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Julian Cope presents Head Heritage

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National Geographic and Celts
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gorseddphungus
185 posts

Too OLD
Mar 15, 2006, 23:17
The dating pattern for tombs only shows the dating pattern of *archaeological schools*. I have known about the Carromore dates for some time but I am also aware of the backward state of European Archaeology.

Tara or the Thornborough henges move fierce passions whereas equivalent monuments being bulldozed by the dozen in any other country in europe doesnt raise an eyebrow when they make way for the new high speed train link or a three-lane motorway financed by the flipping EU.

The truth is, archaeological research in Eire or the UK is miles ahead of the rest of europe, as well as public interest. Everything slightly impressive is also, for better or worse, quickly made into a tv show. I visited one of the Passage graves with the longest corridor i have seen (45-50 metres long) near Seville the other day. It took me 6 years to do that. Every time I tried before I needed to make an appointment beforehand and get there at the right time. The grave is always closed, far away behind railings and no-one (excepting the researchers) in that city has heard of the biggest passage grave in Europe,, not even the taxi drivers. The visit was successful, it lasted less than 3 minutes when I luckily sneaked in just before they locked the door for another 500 years or whatever and because I was lucky that they nearly interred a couple alive by mistake when they stayed far behind in the chamber so they agreed to keep it open for me . When I asked the caretaker for detailed publications or bibliography he said - SURE, and I got a crappy leaflet. Unfortunately, the other grave with the 40 m passage nearby was locked and they refused to open it because 'it had rained'. There are another 15 similar monsters nearby, lying under private farms. But such is the state of things in Spain. Portugal with its proto-/pre-megalithic tombs dated quite early by forward thinking archeos is only slightly better, but extreme academicism and internal strife and jealousy between the few archaeologists there does not allow any progress. latest dating of materials under Portuguese menhirs were given Mesolithic dates recently and yet no-one bothers to publicize it. It remains filed in the dusty corners of Portuguese universities where only some foreign researchers sometimes excavate.

In the same way, i have seen Spanish local archaeologists dismiss dates which are 'TOO OLD' (say, over 7-8,000 BC) in the carbon found on the floors of one megalithic tomb because they did not *fit* with the neolithic sequence of the group of tombs they were studying and therefore 'the dates must have been a mistake'.

Also, Mesolithic burials are entirely overlooked as well as Portuguese shell middens dating from that time, which were deliberately created to make a sort of barrow and burials within them have been found. Research is so sparse (there are even no official maps like the OS ones) that years will pass before we see results like the ones in the British Isles with less and less being left to discover.

Elsewhere the German proto-henges are giving dates of +5500 BC suggesting that at least the eastern British tradition of building henges could have a central European origin in the Early Neolithic of that part of Europe (which is earlier than that of Western Europe).
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