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Mick Harper
Site Admin
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In: London
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Two of the guiding principles of Applied Epistemology is that orthodoxy (a) does all the work for us and (b) is the chief prosecution witness in its own demolition.
Saint Guthlac’s Realm: Massive Stone Age Henge Discovered in Lincolnshire
https://www.ancient-origins.net/news-history-archaeology/guthlac-henge-0020610
Archaeologists from Newcastle University have been working for years in Crowland, Lincolnshire around the purported site of the hermitage of Saint Guthlac, a local cult figure. What they found there reveals a far older and more complex sacred landscape, one that dates back to the Neolithic. |
It is highly unusual to see the word 'purported' in these reports but never fear, they don't mean it.
Crowland is best known today for the ruins of its enormous medieval abbey, which was founded in part to honor the saint. Saint Guthlac, who died in the year 714, had been a hugely popular figure when he was alive, and after his death a cult arose in his name and the location became popular with pilgrims. |
In other words, the abbey invented Saint Guthlac to provide itself with a steady income from the pilgrim trade.
So far the excavation has uncovered pottery, two bone combs, and fragments of glass from a high-status drinking vessel at the site. |
After years and years of intensive searching they have found exactly what you would expect to find from any random agglomeration of settled British hectares. So there must be a reason why Saint Guthlac's foundation has disappeared, right?
Unfortunately much of what existed here in the Anglo-Saxon period was later destroyed, leaving these few fragments to offer small clues as to what went on here. |
The only 'destructive forces' on the site is Crowland Abbey. Surely they wouldn't destroy the evidence of the saint they were there to honour? They had no choice, it's yer planning regs, isn't it?
"Although the Anglo-Saxon objects we found cannot be linked with Guthlac with any certainty... |
Excuse I, they have no connection with Guthlac.
...the use of the site around this time and later in the medieval period adds weight to the idea that Crowland was a sacred space at different times over millennia." |
No, what you found was 'pottery, two bone combs, and fragments of glass from a high-status drinking vessel'. Insofar as it shows anything, it shows it wasn't a sacred space.
"Guthlac and Pega were very important figures in the early Christian history of England, so it is hugely exciting that we've been able to determine the chronology of what is clearly a historically significant site." |
This is grotesque even by their standards. What chronology? What early Christian history? What is 'clearly historically significant' about this site? Even if you accept the sources about the historicity of Guthlac, they do not place him at this site, do they?
The site has offered one more secret up to the team of experts studying it. |
Thank God! They've left it late but let's be having it...
A large pit, lined with stones and situated right in front of the great hall has long been thought to be the remains of a well. With what they now know about the site, the archaeologists now think a giant cross may have stood here, dominating the landscape of Saint Guthlac. |
1. It was interpreted as a well
2. They didn't find any evidence of Christianity
3. It's been re-interpreted as a giant cross
4. If they carry on not finding any evidence much longer, it'll be the Cathedral of St Guthlac.
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Mick Harper
Site Admin
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In: London
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I posted this up on Medium under the title Casket of Dreams. Of all our dreams but as it got only one reader, I have changed it to Bury this casket! It will kill us all. Under a pic of the Franks Casket I opined
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This is the Franks Casket. It is the centrepiece of the British Museum’s Anglo-Saxon collection and is perhaps the most important extant Anglo-Saxon artefact. It features regularly in books and documentaries about religion, linguistics, art history, the Dark Ages, history in general, cultural advance in general. It is the subject of an astonishing array of specialist papers by scholars from every corner of the academic and antiquarian world.
The ‘Franks’ in Franks Casket is Sir Augustus Wollaston Franks KCB FRS FSA who donated it, in 1867, to the British Museum of which he was the guiding light for the rest of the century. It is widely acknowledged the British Museum as we know it today is essentially his creation, and has in turn provided the template for national museums everywhere.
The Franks Casket is pretty damn important.
You’ve guessed! It’s a fake, made in France around 1850. Franks was a mountebank and crook of epic proportions. The vast preponderance of the 20,000 exhibits he inveigled onto the plinths in the British Museum are fakes. The Museum has had to lie and cheat for the whole of the twentieth century, dragging in other museums notably the Louvre in Paris and the Bargello in Florence, to keep the whole thing from blowing up in their faces and setting the entire museum world back to the depths of tawdry criminality from whence it first emerged into the light of day. I thought you probably would.
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Wile E. Coyote
In: Arizona
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Crowland is best known today for the ruins of its enormous medieval abbey, which was founded in part to honor the saint. Saint Guthlac, who died in the year 714, had been a hugely popular figure when he was alive, and after his death a cult arose in his name and the location became popular with pilgrims. |
Crowland Abbey continues to be a popular pilgrimage site. These pilgrims think it's the last resting place of.....
Hereward The Wake.
Wonder why they don't mention that.
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Wile E. Coyote
In: Arizona
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So a counter explanation would be that the English resistance used rasied barrows on the flooded fens, "The holy land of the English", as protection against the invading Normans.
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Wile E. Coyote
In: Arizona
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Wiley is on this new extra strong Japanese coffee, so.........
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Wile E. Coyote
In: Arizona
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Fenland=England
It's no different than, say, Finland.
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Mick Harper
Site Admin
![](images/avatars/1200773856450e35214c81a.gif)
In: London
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There is a new Big Thing called mushroom coffee one type of which, my dealer on Radio 4 tells me, is good for creativity. Check it out. You may not need it but I do, it's all greatest hits at the moment.
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Wile E. Coyote
In: Arizona
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According to that well known rag, the Crowland Chronicle, the undefeated Hereward (The last true Englishman) and King William actually came to terms and so Hereward lived a long peaceful (chrisian?) life before finally being buried at the abbey.
I have previous;y posted that Hereward is best understood as Harold Redivivus.
But I now see this might be wrong (I have never understood why this is not a uncomon experience for Wiley).
If you look at Hastings as an imaginary battle (as I do), there are a number of strange features.
English forces at Hastings
The exact number of soldiers in Harold's army at Hastings is unknown, as contemporary records do not give reliable figures. Some Norman sources give 400,000 to 1,200,000 on Harold's side,[k] while English sources seem to underestimate Harold's army, perhaps to make the English defeat seem less devastating.[69] Recent historians have suggested figures of between 5,000 and 13,000,[70] while most argue for a figure of 7,000–8,000 English troops.[26][71] These men would have been a mix of the fyrd and housecarls. Few individual Englishmen are known to have been present;[31] about 20 named individuals can reasonably be assumed to have fought with Harold at Hastings, including Harold's brothers Gyrth and Leofwine and two other relatives.[58][l]
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Basically it's only Harold and his relatives that get wiped out (don't appear in Domesday) and disappear from the record (did they ever actually exist?).
Few other Englishmen present. |
Now comes another strange bit.
The English army consisted entirely of infantry. It is possible that some of the higher-class members of the army rode to battle, but then dismounted when battle was joined to fight on foot.
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There was no cavalry, and surprisingly few noble types. This is an army that has just beaten the mighty Danes at Stamford Bridge, and rushed back across the length of the country, but they have no cavalry. So they set up on a hill/barrow.
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Wile E. Coyote
In: Arizona
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Because of, err, bad fortune, Harold ends up (No cavalry, No Nobles) by having to adapt similar tactics to what Hereward did during the English fen resistance, you use the barrows and flooded fens to help your defence against the superior forces.
The fen resistance has been reinvented to beome a national battle we think of as Hastings.
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Wile E. Coyote
In: Arizona
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I need another mug of Fugi roast.
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Mick Harper
Site Admin
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In: London
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I dismiss Hastings too on the grounds you don't build an abbey to commemorate the site and then have no physical evidence of the battle. I am inclined to see the post-Eddie the Confessor manoeuvrings as more a coup by the Norman faction at court than anything else.
I'd like to be able to dispense with Stamford Bridge too but I haven't gone into it. 'The harrying of the north' is clearly bogus, as written, so maybe that was the final reckoning with the Scandinavians.
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Wile E. Coyote
In: Arizona
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So, to recap, archaeologists have been digging in Anchor Church Field just to the north of Crowland in the belief that they will find evidence of the first settlement of Saint Guthlac. They have uncovered pottery and an elaborate bone comb. While ortho says these objects cannot be definitively associated with the saint, they want to believe that Anchor Church field was indeed the location of Guthlac’s fenland retreat.
Who was Guthlac?
Wiley's guess would be Saint Good Luck. But heyho....
Where did he come from?
Mercia...It's marsh land, fen land.....
What is he known for?
Early years. Known for early military prowess....Which famously he then gives up (you should too). Then his abstinence (You should as well.) If not (also known for multiple vistations from devils).Calm down dear, and with St Good Luck all will be well.
He is the Norman peacekeeper......to Herewald's insurgent. ?
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Wile E. Coyote
In: Arizona
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Wiley is getting the demons.
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Wile E. Coyote
In: Arizona
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Mick Harper
Site Admin
![](images/avatars/1200773856450e35214c81a.gif)
In: London
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I tend to assume he was a made-up character in the first place. All part of western Europe's attempt to (a) resist and (b) turn the tide of Islamic expansion.
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