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DPCrisp
In: Bedfordshire
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| I mentioned that Burg/Borough which is assumed to be Anglo Saxon/Germanic is actually Ancient Greek - Purgos. |
Or the other way around.
| Perhaps the Romans not only built new roads over older ones they also built new canals over existing ones. |
Like this one?
They date causewayed camps to the Neolithic and when this one was featured on Time Team, the line through the centre was dismissed as a Roman canal coincidentally crossing the site. It's a shame they made nothing of the fact that it hits the causewayed camp dead centre and that the arcs of ditches fail to meet up just where the 'canal' crosses them.
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Komorikid
In: Gold Coast, Australia
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I mentioned that Burg/Borough which is assumed to be Anglo Saxon/Germanic is actually Ancient Greek - Purgos.
Or the other way around. |
Yes. My thoughts exactly. Ancient Greek (the language) has a North Atlantic origin. That is why it is different to Modern Greek (the original Demotic language of Greece _ancient and modern).
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DPCrisp
In: Bedfordshire
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| Ancient Greek has a North Atlantic origin. That is why it is different to Modern Greek. |
It's that different???
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Mick Harper
Site Admin
In: London
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Of course it isn't. The idea of different origins is preposterous. However it is perfectly possible that the people who took Demotic Greek and alphabetised it into Classical Greek were from the Atlantic.
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Mick Harper
Site Admin
In: London
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We should be very chary of notions that places had different climates in the past from that of today (not counting temporary global changes like Little Ice Ages or whatnot). It breaks the What is is What was rule. In other words you'd have to produce really good evidence that it was different, and from what I've seen this just isn't the case. For instance, large populations in Orkneys etc are much better accounted for by specialist communities importing their food, than by better farming conditions.
Dartmoor is a special case since it doesn't seem to be good farmland what ever the local climatic conditions. But here we should look to human-wrought degradation since it is a known fact that areas with poor(ish) soils can be easily turned into permanently unproductive land.
We should definitely think more about peat since this seems to have a curious interface with human activities of various sorts.
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Ishmael
In: Toronto
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| frank h wrote: | | I understand an updated version of my original plot of these plus Hogg's detailed diagram of Hill forts may shortly be posted up by Ishmael for comparison. |
Here you are...(click to enlarge)...
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That the Greek 'purgos' and 'burgh', 'burg', and even 'berg' are cognates is noted in my 1901 edition of Liddell and Scott's Greek-English Lexicon. It is used by Homer and Hesiod, as well as later writers, so it is a very old word. That there is no cognate in Latin is perhaps a smidgeon of evidence that Greek is closer to the Germanic group in the IE family than to the Romance group.
As regards climate change, I will check the sources sometime, but I was under the impression that the differences in temperatures at different times was well established by pollen analysis and examination of ice cores from Greenland. If not how can we raise the cash to finance the research which is needed on Shetland?
The farming on Dartmoor appears to have been amazingly extensive, far more so than any later farming in England. To quote Oliver Rackham, History of the British Countryside, page 156, 'Reaves tell a story of country planning on a gigantic scales: of an organization able to parcel out tens of square miles as it pleased, and which set its rules of geometry above the practicalities of dealing with gorges and bogs.' Ancient societies were amazingly highly organised.
Climate change has happened in my lifetime, so for me constant climate changes fulfil the rule that things are as they always were unless proved otherwise. The most obvious change in my lifetime is in the atmosphere. The first time I went to the Scottish Highlands in 1959 I was struck by the Technicolor clarity of the scenery, something then unknown in the English Midlands where I was born. Now one sees it everywhere, thanks to the Clean Air legislation.
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Mick Harper
Site Admin
In: London
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| I was under the impression that the differences in temperatures at different times was well established by pollen analysis and examination of ice cores from Greenland |
I was under the impression that both these 'sciences' are so much in their infancy that it is laughable to pretend that we can say what the climate of Dartmoor, or even Britain, was in the Bronze Age. Dangerous times because it means a) the impression can be given that a scientific underpinning is available and b) much worse, there is just enough data to actually 'show' a scientific underpinning.
| The farming on Dartmoor appears to have been amazingly extensive, far more so than any later farming in England |
If this is true it is extremely important. There can be no question, at any state of the climate, that Dartmoor is better than elsewhere in Britain. It follows that Dartmoor must have had some special advantages -- but what advantages does mere height, which would appear to be Dartmoor's only advantage, have?
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DPCrisp
In: Bedfordshire
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| Ancient societies were amazingly highly organised. |
I know what you mean, but I don't find it amazing.
| I was under the impression that the differences in temperatures at different times was well established by pollen analysis and examination of ice cores from Greenland |
Pollen analysis isn't so bad, since we can see what conditions plants favour now; but there are uncertainties in deciding which are the contributing factors and in the level of interference credited to ancient people.
Greenland and Antarctic ice cores suffer from the presumption that they represent global conditions; the same assumption that says glaciers extending farther south imply tundra and everything else extend farther south and (assuming the trend doesn't cross the Equator) the whole world must have been colder. Psh.
| what advantages does mere height, which would appear to be Dartmoor's only advantage, have? |
Is it an advantage that all you can (could) do is farm up there? Does its height (not too high) just mean that 'proper life' goes on down at the river mouths...?
If Dartmoor could be planned so arbitrarily, then there can't have been any 'indigenous' locals with any clout and boundaries to respect.
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Mick Harper
Site Admin
In: London
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| If Dartmoor could be planned so arbitrarily, then there can't have been any 'indigenous' locals with any clout and boundaries to respect. |
Good point but then we have to ask ourselves why, if nobody fancied it very much, it was worth 'planning' at all. What about peat-digging? If the climate was stupendously hotter, we might be looking at poppy cultivation. But then what pollen grain evidence would be left generally if a monocultural plant was being artificially cropped?
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| Here you are...(click to enlarge)... |
Many thanks Ishmael for posting up the Hill fort/bury diagrams. There is also Burrill near Bedale/Northallerton which stands just in front of the Dales near the river Ure.I guess other bits and pieces might also gradually come to light.e.g.of the deserted villages some are burys and worths which will be added to the map shortly.
Returning to your point in the thread 'Scotching the Scotch', I imagine the dense cluster of small Hill forts in the borders region (shown in Hogg's figure) rather than the later built Hadrians wall, might have been the barrier 'scotching' the northern part of the island from other bury people in the south and thus possibly generated the term Scotland.
As far as the coloured map is concerned the proposed setting is the Iron Age and that defensive earthworks were ubiquitous until a more peaceful landscape existed at the end of the millennium when Hill forts and enclosures were then mostly unnecessary, except for those holding out in remaining unresolved areas of conflict.
It can be seen (Hill fort-blue, bury-red, worth-yellow) that modern towns and villages with the bury suffix are hardly present westwards into Wales or in Cornwall. Strikingly like the Scottish Borders these localities also have dense clusters of the very small Hill fort type, perhaps indicating flight of the uprooted elites to relative safety in the wake of an advancing enemy.
Also the lack of worths in Cheshire,Shropshire and Herefordshire suggests continued instability which may have been instrumental for the building of Offa's Dyke(shown in white line and yet to be dated). Moreover according to Hogg both Credenhill and Croft Camp Hill forts(black dots) just east of the dyke appear to have been built or converted by invaders very early(maybe pre 500BC) to serve the purpose of substantial barracks. Further, the later major Roman fortresses (pink) needed along the dyke would also support this point, as would a similarly argued building of the Antonine and Hadrian walls in the north.
Significantly the British tribes described by the Romans, the later fifth century Kingdoms and particularly the church dioceses c700AD can be discerned from the flow boundaries of the map.
Indeed Wans and Grims/Bokerley Dykes in the south seem to demarcate lines between the Belgae, Atrebates, Durotriges, Dumnonni and Dobunni. Devils Dyke and the other ditches serve similar purposes on the borders of Essex (white lines).
South Cadbury may also have been converted by the Durotriges or Dumnonii to garrison the border. All perhaps hinting that the proposed invaders were groups of different geographical origin demarcating their newly won territory.
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Mick Harper
Site Admin
In: London
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It can be seen
are hardly present
perhaps indicating flight of the uprooted elites
suggests continued instability which may have been instrumental
Moreover according to Hogg
would also support this point, as would a similarly argued
etc etc etc |
Frank, ol' boy, we don't allow academese on this site and it's a rule ruthlessly imposed. Do yourself a favour (not just us) and stop doing it.
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DPCrisp
In: Bedfordshire
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| A little way back, KomoriDude wrote: | | Are the borough/ burgh/ bury separate identities or are they intricately linked to the nearby 'high place' where the local population could go for protection in difficult or dangerous times. |
This does drive rather to the heart of the matter of what the hillforts were about and, surprisingly for Komorikid, betrays the skewed thinking of the scholars.
They rarely if ever treat ancient people as ordinary people: either they're always simpler or more superstitious than we are, or we can't know how they thought and what motivated them; or they trot out silly accounts of things they must have done (paradigm or new theory says so) with a breezy air of "well, that's what people do, isn't it?".
And so it is with the Age of Migration and where Iron Age Britons lived and so on. Someone on the move means everyone was on the move. Someone speaking (or worse, writing) something means everyone was speaking it. And one model for housing everyone in the Iron Age.
Specifically, hillforts are reckoned to be somewhere people lived. I don't mean they say someone is reckoned to have lived in them -- though even that may be debatable -- I mean hillforts, where they exist, are taken to be the sort of place the population at large lived. Then we get to discuss how many people they could hold and whether that's enough to defend one...
And Komori's
| the nearby 'high place' where the local population could go for protection in difficult or dangerous times |
paints it as a community resource. (It may have been a throwaway line in his context, but we can still dissect the point it makes.) Again, everyone is tarred with the same brush, but why is it assumed that the peasantry was targeted or enrolled in matters of warfare? Why is it assumed that they would be allowed into the strongholds or that they'd be better off there? (Where would you rather be, in a castle where you will certainly be attacked? Or out and about where you might stand a chance of staying out of any marauders' way, with just as much chance of preventing your home being torched, i.e. none?)
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It's clear from the plots posted in this thread that hillforts are a widespread but not ubiquitous feature of the landscape. Roughly speaking, they are in inverse proportion to the population density, presuming the arable land of England was supporting the greatest numbers. Nothing in general to do with where people lived then.
My earlier suggestion that the highest concentrations being in Celtland means the hillforts were Celtic has not been challenged directly. That was on the basis of England and Wales. Now we have added the Scottish bit, the picture remains consistent: concentrated in Celtland, but not so much in the too-rugged-and-remote bits.
What can they be if not the posh houses (-cum-offices, perhaps) of the Celtic Ruling Class?
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If they were meant for war, they'd be more concentrated, not less, the farther from their secure homeland. Unless they were fighting amongst themselves, which is about money and influence more than militarism. Innit? (When fisticuffs actually breaks out, you fight where the fighters are, so evidence of skirmishes at the hillforts is as helpful as "either chicken or egg".)
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The alternative (since there is a Celtic-English bias in their distribution) is that the hillforts are English (or 'English' is shorthand for whatever the actual political situation). But the increasing concentration in Celtland would then mean it was harder and harder for the English (invaders) to control the Celtic population... but I find this completely unsatisfactory on the grounds that through the series of invasions from the Belgae to the Normans, the English proved incapable of controlling anyone at all.
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Burgh is supposed to be Old English/Germanic but it is clearly Ancient Greek in origin.
I guess they just borrowed it from the Romans.
Nope there is no variant of Purgos/Burgos/Berg/ Burgh/Borg/Borough anywhere in Latin. The Latin word is Castrum/Castle. |
Where the term borough in the Doomsday book refers to beorg, the place name specialists explain it as a settlement associated with a hill, mound or tumulus. For the purposes of the Hill fort/bury map I've assumed such to be possibly the same as fortified place - quite a few occur near Hill forts.
Also, although evidence for burys being stockades has not been investigated, to name just Chirbury and Rushbury in Shropshire, both have undated large mounds still visible in these villages.
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DPCrisp
In: Bedfordshire
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| For the purposes of the Hill fort/bury map I've assumed such [borough/beorg] to be possibly the same as fortified place - quite a few occur near Hill forts |
Borough, -burgh, -bury, -berg, berry, bury, burrow, barrow, borrow: all the same.
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