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Inventing History : forgery: a great British tradition (British History)
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Wile E. Coyote


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I disagree, I am now expecting to need to have to explain some of the 200 or so "Anglo Saxon" English coins with runic or part runic inscriptions on them. This of course doesn't rule out some wacky fakes. A problem of ortho creating a invented dark age is that later forgers and revivalists have sought to create narratives and fakes to fill that invented gap with "missing links". Still, Runic alphabets pre and post date the gap don't they? In fact you could argue that the stopping (Roman) and starting (Early Medieval to mysteriously coexist alongside Latin) was evidence for an invented gap?
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Mick Harper
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I am not entirely clear what you are saying. Can you elucidate in terms of our new red flag/green flag checklist?

Two hundred, eh? Don't spend them all at once!
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Wile E. Coyote


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The problem for Wiley is that once archaeologists became meticulous about recording stratigrapy, then the chances of the stuff underneath being fake, if it was in sequence, are neglible. You can argue about the interpretation, the actual dating and so on, but not that it is a modern fake. It could be an ancient fake, ie faked in the first century, and the stuff above is genuine, whatever, but that's not really the same thing.
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Mick Harper
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I wholly agree with this. How many of your two hundred were found in such circumstances? And, since you raise the question, how do coin-dealers blurbs treat this kind of evidence, and are they to be trusted when doing so. They are not, after all, peer-reviewed journals. However, I accept that it only requires one coin found in a securely dated strata to authenticate the rest -- even if some of them are modern copies!

I do not accept the concept of an ancient fake since even if they are, they must be as near as damnit to the real thing in order to pass muster, so it matters little.
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Wile E. Coyote


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Mick Harper wrote:
I wholly agree with this. How many of your two hundred were found in such circumstances? And, since you raise the question, how do coin-dealers blurbs treat this kind of evidence, and are they to be trusted when doing so. They are not, after all, peer-reviewed journals. However, I accept that it only requires one coin found in a securely dated strata to authenticate the rest -- even if some of them are modern copies!


It's not just the 200 A/S coins, you only need one object, say a sword, or, say, any "Viking" Scandinavian object/ coin inscribed with runes in securely dated strata, and you have to then take the runes thing seriously.

So this sort of find would worry me. I just googled it, so you could have an example of my concerns.

https://www.artnews.com/art-news/news/archaelogy-news-norway-worlds-oldest-rune-stone-1234654100/
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Mick Harper
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I have clearly overstated the case about runes. In an excess of zeal, I had supposed they were an entirely modern phenomenon. This is clearly wrong. However, if I itemise the three occasions I talk about runes in RevHist, I wasn't wholly wrong

One of his best known donations was the ninth-century ivory Franks Casket from Northumbria with its runic inscriptions.
Runes make museum curators breathe more easily.
The Franks Casket is a small Anglo-Saxon whale’s bone (not “whalebone” in the sense of baleen) chest from the early 8th century, now in the British Museum. The casket is densely decorated with knife-cut narrative scenes in flat two-dimensional low-relief and with inscriptions mostly in Anglo-Saxon runes.
Mostly. Did the inscriber feel he had better include some foreign ones to fox the reader? No doubt we shall discover because
identifying the images and interpreting the runic inscriptions has generated a considerable amount of scholarship
Not to say a considerable amount of interest from revisionists though we do not refer to our work as scholarship. One hopes one is better than that.

This, together with the other arguments about the Franks Casket, clearly demonstrates that these runes at least are the result of thoroughly modern milling. The academics then oblige by getting lost in a runic maze entirely of their own devising with one of the panels of the Franks Casket

The runic text of this panel presents many problems as well. For some reason, most of the vowel-runes have been replaced with new, and seemingly arbitrary, runes, and many of the spellings are unusual, making the translation somewhat difficult. It may be read as: Her ltos sitafo on ltarmberga; regl(re) drigip; swa ltiri ertre egi sgrref, sarden sorga rend sefa lorna. A possible translation is: ‘Here a host sits on the mound of grief; misery endures; so to (her or them) Erta prescribed dread, a sad grave of sorrow and troubled heart.’

But this does not justify my more sweeping remarks about runes in general

If there are Dark Age inscriptions on the stone (Ogham, Pictish, Runic etc) ask why they are not in an alphabet people could read. Inscriptions are made to be read. If you are told these are a very special kind of inscription not intended for public consumption because of their sacredness (or something) tell them it worked
o they all vanished from profane view
o they all stayed hidden from prying eyes for a thousand years
o they all re-appeared in new countries keen to show how old they are.

People could and presumably did read runes, though I might stand my ground over Ogham. In THOBR I claim that Pictish is Scots Gaelic. 
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Wile E. Coyote


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If there are Dark Age inscriptions on the stone (Ogham, Pictish, Runic etc) ask why they are not in an alphabet people could read. Inscriptions are made to be read. If you are told these are a very special kind of inscription not intended for public consumption because of their sacredness (or something) tell them it worked

- they all vanished from profane view
- they all stayed hidden from prying eyes for a thousand years
- they all re-appeared in new countries keen to show how old they are.


Maybe runic inscriptions were never meant to be read, and understood. Maybe they were always deliberately aged, mixed and riddled, to give a more ambigious impression of something like ancient wisdom. I mean people love that sort of stuff today, why shouldn't they have done previously?
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Mick Harper
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I mean people love that sort of stuff today, why shouldnt they have done previously?

No reason. I'm popping down to Kensal Green cemetery to see how much our love for unreadable inscriptions has been playing out.
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Wile E. Coyote


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You are probably going to find easily recognisable similar lasting memories and tributes, mixed in with some weirder ones "The Lord watch between me and thee, while we are absent, one from the other". I guess you will also get some common and some weird symbolism.
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Mick Harper
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Remember those Ian Allen trainspotter books? You should do a few inscription-spotting books. Soon there will be hordes of anoraks clambering around Highgate ticking them off. If they start doing 'brass-rubbing' as well -- as they generally do when they reach early middle age -- we may end up only with your books as evidence the inscriptions ever existed. It's a pretty awesome duty, Wiley, but we're counting on you. Could be a K in it.
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Wile E. Coyote


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Sadly my nerd love is coins and I still need to get an explanation for the ones with runes on, so a trip to the cemetery will have to wait. God willing.
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Mick Harper
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On a different front.

Mick in 'The Enlightenment, Oh No It Wasn't' wrote:
The French were not alone in wanting to cast a retrospective cultural glow. The Russians and the Austrians were in the same position but were content to respectively re-brand Catherine the Great and Leopold II as towering figures of this Enlightenment everyone was talking about. The French, as can be their wont, went a great deal further by claiming they had invented the whole thing.

In other words, as RevHist points out, the Enlightenment never happened, it was completely made up by French historians in the nineteenth century. Radio 4 in the The Invention of Russia seems to be trending in the same direction

Academic One: "Where Catherine the Great connects with the Enlightenment is not in the development of new ideas but in that desire to classify... to codify legislation in Russia, to bring order out of chaos. I think that was what she was going for."

Misha Glenny: "Do you think in the long term she contributed very little to the development of Russia because in the nineteenth century it is Russia not moving forward. Was it that her ideas didn't set in or was it too impossible a task?"

Academic Two: "That's what we all keep asking ourselves. It seems to get so far and then fall back on itself. But there is something about the eighteenth century and Catherine's reforms that does look, from this distance, as a Golden Age that somehow didn't stick."

I think that's a no, then.
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Mick Harper
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Mick in RevHist wrote:
If it works once, it will work again. In fact, one forgery can lend credence to another… but there is a risk when using such a technique. If one memoirist is later exposed as a fake, surely the whole tissue of lies will come apart at the seams? Not when forgers are up against academics.

Something of the sort has just been exercising a coupla titans on Facebook and since it involves mystery-inscriptions I thought I’d better mention it here

Jamie Swanson wrote:
The Ulbster stone. Discovered in 1770 in St Martins Chapel at Ulbster in Caithness. It was used as a gravestone before being moved to Thurso Castle in the 19th century. In the early 20th century it was moved to Thurso museum and is now displayed in the excellent North Coast Visitor Centre in Thurso. The 8th century carved stone is remarkable in showing the largest collection of Pictish symbols on any stone yet discovered.

It's a world record! If he thought he was going to slip that one through without anyone noticing he thought wrong

Harriet Vered wrote:
Looks more 'Gothic Revival' than 'Pictish' to my eye. Trouble is, inscriptions can't be dated but the unlikelihood of inscriptions carved on sandstone surviving a millennium of exposure to weather in the Scottish Highlands makes an eighth century estimate seem fancy rather than fact.

Get outta that one, sunshine. Nae bother

Jamie Swanson wrote:
I agree with your thoughts about weathering. 18th and 19th century sandstone gravestones are often illegible so surviving 8th century carvings would be remarkable if exposed. However local history tells of it being dug up therefore it may have been protected from the worst weathering elements.

Well, that's not what you said originally but OK... Then he did a two-for-one as per my memoirists

Jamie Swanson wrote:
This is backed up by the recent discovery of another stone at Ulbster which seems to bear some similar carvings.

Now he's got to fight on two fronts...
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Mick Harper
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Hatty decided kicking the first stone into the long grass took precedence

Canmore is a bit coy about what it calls 'evidence of discovery'...
"Stuart records a tradition that the stone was dug up in the churchyard of St Martin’s Chapel at Ulbster in 1770, set upright and later re-used as a graveslab (1856: 14). In the 19th century it was moved to Thurso castle and set upright on an artificial mound in the grounds".
What they seem to be (not quite) saying is there is no record of the stone at Ulbster. The setting suggests it would have been at Thurso Castle (a Victorian Gothic ruin dated 1872) for 'atmosphere'.

Jamie Swanson wrote:
Is your hypothesis that this stone could have been carved as a period showpiece for Earl of Caithness at Thurso Castle, copying carvings on other stones. I can see that possibility however the recent discovery does tend to support the veracity of the stone.

Hang on, what are these 'other stones' before we get on to latest one? Why have you slipped a mention of those in? Hatty understands that they are irrelevant anyway.

The inscribed stone was allegedly found in the burial ground attached to St Martin's chapel but the site is said to be now occupied by a mausoleum, apparently dated 1700. Archaeologists were unable to locate remains of the chapel, let alone date it. There is reason to doubt the existence of a chapel in view of the absence of archaeological or documentary records. The earliest written reference according to RCAHMS /Canmore is dated 1726

"In 1726 the parish minister, Mr Oliphant, recorded, 'the house of Ulbster, and betwixt it and the sea side stands a chappell called St. Martines Chappell now erected into a tomb and is the burial place of the family of Ulbster' (Geog. Coll. i, 160). The mausoleum built on the site appears to have been built circa 1700 (NMRS), but a Pictish cross-slab suggests much earlier occupation by possible ecclesiastical building(s)."

Now you, me, Hatty and the gatepost know all this shrieks 'fakery' but since everyone else is shrieking, "Ooh look, Pictish-inscribed stones... they're everywhere" there's plenty of scope for... um... fresh discoveries...
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Mick Harper
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A Thurso woman researching her family tree had the find of a lifetime when she discovered an ancient Pictish stone while uncovering her ancestors' graves at Ulbster. https://www.johnogroat-journal.co.uk/news/pictures-rare-find-of-pictish-stone-at-ulbster-graveyard-by-293111/

I thought uncovering graves had been made illegal in Scotland since Burke and Hare, but apparently not

Fiona Begg found the Pictish stone, which may date to the 8th century, in the historic graveyard at the Mains Of Ulbster which is on land owned by Lord Thurso

Now there's a turn-up for the books. Pictish stones are as rare as hens' teeth anywhere in the world but two have been found on Lord Thurso's estate.

and is reputed to be the site of a chapel dedicated to St Martin.

Oh well, fair do's, she knew exactly where to look.

"On one visit to Ulbster, I felt something underfoot and after removing a little of the soil I uncovered a flat gravestone [that] had an inscription for someone who belonged to my family tree," said Fiona. She gradually uncovered more stone slabs that were marking graves and which had become submerged beneath soil and grass. The slabs had not been recorded before ...

Well no, I suppose they wouldn't have been.

...so Fiona decided to take photographs of them but when she brushed away the dirt from one she noticed wavy lines on the surface. "My first thought was that this one had an inscription. Once it was fully uncovered the pattern stood out, it looked amazing. I knew that it was a Pictish stone."

Your family tree must go back aways, Fi. She dashed home to dash off a letter

Later that day, Fiona wrote to Lord and Lady Thurso about the discovery since it was on their estate and shared a photograph of the Pictish stone. "They kindly wrote back and said they were very interested in the work we were doing and particularly the discoveries that had been made."

I'm not saying this is faint praise but if I'd received news that a Pictish stone had been found in my backyard I'd probably be slightly more animated than this. I'd also wonder why they've been digging stuff up without, it would appear, as much as a by-you-leave. Take photos by all means, I'd have said, but I'd like to have been there before you started digging stuff up. I dare say some members of my own family tree are buried there as well. Lord Thurso is far more gracious than I am.

Lord Thurso said it was a "wonderful find" and that he was delighted that a local organisation called the Yarrows Heritage Trust (YHT) was helping with the removal of the stone from the graveyard so it could be properly restored and eventually displayed.

I'd probably say, "Hang about, I've never heard of the Yarrows Heritage Trust (YHT), this is a find of national -- nay, international -- importance, shouldn't we be getting the Big Boys involved?" No need, my lord

Fiona said: "Roland Spencer Jones and Islay Macleod from the Yarrows Heritage Trust have taken on the responsibility of managing the stone with the correct permissions in place prior to moving it and that the stone is safely transported to a place where it can be dried, cleaned, and restored."

I bet it turns out to be Pictish.
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