correctly) and that the people who lived there threw there refuse over the walls such that each "home" is surrounded by a mound of garbage (which then provided insulation). I also thought I recalled that each house was entered via the roof.

Isn't Catal Hayak the one (one of the ones) where they buried their dead under their floors, then seemingly razed - well, flattened - the whole place and rebuilt on the same plan? Anyway, it's a tell that now stands several metres above the plain, after a thousand years (or whatever) of occupation. It's rectilinear and most walls are party walls. (Dunno about throwing out the rubbish.) They must have walked over each others' roofs to reach their own ceiling entrance. It's all mud brick and plaster, I think.

Skara Brae is curvaceous, by contrast, and much smaller. I haven't heard about the rubbish there either, but I guess each 'house' was free-standing... There are normal, if low, doorways with lintels, but nothing above that. (I have no idea about windows or roofs.) That's ground level now, coz all the intervening spaces are filled with sand. They're clustered around shared path/passageways, affording shelter from the elements. {Not facing the rising Sun, then. That's unusual.} It's a one-off construction of dry stones, but with a sewer system and indoor toilets.

It was revealed in 18whatever when a violent storm ripped the turf off the sand dunes. {I was gonna say that's one small piece of evidence against it being a domestic settlement -- who the hell would choose to live where the storms are so violent they rip up the grass?? -- but Orcadians live there still. I'll leave Mick to cast nasturtiums.}
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DPCrisp


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Just about every house at Catal Hayak has a shrine... I wonder whether the whole thing was some sort of necropolis.

The Catal Hayak plan would do better as a prison, but who knows? Maybe the Orkneys were prison islands... Maybe they're named for the Underworld because no one was expected to return.
(I'd prefer the centre of learning and initiation option though.)
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Mick Harper
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Necropolis isn't half bad -- at any rate for Catal Hayuk. Presumably people (upscale people?) would go to some trouble to make the dead "feel at home", thereby fooling archaeologists into diagnosing domestic architecture and it would explain the top-down one-way entrances. Did archaeologists find much in the way of evidence-of-occupation i.e. stuff over and above the usual funerary food-and-drink-and-trinkets? One would think, if there is any science in archaeology, they could tell the difference between what is produced by the living and what is produced by the dead. It's not beyond possibility that Skara Brae is the same -- think boats with black sails, Island of Repose, windswept barren landscape, wailing and gnashing of teeth etc etc. Maybe each funeral party had to build their own "home" for the departed. But again I presume archaeology can decide.

My point about nobody wanting to live on Skara Brae is this
a) when the British Isles are "full up" by the standards of the time then, yes, the Orkneys are perfectly capable of sustaining a bit of modest settlement
b) but Skara Brae is, we are told, the earliest "village" in the British Isles which means that the Brits chose Skara Brae over all the rest of Britain to site their first village, which is perverse to the point of unacceptability.
c) unless Skara Brae was actually chosen for its remote awfulness which is perfectly possible for monasteries (and necropolises).
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DPCrisp


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I presume archaeology can decide.

Not if it never occurs to them to ask the question. If only the world of the living weren't deliberately replicated for the dead... How can we tell people coming from miles around to trade from people coming from miles around to bury their dead?

a) when the British Isles are "full up" by the standards of the time then, yes, the Orkneys are perfectly capable of sustaining a bit of modest settlement

There is some indication that they didn't, e.g. few remains of whole animals, as if pre-butchered cuts were brought in. But they'll bend over backwards to show that any old piece of scrub can produce a modest living. In the Shetlands, they have the broch-builders spreading alkaline sand all over their acidic soil because a few burnt grains have been found...

b) but Skara Brae is, we are told, the earliest "village" in the British Isles which means that the Brits chose Skara Brae over all the rest of Britain to site their first village, which is perverse to the point of unacceptability.

They keep mangling "earliest so far found" into "first that ever existed". Anyway, it's not true any more is it? Older clusters of houses have been found, mostly up north {where the rate of domestic churn doesn't obliterate the evidence so fast?}.

c) unless Skara Brae was actually chosen for its remote awfulness which is perfectly possible for monasteries (and necropolises).

They do like to throw in a slack handful of climate change every now and then though, so be careful. But with a name like Orkney, the Underworld -- Hell, if you prefer -- it's gotta be off the beaten track.

{Or they went there to commune with Orcae (?), whales... Still off the beaten track, especially if there is a convoluted route back to Wales...}
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Ishmael


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The Catal Hayak plan would do better as a prison, but who knows? Maybe the Orkneys were prison islands... Maybe they're named for the Underworld because no one was expected to return.

No one was expected to leave....but that didn't make them prisons. They were monastaries where monks or vestal virgins of a sort were locked up -- perhaps to function as oracles to people on the outside. Just a guess.
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Ishmael


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Necropolis isn't half bad -- at any rate for Catal Hayuk. Presumably people (upscale people?) would go to some trouble to make the dead "feel at home", thereby fooling archaeologists into diagnosing domestic architecture and it would explain the top-down one-way entrances.

Right! That's the other notion I've been toying with too! That it's all tombs!

Did archaeologists find much in the way of evidence-of-occupation i.e. stuff over and above the usual funerary food-and-drink-and trinkets? One would think, if there is any science in archaeology, they could tell the difference between what is produced by the living and what is produced by the dead.

The garbage piled up around the houses at Skara Brae though would suggest that the buildings were occupied.
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DPCrisp


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Mr Google tells me they reckon the 'village' was built into the midden heap, rather than the midden accumulating around the buildings. That sets the mind racing. Living in shit, as it were, sounds like a 'hippy' thing to do... They were effectively living underground (with the passageways covered over, apparently), troll-, dwarf- or gnome-fashion... Or it simply put the midden to a practical use for which it is better suited than the wind-blown sand alternative... Or all of the above.

The mind also boggles.
Near the dresser were rectangular stone boxes sunk into the floor. The corners were lined with clay to make them waterproof and Childe suggested that they were used to keep limpets. Limpets are very tough and practically indigestible to humans but they make excellent bait--as long as they have been softened by prolonged soaking in brine.

Apart from the fact that I've heard more than once about how nice it is to cook and eat limpets (among other things) on a Scottish beach -- so much so that they're dotted with metres-high piles of shells -- and that it seems rather odd that members of such a standardised, cheek-by-jowl community should prepare their own bait inside their (small) houses; a few paragraphs up the page, the same author wrote

Although no fishhooks have been found, huge quantities of fish bones (cod and saithe) along with limpet shells were recovered.
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Mick Harper
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Look, a community of souls (live ones, that is) requires an enormous amount of feeding. I simply cannot believe that people would imprison people in remote parts and then have to go to all the trouble of bringing in supplies. One possibility with Skara Brae though: "You are sentenced to being marooned on Skara Brae for life. You may take a fish-hook with you." But then you'd have to have a permanent garrison to prevent them being sprung by any passing boat. On the other hand, a monastery might well have sufficient prestige, power etc to have supplies brought in continually from outside.

Ishmael's Gothic fantasies about Virgins chained up in underground dungeons should be treated cautiously. Being "cloistered" involves solitary contemplative study but (applying Applied Epistemological rules) nobody would take the job on if it involved premature burial.

On the question of sea-food and middens, the recent death of the Chinese sea-food gatherers in the Solway Firth reminds us that a single night's work guarantees a week's sustenance (so long as you like mussels or whatever it was they were gathering). We can be pretty sure that the whole British coastline was awash with such possibilities in ancient times.

This is so enormously more efficient than "hunting and gathering" that what is staggering about ancient British archaeology is not that the odd midden is discovered but why there aren't vast piles of middens all round the coast. It suggests that life was a la THOBR i.e. settled villages conducting ordinary intensive agriculture and regarding mussels as an occasional treat.
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DPCrisp


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But then you'd have to have a permanent garrison to prevent them being sprung by any passing boat.

Yeah, "marooned in a busy shipping lane" doesn't make much sense. Well, none.

On the other hand, a monastery might well have sufficient prestige, power etc to have supplies brought in continually from outside.

Or a school... for Druids, say.

settled villages conducting ordinary intensive agriculture and regarding mussels as an occasional treat.

Yes, recent studies suggest sea food was more or less abandoned "for 4000 years". We ate mostly beef. (No doubt, the Saxons had control of the seaways because we couldn't sail for toffee.)
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Mick Harper
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Or a school... for Druids, say.

Yes, that has been my thought throughout. I used the term "monasteries" because that's what they were called when the sixth-ninth century AD "Druids" did exactly the same thing. They would
a) send out one charismatic leader and a few assistants (from Ireland originally but increasingly from well-established mother-monasteries in Britain)
b) choose an out-of-the-way island or promontory (Lindisfarne, Jarrow, Iona, whathaveyou) and build a...well...a cloistered retreat
c) they would then use that as a base to stir up the locals and
d) build up networks between the monasteries.

By the time the Roman Church and then national monarchies moved in and took over, they were away on their next big push (presumably the Cistercian/Gothic/Templar movement).

for 4000 years"....We ate mostly beef

That's interesting. Cattle are not particularly good eating in intensive agriculture because a) they require lots of good pasture per pound and b) they are far more useful for pulling ploughs, carts etc. Sheep, goat and pig bones ought to outnumber cattle by a large margin. However, as per the Masai et al, there are cattle-only cultures. Food for thought.
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Mick Harper
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Nobody's mentioned the stone circles that are dotted around Skara Brae. So what about this:
1. They are a community of navigational mathematicians and chartmakers (hence the need for lots of uncluttered sightlines that you get on small islands plus it explains why there are "scriptorium benches" in each cell)
2. They are in the Orkneys because that is very favourably placed vis a vis the main shipping lanes of the "Celts" ie Western Britain, Scandinavia, America etc.
3. They barter with the sailors hence the fact there is loads of fish but no fish-hooks.
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DPCrisp


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Apparently, "One in five Scots has blood tie to ancient Iraq".

http://www.ftlcomm.com/ensign/ensign2/mcintyre/
pickofday/2005/january/jan21/1infivescots.html

"About 20 per cent of all Scots have Iraqi blood, according to... Before Scotland: The Story of Scotland Before History"

Scythian Scots and Persian Welshmen not such a screwy idea, then?

"Using new research into Scottish DNA by Professor Bryan Sykes of the Oxford Ancestors Project, the revelation that some Scots have an exotic set of Iraqi ancestors is also backed by his research, which traced the movement of early farmers in the centuries around 4000BC. It showed them coming from Iraq and ultimately to prehistoric Scotland."

Note the timeframe. I say the Celts arrived in the Isles around that time.

"The remaining four in five Scots are descended from bands of hunter-gatherers who came from England and northern Europe after the Ice Age"

The bulk of Scots are genetically indistinguishable from the northern Europeans of antiquity, eh?

Did Alistair Moffat (writer and producer of the book and series) get a copy of THOBR?

"The programmes - accompanied by a book - also claim the mythical land of Atlantis existed in what we now know as the North Sea,"

One for the back of the ear.

"and that many Scots spoke Old Welsh before Gaelic."

Also THOBR-esque. Maybe they reckon there was a Gaelic invasion from Ireland because there was?
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