The Troy Game (History)

[DPCrisp]

Some website says "the Romans call it Lutetia Parisiorum, the mud-town of the Parisii."

Is that just derogatory, or was Paris somehow known for its mud or (potters) clay (lutum)?

And guess what: a lute is "a ladle or skimmer used in the production of salt to remove scum from a brine-pan."

[Komorikid]

Troia Nova or Trinobantum, the ancient name for the present geographical location of London, only became a prominent cultural centre after the most important site in Northern Europe was destroyed. All that is left of the real centre of power is under a lonely hilltop just off the A1307 southeast of Cambridge just over a mile from Stapleford.

[Ray]

Where on earth did you get that from? I didn't know there were any hilltops in Cambridgeshire. Now I've had a chance to check it in the atlas I know that a low range - the Gogmagog hills no less - divides the county from Suffolk. That's not where Stapleford is to be found, but that's beside the point.

What did whoever produced this information mean by the real centre of power? And how did they arrive at it? This is important for those of us actively researching into this sort of thing.

My scenario, very different to Mick's - but perhaps not here - is that the dynamic was in the Western coastal regions. I'd like to know if your source knows something I don't, ie he's aware of all the early doings in the West, but nevertheless has reason to believe that Stapleford held the whole island together - or if he's simply made the assumption (as so many do) that Southeast England has always been at the centre of everything.

[Komorikid]

[Komorikid]

I gleaned this little piece from British Archaeology.

Without the votive offering explanation the sheer amount of bronze weaponry seems to support Wilkens' Troy in Cambridgeshire theory.

The idea that metal objects were thrown into rivers and pools in the Bronze Age for ritual or votive reasons - an idea firmly established among scholars of the period - has been challenged by a new study of Bronze Age metal deposits in East Anglia.

East Anglia has one of the richest concentrations of Bronze Age metal in the country. But according to the study, part of an unpublished PhD thesis by Colin Pendleton, Suffolk's Sites and Monuments Record Officer, the vast majority of metal finds seem to have been deposited on dry land.

Over 11,000 objects of Bronze Age metalwork have been found in Norfolk, Suffolk and Cambridgeshire, but - excluding material from the Fens - only 72 of them were found in water, the study says. Of these, seven or eight came from modern watercourses, and most of the rest were widely scattered, with only one slight concentration of 15 finds on the River Little Ouse. The concentration was closely associated with a dry-land settlement scatter that had somehow found its way into the water.

The large quantity of material from the Fens, generally assumed to have been deposited in water, was mostly found on subsoils below the Fenland peat rather than in the peat, and was therefore deposited before the Fens became a watery landscape, the study says.

[DPCrisp]

[Hatty]

The way it's told is that bronze gradually became more widespread and the quality of the artefacts improved until it usurped flint and stone which went on being used for everyday purposes; by the late Bronze Age bronze was found throughout Europe, buckets and other mundane utensils not just weapons.

Bronze shields which are said to be too thin to be used in battle have been unearthed as well; how thick would a bronze, as opposed to wood or leather, shield have to be then? And if bronze is such a good metal for weapons and tools, why didn't its use continue? Perhaps due to copper mines being overworked or the expense?

[Mick Harper]

[Deejay]

While we are not on the subject of that great wanderer from Troy, Odysseus, does any one give any credence to the theory that he wandered to the north sea coast of Europe. The place which some people believe was the home of the Sea Peoples who invaded Greece, Atlantis, the Atlantean Culture which spread from Spain to Denmark and the coasts and all points between. There are supposed to be references to it in Homer. The pillars of Hercules, not being Gibraltar but two megaliths outside the temple of Heracles at Gadir or Cadiz as we call it now. The strong westerlies at Poseidon's behest blowing him up the Channel to the mouth of the Elbe

[Leon]

[Leon]

[Mick Harper]

[Mick Harper]

He goes from the Azores to the Kattegat? Didn't he spot anything on the way?

[Ishmael]

[Grant]