Wotan
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Woodentop
Feb 16, 2002, 21:00
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Right - forgive my ignorance again, but is there a period pre-dating the building of stoneworks, or concurrent with it, when monuments etc were built from wood? If so, how is it referred to?
I know there are henges etc built from timbers, but presumably before early man learned to work stone effectively, and tree worship was big, timber constructions must have been common.
I've run into the term Megaxylic - or am I barking up the wrong tree?
W
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FourWinds
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Re: Woodentop
Feb 17, 2002, 08:56
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The problem with ages is they refer to tool technology rather than building technology. While the people who built the like of Newgrange could obviously build fantastic things from stone in 3500 BCE (and in Malta earlier still <and if you listen to some people over 12000 years ago>) they still lived in wooden huts.
The 'wood age' you refer to (i.e. when mega-monuments were all wood) seems to have been concurrent with very early 'stone age' proper.
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Wotan
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Re: Woodentop
Feb 17, 2002, 09:53
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So we're talking palaeolithic ? Where does SeaHenge and WoodHenge fit into the scheme of things?
Ta, W
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Annexus Quam
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Re: Woodentop
Feb 17, 2002, 10:05
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As said, wood does not pre-date stone. It's always been used in conjunction with stone from times immemorial. In fact, areas where there are (no) megaliths today were rife with wooden constructions, eg East Anglia. But then there's also places like Stanton Drew where woodrings were common too alongside bronze age stone ones. Dwellings from those times have hardly been found because they consisted of wooden huts and houses, that's why it's been called the civilization of the dead. Plus, they used to be quite frugal constructions, since many communities were still semi-nomadic, and roamed the land once a year at least (as some still do today, following summer and escaping winter).
Still, there's the Ur-Stonehenge, ie. the triple amazingly huge wooden solstice posts that used to stand where the car park is today, dating from the Mesolithic and predating everything we see today, as a sign of man's spiritual continuum until christianity. At that time, it is possible that wood was used in a unique way (see Starcarr too) whilst the sacredness of stone was entirely *natural*, resident in the most incredible gorsedds and natural outcrops that you can still admire today (though few in fact bother to). The spiritual tradition that lasted 30,000 years slowly gave way to the Neolithics who finally began to tame nature, the buildings in stone (and wood) also taking over the natural ones.
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Annexus Quam
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Re: Woodentop
Feb 17, 2002, 10:06
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seahenge and woodhenge are from roughly the same time as all other neolithic/bronze age constructions, the ones you find in the modern antiquarian.
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FourWinds
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Re: Woodentop
Feb 17, 2002, 13:47
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Newgrange, like Stonehenge is predated by a woodhenge just 50m or so away from the main tomb between it and the gigantic cursus.
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Wotan
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Re: Ann & Four
Feb 17, 2002, 14:44
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Excellent! - thanks for that. W
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Annexus Quam
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Re: Woodentop
Feb 17, 2002, 19:32
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are these all still visible at Newgrange?
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FourWinds
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Re: Woodentop
Feb 17, 2002, 19:38
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The cursus is very evident but in a field that you can not get into .. BAH!!
The woodhenge is in the same field and is marked out by little concrete stumps (to one side of original holes I think).
There are also many other structures including round houses on the site. I'll have a dig through tourist gloss and give a definitive list after I've had me tea.
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Annexus Quam
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Re: Woodentop
Feb 17, 2002, 19:45
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I've already had my tea so I'll keep hassling you. It is amazingly similar to Stonehenge then. The cursus there is accessible though. It's the first place I went to as I visited Stonehenge years ago as the busloads of people rushed to the shop. Also, Woodhenge is equally a collection of posts. I know of the round houses and presumably the whole area is a wealth of stuff as is usually the case, forming a big cosmiclike landscape with Knowth and Dowth?
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