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Meetings with Remarkable Forgeries (British History)
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Mick Harper
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There are twelve steps to heaven

1. 1957 a Professor Thomas is doing some routine Ionan archaeology
2. He finds a simple wattle and timber structure
3. He finds some hazel charcoal associated with it
4. None of this is particularly interesting so (2) is left in situ or
5. Put in departmental storage
6. He puts (3) in a matchbox and takes it home as a souvenir of his summer on Iona
7. 2012 (feeling guilty?) (clearing out the garage?) he sends (3) off to Historic Scotland
8. HS trusties with time on their hands (it's winter, too cold for digging) start rooting around in the vaults
9. They send off a whole bunch of stuff for carbon dating
10. One comes back as 1500 years old plus or minus and is Ionan
11. Head of Historic Scotland (who are in the tourist business) point out this is St Columba's time.
12. Wattle and daub hut is declared to be St Columba's.
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Hatty
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In: Berkshire
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A recurring trope in the pilgrimage industry is the maiden cult, centred around some (female) saint with or without a holy well/spring. Reading about Siberian exiles I was struck by the similarity with maidan (from Turkish meydan according to the author), organised trading. Maidan/meidan, it transpires, is almost a universal word. In nineteenth-century Siberia a maidan was a commercial enterprise run by and for prisoners.

I thought of Hermes, patron saint of merchants, and Maya his mother, and wondered if 'May' coupled with dan'/den indicated a trading site, market place. Equating maiden with virginity, saintliness, seems to be a Christian (or monkish) interpretation, possibly giving local trade their blessing as it were.

Wiki gives the etymology as

From Urdu میدان‏ (maidān), and its source, Persian میدان‏ (meydân, “town-square or central place of gathering”), from Arabic مَيْدَان‏ (maydān), itself an Iranian borrowing (see the Arabic entry for more), ultimately from Proto-Indo-European *médʰyos. Compare Avestan (maiδya), Sanskrit मध्य (madhya), Latin medius.

There are several related meanings -- open space e.g. for public meetings or sport events, market place, square.
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Boreades


In: finity and beyond
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N R Scott wrote:
They remind me of my friends that are into Harry Potter and RPG games and stuff like that - academically clever, but not very streetwise.


A.K.A. Intellectual Yet Idiot.

https://medium.com/incerto/the-intellectual-yet-idiot-13211e2d0577
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Boreades


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Mick Harper wrote:
There are twelve steps to heaven

1. 1957 a Professor Thomas is doing some routine Ionan archaeology
2. He finds a simple wattle and timber structure
3. He finds some hazel charcoal associated with it
4. None of this is particularly interesting so (2) is left in situ or
5. Put in departmental storage
6. He puts (3) in a matchbox and takes it home as a souvenir of his summer on Iona
7. 2012 (feeling guilty?) (clearing out the garage?) he sends (3) off to Historic Scotland
8. HS trusties with time on their hands (it's winter, too cold for digging) start rooting around in the vaults
9. They send off a whole bunch of stuff for carbon dating
10. One comes back as 1500 years old plus or minus and is Ionan
11. Head of Historic Scotland (who are in the tourist business) point out this is St Columba's time.
12. Wattle and daub hut is declared to be St Columba's.


By example, Mick has established a grand principle of Archaelogical Divination. I proposed the principle should be called the Saint Matchbox Principle.

Is the following an example of the Saint Matchbox Principle in action?
.
1. While digging-up weeds at the edge of my garden, I found some really old Lucas electrical car parts
... (2 to 11) ...
12. Lucas (The Prince Of Darkness) once upon a time must have had a factory in my garden.
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Mick Harper
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In: London
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Another goodie from the Kate Wiles twitter account, the gift that ever-giveth

From the multicultural Middle Ages: this manuscript from England held Latin psalms with same-page French translations, but 350 years later a scribe scraped off the French translations and replaced them with Icelandic ones! Under copyright but here's a PDF: https://image.landsbokasafn.is/source/AM_618_4to/AM_618_4to,_0017r_-_34-hq.pdf …
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Mick Harper
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Out of the Mouth of Babes Dept

Almost all the evidence we have for the early Middle Ages comes from archaeology and place-names.

This is from Levi Roach's twitter thread. Since the place name theorists are both subjective and operating from orthodox assumptions about the history of the early Middle Ages, that is circular. Every time we point out to these poltroons that there is no archaeology, they point to the orthodox history of the early Middle Ages and say 'Oh well, that must be because we haven't found it yet.'
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Hatty
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In: Berkshire
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Sometimes archaeology is so sparse they have to rely on artefacts e.g. inscribed crosses though these often turn out to be 'not in their original location'. Just the other evening, in a repeat of the Art of the Vikings the presenter, Dr Janina Ramirez, explained that the exhibition, called 'Vikings!', shows artefacts from the Swedish national museum.

Broadstairs on the Isle of Thanet has a Viking Bay. I only noticed it because a putative straight line east from Aust ferry ends up there. It was called Main Bay until 1949.
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Ishmael


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Britain was colonized in the middle ages, as the Ice Sheets retreated from the end of the Ice Age.

Seriously. That's my working hypothesis! Crazy.
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Mick Harper
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No crazier than Janina Ramirez. Perhaps you can attend the clinic together.
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Mick Harper
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Some germane points here re our own fulminations in Forgeries about oral history. It’s about Franklin’s famous 19th century expedition to and subsequent disappearance in the Arctic. (Everything from the Guardian, so super-reliable, super-suspect.)

Growing up in the Canadian Arctic, Louie Kamookak was captivated by tales from Inuit elders of rusted utensils strewn along a remote shore and mysterious white men using ropes to haul a large ship through the ice.

Two things are being elided here. ‘Rusted utensils’ is archaeology; ‘white men hauling ropes’ is oral history. White men are not mysterious to Mr Kamookak but he is reporting they were mysterious to the witnesses. This then is a ‘first contact’ episode, a notorious genre. The rusted utensils have disappeared -- a constant feature of urban myths, another notorious genre. It is implied but not stated that the witnesses of the men hauling ropes and the rusted utensils are coeval. This is not overly important here (presumably they were) but it is very important when dealing with early medieval history because you cannot tell when details are inserted into oral history. You only get the end product.

Years later, he realized there was a striking resemblance between the stories of his youth and historical accounts of the ill-fated expedition of Sir John Franklin, whose two ships – and 129 crew members – vanished while searching for the North-West Passage in the 1840s.

This is very surprising. Franklin’s disappearance was a global cause celebre from day one so it would appear that all this has been kept very quiet for a century and a half.

Kamookak compared Inuit stories with explorers’ logbooks and journals to develop a working theory of where the ships might be.

This tells us that all the utensils have long disappeared and implies that he has only the broadest evidence to go on via the oral history.

He shared these thoughts with Canadian archaeologists, and was eventually vindicated in a spectacular fashion when, using his directions, divers located the HMS Erebus in 2014, and two years later, the Terror. Both ships were found exactly where Kamookak had predicted.

This is both gratifying and bewildering. Mr Kamookak would need to know the current position (to get their story) of Inuit with knowledge of where their forebears were living in the 1840’s (to witness the rope hauling) and all with a precision that allows divers to be sent down.

Archaeologists and historians have paid tribute to the Inuit oral historian who helped solve a mystery that had confounded explorers for generations, after he died this week aged 58.

He didn’t help to solve it, on this evidence he solved it. Since it is not like the Guardian (or, I think, modern Canadians) to downplay Inuit cultural contributions, one wonders what the true story is. Do we have a Canadian in the house?

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2018/mar/29/inuit-oral-historian-who-pointed-way-to-franklin-shipwrecks-dies-aged-58?utm_term=Autofeed&CMP=twt_b-gdnnews#link_time=1522322592 [via Kate Wiles natch]
 
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Mick Harper
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Urquhart Press are just about to send out review copies of Unreliable so it is essential to read Kate Wiles mind since she was far and away the best recipient in the case of Forgeries.

It was discussed widely last year in relation to History, that men are much more likely to put themselves forward for things. Anecdotally, I'd estimate 80% of the unsolicited pitches I receive are from men. Therefore the onus is on me to redress that.

Is it too late to reprint with Michaela Harper on the front cover? She is certainly not averse to factual errors

it's not demeaning to give women an equal voice. There are just as many female experts as male

even if it has a deleterious effect on her professionalism in the day job

If I'm asked to recommend someone, I'll try and find a woman, for example. There always is one.

That's true but there is only a 50% chance of it being the best someone.
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Mick Harper
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Uh-oh, the historians are getting ansty about scientists taking an interest in their field
https://twitter.com/winroth_anders/status/983246725472235520

It can only end in heartbreak. For the scientists.
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Hatty
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Historians and scientists both use the term Viking somewhat loosely but there can surely be no objection to assuming that sailors needed some kind of eye-shield when looking at the sun whatever they called it.
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Mick Harper
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If it isn't mentioned in the historical records, they didn't.
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Boreades


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Mick Harper wrote:
Uh-oh, the historians are getting ansty about scientists taking an interest in their field
https://twitter.com/winroth_anders/status/983246725472235520

It can only end in heartbreak. For the scientists.


An excellent toys-out-the-pram rant. (By Anders Winroth, not Harpo (for a change)) :-)

If only this historian knew his subject better.

Actually, this topic goes at least 20 years. Sir Robin Knox Johnson did a documentary on t'BBC, sailing a reconstructed longship and navigation.

In Viking Voyage, world-renowned mariner Sir Robin Knox-Johnston and a Norwegian crew attempt a journey across the North Sea in a replica Viking ship. Not only do they navigate without modern charts or compasses - as did their Viking ancestors - but they also put to the test the Viking practice of portaging, by attempting to haul a 9 tonne cargo ship across a narrow strip of land in Shetland from the North Sea to the Atlantic.

Sir Robin Knox-Johnston, tests these navigational skills and leads a voyage across the North Sea from Norway to Shetland without modern magnetic compass or chart. He tries out the only piece of navigation equipment he thinks they may have had - a sun-compass.This wooden disc with a central hole and notches along the outer edge and a pin fixed in the centre may have acted as a compass; casting a shadow from the sun which would help seafarers head in the right direction. Sir Robin and the rest of the crew are amazed at the accuracy of this simple tool which, along with the aid of some fair winds, brings them safely to their destination.
http://www.bbcactivevideoforlearning.com/2/TitleDetails.aspx?TitleID=23403


See also http://www.fatcalf.co.uk/project/national-maritime-museum-cornwall-viking-voyagers-av/

There's an important note that Sir RKJ glossed over in the documentary : a sun-compass works by the sun casting a shadow. Fine on sunny days, but if it's cloudy or overcast, yer stuffed!

Then Robert Temple wrote a very good book called The Crystal Sun, on ancient optical technology. It mentions Vikings using polarising quartz to tell where the sun is in the sky on cloudy days. These quartz objects having been found in a few Viking sailors' graves. Without (as is often the case) the ortho historians having much clue what they were for.

As M'Lady Boreades has seafaring connections to Sir RKJ, I was able to get in touch with Sir RKJ and mention this. He was very pleased, as it solved a problem he hadn't mention on the BBC documentary.
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