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Why is Waulud's Bank empty? (Pre-History)
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DPCrisp


In: Bedfordshire
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Sunrise, East = Host and Sunset, West = Guest was just going through my mind when I remembered that

"the Lord giveth and the Lord taketh away".
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Komorikid


In: Gold Coast, Australia
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One of the things about the earthworks is that we don't know when they were 'disfavoured'. It is certainly true that the Iron Age tribes used them for fighting the Romans but whether that makes them 'Iron Age forts' as opposed to "useful strategic bits of terrain used by Iron Age people trying to fight the Romans" is not clear.

Pre-existing strategic locations are usually modified to suit the conditions of battle being fought at the time and this includes trenching, palisading and modifications that could destroy any archaeological evidence of prior use.

It is widely agreed that many of the hill forts are laughable as defensive structures. The most famous of all--Maiden Castle in Dorset--is so huge that it requires armies far larger than the local tribes could ever practically have assembled to defend it.

This assumes that historians got it right in assuming a much greater force was not present during the Iron Age or that these places were used ONLY for minor skirmishes.
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DPCrisp


In: Bedfordshire
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This is figure "1. Distribution of iron age forts in England and Wales" from James Dyer's Hillforts of England and Wales. I couldn't find anything like it on the internet, so I had to scan it.



1. The hillforts are most concentrated in South Wales and Cornwall and thin out towards the east.

2. That means they are of Welsh/Cornish (i.e. Celtic) origin.

3. This looks like fairly direct evidence of the Celts being in charge of England in the run-up to 0 BC.

4. I presume they are the high status sites of the Celtic ruling class; equivalent to the Roman villas; mostly abandoned and never reoccupied, on the outskirts of the towns and villages where people already lived. Whether they were originally intended as military strongholds or just defaulted to that role, I don't know.

Any arguments?

I'm not sure how easily Waulud's Bank fits into this picture: it's much earlier than run-of-the-mill hillforts... but dating back to the actively-megalithic days means it's at least as likely to be of Celtic origin... if you ask me. I haven't found a nice table or summary of dates for hillforts yet.
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Mick Harper
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In: London
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This is pretty definitive. It goes along with the THOBR theory -- though not spelled out there -- that English-speakers were always under the sway of some bunch of foreigners or other. Except I suppose one might say that Dan's map might suggest that the English-speakers in the east were relatively free of the imposed hill-forts of the Celts from the west.

However a slight complication to the idea of (let's say) Boadicea and her fellow henchman being Celtic-speakers is that we know the Belgae occupied SE Britain immediately before the Romans, so it may be that Dutch-speakers rather than Celtic-speakers were top dogs thereabouts and thenabouts.

But that aside, I think we can take the association of "Iron Age" British architecture being Celtic is established. But does this allow us to stretch everything back to Megalithic architecture too?
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DPCrisp


In: Bedfordshire
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I was quoting Brewer's Dictionary of Phrase and Fable of 1894 when I wrote: ...Vitellius, called by the Britons Guet'alin...

I wonder how and when we know this. (There's bugger all on the internet about it.)

Since these are pronounced almost the same (and our hard 'G' pronunciations are somehow the product of standardised spelling and widely disseminated literacy*), a Roman would have written them both with a V, even if rendering the (slack) British pronunciation.

I take it there are accounts of Vitellius among early Anglo-Saxon (or Irish?) records using GU for U/W. If, on the contrary, "Guet'alin" was written down during the Roman occupation, this would have to be one of the earliest examples of written English, wouldn't it? I wonder which it is.

---

Vitellius was Emperor from 69 AD, so he could easily have commissioned some or all of the roadworks; but since the Anglo-Saxons attributed the roads to mythical giants rather than the Romans, it'd be strange to find them writing about Vitellius/Guet'alin.

Is there much about the Romans overall in the early Anglo-Saxon stuff?

---

* An example: typical crossword filler: "eft" for newt. Not some funny alternative, but the same word. F = V = W.

an eft
an evt
an ewt
a newt

The gulf between eft and newt is an effect of received pronunciation and literacy. (I nearly said it's an illusion, but the difference is real now, just as between guard and ward.)
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DPCrisp


In: Bedfordshire
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The Gallic Wars
A few more observations touching on various of our concerns. Quotes are from Book 5 of The Gallic Wars.

"For dispatch of lading, and for drawing them on shore, he makes them a little lower than those which we have been accustomed to use in our sea; and that so much the more, because he knew that, on account of the frequent changes of the tide, less swells occurred there; for the purpose of transporting burdens and a great number of horses, [he makes them] a little broader than those which we use in our seas. All these he orders to be constructed for lightness and expedition, to which object their lowness contributes greatly. He orders those things which are necessary for equipping ships to be brought thither from Spain."

-- Sounds like Viking longboats doesn't it?

-- The whole fleet-building exercise is geared towards operating in these 'unfamiliar' seas, so either Caesar is an amazingly gifted geographer and mariner, or he's using local advice.

-- The premier Roman ship-fitters are from Spain: presumably Celts.

"[He] orders all the ships to assemble at port Itius, from which port he had learned that the passage into Britain was shortest, about thirty miles from the continent."

-- These specially wide, shallow ships are only suitable for short range operations. Remember the argument about Viking long vs. round ships?

Caesar set off for Britain and was "borne forward by a gentle south-west wind, he did not maintain his course, in consequence of the wind dying away about midnight, and being carried on too far by the tide, he urged on with the oars that he might make that part of the island in which he had discovered the preceding summer, that there was the best landing-place, and in this affair the spirit of our soldiers was very much to be extolled; for they with the transports and heavy ships, the labour of rowing not being [for a moment] discontinued, equalled the speed of the ships of war."

-- Definitely two classes of ship.

-- Definitely not amazing seafarers, attaining their goal by brute discipline, as usual.

-- Must have been local expertise, already 1000 years before "the Vikings".
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DPCrisp


In: Bedfordshire
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The Gallic Wars
"He himself, having advanced by night about twelve miles, espied the forces of the enemy."

-- You can't do that easily unless the routes are already well-defined.

"Cassivellaunus... used to observe our marches and retire a little from the road, and conceal himself in intricate and woody places, and in those neighbourhoods in which he had discovered we were about to march, he used to drive the cattle and the inhabitants from the fields into the woods; and, when our cavalry, for the sake of plundering and ravaging the more freely, scattered themselves among the fields, he used to send out charioteers from the woods by all the well-known roads and paths."

-- Explicit references to road networks.

-- And there is no telling "those neighbourhoods in which we were about to march" unless there are neighbourhoods with unambiguous routes between them.

"The number of the people is countless, and their buildings exceedingly numerous, for the most part very like those of the Gauls: the number of cattle is great. They use either brass or iron rings, determined at a certain weight, as their money... They do not regard it lawful to eat the hare, and the cock, and the goose; they, however, breed them for amusement and pleasure."

-- But the Romans had to tell us how to link up cities over hundreds of miles?
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DPCrisp


In: Bedfordshire
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Caesar's measurements were pretty good, weren't they? (12 miles to Canterbury, 80 miles to Westminster...) Except for the bit about islands with 30-day days, which should be placed rather farther north than the Irish Sea.

What does Alba/Albion have to do with Alban (St. Albans is on the Watling Street), Albania and the White Island(s)?
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Mick Harper
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In: London
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Caesar was rather more ambitious in his surveying of Britain than pacing out The Old Kent Road. He says in De Bello Gallico that Britain is a triangle measuring 475 miles along the base, 760 miles on the east and 665 miles on the west.

Since neither the Romans nor the Greeks were known for their derring-do in the northern seas, it looks as though ole Jules had access to some pretty nifty surveyor-types. Now who were they I wonder?
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DPCrisp


In: Bedfordshire
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The bit I read wasn't that precise, but it was clear that he relied on expert knowledge, obtained chiefly from literature and torture.
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DPCrisp


In: Bedfordshire
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NB. I was misled by modern maps when I said Wauluds Bank is less than a mile from the Icknield Way. It is now clear to me that Wauluds Bank is on the Icknield Way. (i.e. immediately next to it, not straddling it.)

That may be why the source of the Lea is ascribed to the springs there despite the fact that the rivery bit continues to snake off into Houghton Regis. (I haven't seen how it rises there.)

Perhaps it's significant that the Norman church a stone's throw away from there was the seat of a large parish.
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Mick Harper
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In: London
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This reinforces the idea that the Ancient Brits were positively obsessed with this idea of "water: now you see it, now you don't." Can anyone come up with a practical consideration why this should be their big beef?
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Mick Harper
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In: London
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My attention has been drawn (by my mum actually who saw one near Shaftesbury) to "dew ponds" which are permanent bodies of water, often in the middle of villages, but with no streams going in or out of them.

It turns out that this dewpond is at a place called Ashmore, which is described as "the highest village in Dorset". For some reason this nags at me.

The whole question of water sources and "iron age forts" turns out to be riddled with mystery as per this little piece:

http://www.dewponds.com/biblio_earthwork_of_england.htm

But perhaps I'll leave it to Mum to work out after she's finished the Daily Mail crossword.
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DPCrisp


In: Bedfordshire
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One of these days I'll pore over the Victoria County History of Bedfordshire to see what it says about Waulud's Bank, Maiden Bower et al. But from my first peek, I gather Waulud's Bank was also called Wallud Bank, which is surely nothing other than Walled Bank.

(Lygetun Drive is right next to it, but no one believes me when I tell 'em that's pronounced "Luton Drive".)
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DPCrisp


In: Bedfordshire
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A few gems from Ancient Dunstable by C L Matthews. (More to follow, I'm sure.)

1. "a [Bronze Age] sword-blade was discovered in an outhouse near a spring in Totternhoe, where it was being used to chop wood."

Tickles me, that.

2. "Sometime after 1,000 BC, a migration of peoples began to affect Europe...

"The only way we can define the Celts in these early historic times is to say that they were people speaking a Celtic language."

AAARRRGGGHHH!!!

He continues

"In the century around the birth of Christ, Celtic languages were spoken in many parts of Europe, including France (Gaul) and Britain. The surviving descendants of these languages are Irish and Scottish Gaelic, Welsh and Breton. From this we know that at some time before the birth of Christ substantial numbers of settlers must have come to Britain, bringing their Celtic language with them. It is not known when this was - writing was unknown to them, so they left no record - but it cannot have been later than some time during what we call the 'Iron Age', when the use of iron became widespread in Britain."

followed by

"There is no sudden change in the way of life of the people living in the Dunstable area. It is difficult to distinguish the pottery of the Late Bronze Age sites from that of the first settlement we have called 'Iron Age'."

Classic!

3. An Iron Age round house was excavated on the quarry's edge at Puddlehill (and reconstructed at the Chiltern Open Air Museum). Near the centre were two hearth pits and a clay oven. Intersecting and leading away from the clay oven was a "sausage-shaped depression" about 2.4 x 0.8 m [not a pit or a trench, notice, just a depression], of which he says

"The sausage-shaped hollow is a feature often found in the houses of these people. Its use is unknown, but it may have been lined with hides to hold water, either for washing or for some form of domestic processing - it is anyone's guess."

Well, my guess is that it's obviously the area where the oven was repeatedly raked out for retrieving the bread, clearing out the ashes, or both.
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