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Mick Harper
Site Admin
In: London
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Dan wrote: | Surely hunting/gathering is the norm for every other form of life on Earth! |
Animals have a home range that they exploit for food by hunting and/or gathering. And they also tend to have a permanent dwelling place somewhere in the middle of that range. But that is not the way "hunter-gatherers" are portrayed by pre-hsitorians. They are always pictured on an endless trek across the landscape.
| It's the state of nature from which we've diverged only slightly. |
No, that's my point. We have not diverged at all. We've always stayed put in permanent homes just like the rest of the Animal Kingdom.
| It's only a matter of how much effort goes into the hunting and the gathering, how far afield you have to go, |
Again, no. Human beings, like animals, occupy only those bits of real estate that mean you don't have to go far afield--unless you're operating a very peculiar life-style or you live somewhere so poor in resources that occupation uses them up. But I accept that it IS a mark of human beings, that when forced to, they'll do something deeply uncongenial, like wandering around in small groups without a home.
| what you look for, what you do about variety and competition... Ants do some farming... but it's only another form of symbiosis. |
Well, you do what your parents do. You do what everyone else does. The evidence from middens is that human beings don't ordinarily go in for variety.
| And cutting with the other edge, that means cultivation, forest management and stuff are indefinitely old. |
Well, yes, this is critical. If you look at, say, Australian aborigines or Kalahari bushmen, they are adept at finding food in unpromising places but that's it. It requires human beings settled in one place and in relatively large groups, to start messing with their econiche. One might go a little further and say that Australian aborigines and Kalahri bushmen are functionally animals.
| There are simple facts of the matter as to what ancient lifestyles were like... the tricky part is finding out what they were. The key thing is human sociability. I moaned on GHMB once that everyone talks as though small bands of people set off into the great unknown, never to see or be seen again; but then managed to convene an annual shag-fest! (The problem throughout the study of history is that people in the past are not treated simply as people.) People live together-and-apart. |
I strongly endorse everything here. Except the last two words. Who lives apart? Monks? Nutters? Applied Epistemologists?
| The question remains at what point did Britons start structuring their settlements in the now-familiar way? Whether or not farming is the norm is surely a big determinant of the sizes and locations of the settlements. |
If you look at the distribution of villages in Britain--five miles apart?--my guess is that that's how the Brits organised themselves from Day One. A bit like a pride of lions I suppose. Or baboons. Villages seem to me extraordinarily unavoidable.
| Why are you so sure that farming is a better way of life, Mick? People sure seemed to have suffered for it when it started. (Which to me is proof of a near-death experience.) |
Again, I entirely agree. The evidence is overwhelming that sedentary hunting and gathering takes a coupla hours a day max. Farming is a full-time occupation. However, farming is definitely a superior way of exploiting a given land area, so I assume the small village became a large village.
| Among primates, brain size correlates to troupe size {Social interaction is the most complex thing anyone ever has to do.} so human-ness is certainly founded on the largest of social groups {Neanderthals had bigger brains...}, but why permanent, necessarily? |
I still don't understand what you're driving at. Why would any species waste resources moving about? It's a damned nuisance and none of us does it voluntarily (except recreationally). And note, our dear palaeoanthropolgists ALWAYS have Neanderthal living in tiny groups forever roaming the earth.
Your point about troupe size is interesting. The evidence for human beings suggests that they live in the largest concentrations of humanity that can be sustained economically.
| Since when is recreational-style hunting (and trapping and fishing...) not sufficient? How is herding over cliffs efficient? And where is it applicable? |
Dan, have you ever tried hunting animals with a pointed stick? Or even a bow and arrow. Animals worth the eating are designed not to be killed by superbly designed predators. The idea of us doing it on a daily basis is risible. Though I am told that it is very entertaining and has been engaged in recreationally for all eras for which we have information.
Trapping small animals though is definitely a paying proposition but it can only be done when you're in the same place all the time. I quote the cliff stuff simply because the evidence that it was done is overwhelming and it is something that is achievable by lumbering but smart people. But note, it can only be done by large groups of people and it is only worth doing when you can butcher and store the meat in one place. It's a village activity.
| My eyebrow certainly twitched when Ray suggested (if I read it right) that the idea of kingship was introduced (ultimately) from Sundaland. |
Hierarchy is absolutely necessary as soon as human beings try to socialise. Two or more. It is another twittish concept introduced by the anthropologists that society can be run by some kindly aged heresiarch. I'd say "a king" is necessary when numbers get up to about fifty.
| All these reality TV shows, especially the one on the Scottish island, annoy me by suggesting that "everyone has to do their share of everything", which means forcing people to do what they loathe and are bad at and preventing them indulging (taking advantage of) their preferences (i.e. doing their fair share). Majority rule is clearly demonstrated not to work. Specialisms and hierarchy are obvious from the beginning. |
You got it, bub. So you get a village, the smallest unit that allows for specialisation, and you get the Big House (sorry, the high status dwelling).
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DPCrisp
In: Bedfordshire
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| But that is not the way "hunter-gatherers" are portrayed by pre-historians. They are always pictured on an endless trek across the landscape. |
Fair enough. Palpable nonsense.
| Who lives apart? Monks? Nutters? Applied Epistemologists? |
Together-and-apart in the sense that sleepers keep train tracks always together, always apart. There is a certain amount of isolation, but only so much.
| However, farming is definitely a superior way of exploiting a given land area |
Ah, in the sense that (and to the extent that) we don't go in for variety...
| [color=darkred]Animals worth the eating are designed not to be killed by superbly designed predators. The idea of us doing it on a daily basis is risible. Though I am told that it is very entertaining and has been engaged in recreationally for all eras for which we have information[/color]. |
You seem to underestimate the value of that entertainment.
| Trapping small animals though is definitely a paying proposition but it can only be done when you're in the same place all the time. |
Huh? You need to know where to put the traps, but when you know the signs, you can do it anywhere.
| I quote the cliff stuff simply because the evidence that it was done is overwhelming |
In Britain?
| it is only worth doing when you can butcher and store the meat in one place. |
Or butcher and disperse the meat among the participants. But then, what is the evidence that it was done at all? From what I've heard, the evidence usually comes as pile of unbutchered bones at the foot of a cliff: evidence of the inefficiency of the process. Do you know of piles of butchered bones?
Agreed.
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Ray
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| round houses are pretty substantial and long-lived, though, aren't they? Foot-thick posts, multiple layers of hearths... |
Substantial and long-lived maybe; practical homes for the winter, no.
Did you ever watch Barry Cunliffe's experiment in which a group of volunteer families lived in one for a (summer) season?
They had endless problems with water, which leaked in under the walls when it rained and soaked their beds. It would have been very impractical in the winter
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DPCrisp
In: Bedfordshire
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I've been sorely disappointed by every reconstruction of ancient ways I've ever seen.
The only worthwhile finding I know of is from West Stow: they couldn't live on the sunken floors of Saxon houses as had always been assumed: the house just filled with mud. Even so, they've found the burned remains of at least one house that proves they had floor boards above the hollow, so they needn't have gone to all that trouble...
Nevertheless, I am not disputing what you say, Ray. I bet you've got a lot to tell us about the geometry of these rectangular houses.
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Ray
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| My eyebrow certainly twitched when Ray suggested (if I read it right) that the idea of kingship was introduced (ultimately) from Sundaland. |
Did it now? I must admit that the daily word allowance made it difficult to explain it clearly. I was talking specifically about the pyramidal structure in which every person is apart of the whole. The king as the apex and the channel between the phenomenal and the extraphenomal worlds was far more than top dog. Without him there was no nation.
It's taken me a long time to root it out and even longer to grasp how it worked. there are no surviving examples, only vestigial trappings so it's not easy to get it across. But I stand by what I was attempting to say.
BTW Dan, I don't understand what you think I've got to say about hut geometry. Give me a few clues and you never know, I might give it a whirl.
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DPCrisp
In: Bedfordshire
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| I don't understand what you think I've got to say about hut geometry. Give me a few clues and you never know, I might give it a whirl. |
Just give us the overview of what you've found out, then we'll see what significance we can wring from it. Where are these houses? How big are they? How are they arranged? Which way do they face? How much do these things vary? Are there gaps where they should be found...?
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Ray
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| Just give us the overview of what you've found out, then we'll see what significance we can wring from it. |
Not a lot as you're about to learn.
In the submerged bits between the Scilly Isles. Some are above the low tide line.
| How big are they? How are they arranged? Which way do they face? How much do these things vary? Are there gaps where they should be found...? |
I've only ever seen them in a photo, and that was long before I joined AE. I had to ask a friend who's seen them for real and he's positive they're rectangular.
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TelMiles
In: London
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For what it's worth I've also seen photos of these buildings.
_________________
Against all Gods.
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DPCrisp
In: Bedfordshire
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The importance of St. Albans in our early history is a recurring theme. The Belgae established a capital there in the BC... Verulamium was a significant Roman town on the Watling Street... Boudicca did her dirty work there... St Alban is Britain's first Christian martyr... and as if to underline all this, I read in Ancient Dunstable that
| "We know that in the Roman period the tribe whose centre was at Verulamium, the city on Watling Street near the modern St. Albans, were known as the Catuvellauni. Caesar's adversary Cassivellaunus was probably a chief of this tribe, and his successor from about 20 B.C. to about 10 A.D. was Tasciovanus, who struck coins at Verulamium, bearing his name and the name of the town. The letters inscribed on these coins are the earliest words written in Britain." [My emphasis.] |
But that was on page 54. All the way back on page 51/52 we read
| "In 54 B.C. [Caesar] committed more than half of his entire operational strength. The Britons placed themselves under the command of Cassivellaunus, chief of a tribe beyond the Thames. Seven tribes are named as part of these troops and it may well be that some of them lived near Dunstable on Puddlehill. |
{See what I mean about being obsessed with Puddlehill?}
| "Caesar forced his way across the Thames, and Cassivellaunus fell back northward with 4,000 charioteers along a road, burning the crops and driving cattle into the woods. The route must have been along the western bank of the Lea, by Cheshunt, Hertford and Hatfield, the only area where Iron Age relics have been discovered. {I dunno what he means by that, but he obviously can't bring himself to think of Watling Street being there already.} Caesar pursued him until he captured his capital. Sir Mortimer Wheeler believes this capital was at the "Devil's Dyke" in Wheathampstead, where he dug in the 1930s. This huge ditch, 40m across and 12m deep, is one of a number of similar massive earthworks dug near tribal capitals in south-east Britain at this time. There is another known as "Beech Bottom" on the outskirts of St. Albans. |
| "Ravensburgh, near Hexton, has also been suggested as a possible site for the British stronghold." |
Eh? All the signs are there that St Albans/Verulamium was the tribal capital... and yet it was probably somewhere else? I don't geddit. Whose brain turned over two pages together? Not just this author: it's "either Ravensburgh Castle or Wheathampstead" everywhere you look.
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Mick Harper
Site Admin
In: London
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Entirely fascinating, Dan. The underlying problem, as I indicated in THOBR, is that there is such an intense desire to "know one's roots", to have a Creation Myth at all costs, that when there's nothing or (what's actually worse) when there are stray wisps, then "history" becomes a series of Chinese boxes (or, as it were, a series of Chinese whispers).
The geezer writing Ancient Dunstable is just the last person to paint some more lacquer on the story. And you may be sure that in fifty years time, somebody else will be starting from Ancient Dunstable as being gospel and adding a bit more. Academics, of course, always think that "At last, we know", when adding another brick in the wall. And they're right in a sense, the bigger the wall the more true it all seems. But they're still just castles in the air.
But it has to be the "right" castle. You try telling a historian that Watling Street is not Roman and that therefore "straight roads" are not Roman and you'll get a dusty answer.
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DPCrisp
In: Bedfordshire
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We've mentioned this before: that Maiden Castles/Bowers in (southern?) England are supposed to have been so named because they were never taken, breached, defiled. But, of course, there is no point in time at which it's appropriate to take a retrospective and rename all the castles that were never taken. (Never mind that English, including the word 'maiden', is supposed to have arrived long after the castles were disused. I guess that's why some say it's Brythonic for big hill.)
Dunstable's Maiden Bower appears to be a reworking of a neolithic causewayed enclosure: that is, a dotted line of ditches and banks with several 'entrances' was made into a continuous ditch-and-bank with just one entrance. Lo and behold, Wikipedia also says of Dorchester's Maiden Castle:
| "excavations at the site have dated construction of a Neolithic causewayed enclosure back to around 4000 BC... However most of the works at the site date from around 450 to 300 BC, when an earlier Iron Age hillfort dating to c. 600 BC was extended and enlarged...". |
This now seems obvious: "maiden", meaning unpenetrated, unbroken (complete, as when it -- or she -- was first made), was to distinguish the new (apparently defensive) embankments from the earlier, broken (apparently non-defensive) causewayed enclosures that were known about, if not remodelled. "Maiden Bower" literally means "unbroken enclosure" {in English!}.
NB. I've seen a map somewhere that shows causewayed enclosures in southern England and scattered right across Europe... but only in the lowlands: just where you'd expect to find meat markets?
(By southern England, I mean a line from the Severn/Bristol Channel to the Trent/Humber estuary seems to be the dividing line in a number of archaeological cases.)
Etymonline:
| maiden: O.E. mægden, mæden, dim. of mægð, mægeð "maid," from P.Gmc. *magadinom "young womanhood, sexually inexperienced female" (cf. O.S. magath, O.Fris. maged, O.H.G. magad, Ger. Magd "maid, maidservant," Ger. Mädchen "girl, maid," from Mägdchen "little maid"), fem. variant of PIE base *maghu- "youngster of either sex, unmarried person" (cf. O.E. magu "child, son," Avestan magava- "unmarried," O.Ir. maug "slave"). |
made: from M.E. maked, from O.E. macod "made," pp. of macian "to make".
Don't be put off by all those Gs: since G = Y, magd = mayd = maid. Nothing funny about that. But there is something funny about 'made' and 'make', since G = K is another good rule...
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Hatty
Site Admin
In: Berkshire
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'maiden' comes from the Celtic mai dun, meaning 'great hill' I gather.
| At the time of the Roman invasion in 43 AD, Maiden Castle was inhabited by the Durotriges tribe |
Duro = Duero?
Could 'bower' be connected to boyar (or bojar) as in the Rumanian/Russian/Bulgarian aristocratic title?
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Hatty
Site Admin
In: Berkshire
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Dan wrote: | This now seems obvious: "maiden", meaning unpenetrated, unbroken (complete, as when it -- or she -- was first made), was to distinguish the new (apparently defensive) embankments from the earlier, broken (apparently non-defensive) causewayed enclosures that were known about, if not remodelled. "Maiden Bower" literally means "unbroken enclosure" {in English!}. |
Maidenhead on the Thames may be another instance of unbreached defences. There's a Maidens Green nearby described as a "moated site", "which survives as an earthwork" - situated in an area of mostly unbroken grassland - with a church, St. Michael the Archangel (12th century, replaced a 'Saxon' chapel) located on a stream called The Cut. Berkshire was originally under the diocese of Dorchester (on the Thames), which is where the Isis meets the Thame river.
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Mick Harper
Site Admin
In: London
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I don't much go for this flowery imagery. Do we have much evidence that the Ancient Brits had any kind of Virgin cult? And doesn't it rather invite hubris to actually call a fortress impenetrable...and what generally happens to virgins sooner or later anyway?
As I have pointed out elsewhere, "madan" means fortress in Hindi. Do Indians have the word maiden for a young girl?
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Ishmael
In: Toronto
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| Mick Harper wrote: | | As I have pointed out elsewhere, "madan" means fortress in Hindi. Do Indians have the word maiden for a young girl? |
I suspect the association is through the hymen -- which is a barrier or wall that guards entry. Even today, we still retain the association by referring to the breakage of the hymen as the loss of maidenhood. The "maden" is lost when the wall is breached.
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